The Edge of Destruction
The Edge of Destruction, Episode One: The Edge of Destruction Is this the single strangest episode of Doctor Who? Faced with a two-week gap to fill, no sets other than the TARDIS, and no actors other than the regulars, script editor David Whitaker writes a two-part bottle episode that is like almost nothing else. Where other writers might decide on a character piece, or a small self-contained mystery, Whitaker plumps for just weirding us out. The tropes of absurdist theatre are the easiest way to see what's going on here: there are long instances of silence, the recognizable archetypes of our main characters begin to break down, all within a stream-of-consciousness 'narrative' that doesn't quite fit together – but for all that we can retrospectively interpret 'The Edge of Destruction' in that way, it does rather ignore the fact that this isn’t entirely successful. We can tell it's a bit of a rush job, and because there's no clear mystery to g
