Doctor Whosday: Message In A Bottle

In television parlance, a "Bottle Show" is a show that requires no new sets, and can be made for somewhat cheaper than a normal show. Fresh from their ordeal with the Daleks (as reviewed last week), the Doctor and company deserve a bit of a break, and so they are sent into a two-episode Bottle Show normally referred to as "The Edge of Destruction."

Obviously not actual dialog. In the show, Ian is more of a Jem fan.

The plot of this two-parter is not the greatest. It's got plot holes, a lot of twists that aren't really ever explained, and a conclusion that seems unsatisfying and petty. But the plot is almost incidental. The real joy of this serial is seeing our regular cast cooped up inside a TARDIS plagued by mysterious malfunctions, forced to deal with their tensions and develop as a group. They enter as disparate, and often antagonistic characters. They unite as a team of heroes that will weather the next year together.

And all it took was them almost getting blown up.

As always, you can find a synopsis of this serial over at the Tardis Wiki. But to save you time, here's a summary: The Tardis goes crazy, everyone gets knocked out, strange things are happening, people behave strangely, and it all turns out to be the TARDIS trying to warn everyone that a button is stuck. They unstick the button, and everyone lives.

Simple enough, right? I mean, who wouldn't want a machine that responds to a stuck spring inside a button by trying to murder everyone and/or drive them insane?

This Message Brought To You By the Malfunctioning Robot Board of Hollywood, California

I know it's not the Doctor's fault. After all, it's fairly clear in this serial that he does not really know what his TARDIS is capable of (this is before the series reveals that the Doctor actually stole his TARDIS, which justifies why he is not familiar with all its features). Still, one has to wonder what the Time Lords were thinking when they built this thing.

I'm not proud of this one.

The TARDIS has a fault locator that is supposed to light up whenever a circuit goes faulty, but since the malfunction is that a button has remained pressed instead of springing back to the "off" position, the fault locator doesn't read anything. But if you've already got a machine capable of detecting faults, couldn't it also detect when something that is supposed to turn off has not? I've got that on my oven. If the oven is on, a light illuminates. This helps me know when the oven is done heating up, or when I am in danger of burning down my kitchen. You'd think the TARDIS could do the same.

But if the plot is a befuddled and ultimately anti-climactic mess, the characterization is great. Trapped alone in the TARDIS, for most of the serial the characters believe the strangeness is not caused by the TARDIS, but by sabotage. But does the sabotage mean some alien force has entered the ship? Or is the Doctor or one of his companions responsible? Soon paranoia sets in, and the tensions between passengers reaches a head.

I'm a little proud of this one.

I cannot help but compare this to yesterday's review of Fantastic Four #3. Like the Fantastic Four, the Doctor and his companions are bickering and fighting amongst themselves. Like the Fantastic Four, this tension almost leads to the breakup of the team.

But while Fantastic Four #3 made the tension seem trite, and made Human Torch and Thing's arguments seem petty and childish, Edge of Destruction makes a lot of sense.

After all, why should they trust each other? Ian and Barbara certainly don't trust the Doctor. They just escaped from Skaro, where they were trapped because the Doctor lied to them and sabotaged his own ship. And for the Doctor's part, he's treated Ian and Barbara so terribly thus far that it's easy for him to believe they might be sabotaging his ship in revenge, or in the belief that they can force him to take them back to England.

It's the theme from Psycho. That's what she's singing.

None of that explains why Susan goes crazy and tries to re-enact Psycho with a pair of scissors, but I just chalked that up as a manifestation of Susan's growing psychosis.

Seriously, it's never explained, though later serials do occasionally hint that Susan may have ESP or some minor psychic sensitivity. So she might be affected by the TARDIS's telepathic circuits or something.

It doesn't really matter, the point is we get to see her try to murder first Ian, then Barbara, with a pair of scissors, and that's hilarious.

STARE INTO THE TICKING FACE OF MADNESS!

Also hilarious is when a clock manifests in the middle of the control room. At least I assume it manifested, the camera just pans to it. And then the crew of the TARDIS see that the clock has stopped... and they lose it. They freak out, and start screaming. The clock has stopped! What could it possibly mean!

I'd hate to see what they do when a lightbulb burns out.

It turns out that this is all part of the TARDIS's elaborate plot to tell them that the Fast Return Switch is stuck. Barbara, being the intuitive one, is eventually able to work it out... mostly by being clairvoyant I assume, since her explanation really makes no sense based on the clues they are given.

But again, the terrible plot is forgiven in the face of the great characterization. Having accused Ian and Barbara of mutiny, drugged them, and gone so far as to plan to eject them from the ship, the Doctor is confronted with just how wrong he has been about them.

Actual dialogue. Fuck yeah, Barbara.

Barbara gives him an epic put-down speech, where she rightfully points out that they keep saving his life, while he keeps getting them into trouble. I find this one of the more charming things about the First Doctor stories. Many times it's the Doctor bumbling into trouble, and the companions who must save him. For someone used to later Doctor Who episodes where the opposite is true, it's quite refreshing.

In the end, the Doctor is humbled, and begins to realize that the stowaways he has been taking for granted are actually good people to have around. For Ian and Barbara's part, the ordeal teaches them to trust the Doctor's knowledge, and resign themselves to traveling around with him. This is the moment where they finally forgive the Doctor for, essentially, kidnapping them.

This two-parter concludes the first section of Doctor Who. It is not a full season (television seasons were practically year-round back in the day), but it was the first block of episodes. After Edge of Destruction, the travelers were finally a team, working together and trusting each other. They had been to the past, they had been to an alien world presumably in the future, and they had survived a potentially deadly malfunction. With the basic formula of the show set, it was time for Doctor Who to really start to explore its potential.

Next Week: The Lost Spectacle of Marco Polo.

This is my head canon.