In a final bid to regain control of the Tardis’s faulty control system the Doctor is driven to experiment with a dangerous untried combination. With a violent explosion the TARDIS blacks out and the crew find themselves trapped inside. A simple technical fault? Sabotage? Or something even more sinister? Tension mounts as the Doctor and his companions begin to suspect one another. What has happened to the TARDIS? Slowly a terrifying suspicion dawns. Has the TARDIS become the prisoner of some powerful fifth intelligence which is even now haunting the time-machine’s dark and gloomy corridors?
Released in October 1988, cover artwork by Alister Pearson
Nigel Robinson’s novelisation of The Edge of Destruction is of special personal significance, so much so that I make no apologies for a little self-indulgence before I put on my reviewer’s hat. My worn and battered copy of the first edition of Jean Marc L’Officier’s Programme Guide became a check list for my Target collecting obsession. I would place a tick against each story as soon as I had acquired the tie-in novel, having already written the title and author below each story synopsis after they were published. I’d even scrawled the stories up to season 26 at the back of the book.
A quick flick through before writing this piece, and as I suspected I discover that it has not been updated since I purchased The Evil Of The Daleks back in 1993. Joy of joys, I can now some 21 years later finally tick off the one outstanding published novelisation in my collection - that’s right, you’ve guessed it: The Edge of Destruction. The diminishing probability of finding that book was so upsetting at the time that I am surprised that the corresponding page of The Programme Guide is not tear stained.
Once upon a time, there was a world without the world wide web. For those out of print books, before E-bay and Amazon, we had to trawl through libraries (for withdrawn for sale books), second hand bookshops and charity shops, attend comic-cons, and send off for those specialist mail order catalogues that were being advertised in Doctor Who Monthly, such as Burton Books. I was a latecomer to E-bay only coming across its possibilities because my parents, as avid music collectors, had ventured into the online auction site in the early 2000s. My Mum boasted on a visit one day that you can find anything on E-bay. So I put her to the test – can she source the one Target novelisation that had so cruelly eluded my grasp? To my amazement within an hour she was bidding on a near mint copy. And so finally after having given up the chase some ten years previous following miles of wasted trips to the most obscure of shops, my Target book collection was complete. It is like the pearl of greatest worth, the prize of my collection. Value wise my Muller Crusaders or Wheel In Space are probably worth more, but The Edge of Destruction encapsulates my target book journey like no other.
The first thing that strikes me as I reread Robinson’s book directly after finishing Whitaker’s The Daleks, is how much the legacy of the earlier novel shines through. Writing for Doctor Who Monthly, Gary Russell noted the debt that Robinson owes to Strutton’s The Zarbi, particularly in the description of the TARDIS living quarters (source – On Target website), but Whitaker’s work is also rarely far from view. Indeed the opening line of The Edge of Destruction hints at the non canonical alternative written account of Ian and Barbara entering the TARDIS for the first time in Barnes Common: “It all started, they would say later, in a forgotten London junkyard on a foggy November night in 1963.” (p7) Other nods to Whitaker include the description of the Doctor as an Edwardian solicitor (p10), and the mention of the Doctor’s “tongue clicking” mannerism (p103).
Whether it is true or not, as a youngster bamboozled by Robinson’s early eighties quiz and crossword books, I imagined he had a vast knowledge of the subject matter. But certainly, the expertise that enabled him to quickly move up the ranks to take up the helm as editor of the range can be clearly seen in his subsequent contributions to both the TV novelisations and the New Adventures.
The television script is arguably a triumph of mood over substance, in that the set up and intrigue of the story is ultimately let down by the rather tame solution of un-sticking the fast return switch. Consequently, the first episode is far superior. Robinson tellingly expands episode one to take up 90 odd pages of the 120 page book. Although wandering off in new directions with some fascinating scenes in other rooms within the TARDIS, Robinson steers his imagination back to the original script and at times it feels that this conscious approach has constrained the novel. Most of the original script is present and correct, but in places Robinson makes significant expansions.
The original script for reasons of pacing and timing is filled with brief retorts and conversations with precise and short sentence. There is no space in the 2 x 25 minute format to illustrate how the characters are reasoning or reflecting upon their situation in any great detail. Robinson is working with the added luxury of being able to expand significantly on characters’ speech, and he peppers the novel with some wonderful soliloquies. However, at times the language is so far removed from conversational speech that the characters come across as reading a script instead of naturally expressing themselves. The Doctor suffers the most from this and at times becomes Sherlock like in his deductive speeches, out of step with what was in fact an emotive response to the threat of not being in control of his TARDIS. At one point he even uses the phrase “elementary, my child”. For Robinson the Doctor enjoys making such pronouncements: “When he spoke it was as though he was addressing a group of slightly dim-witted students, and did not encourage any interruptions. Like so many of the Doctor’s discussions this one was no more than an opportunity for him to hold forth before a captive audience.” (p34) At times he sounds like a nineteenth century preacher, particularly in his final speech.
Perhaps the best speech of the book is that of Barbara’s as she attempts to reason with Susan “You and your grandfather are as alien to us as we are to you. Maybe there are times when we don’t know where we stand with you; yes, maybe there are times when we are frightened of you, uneasy and uncertain. I know we’re all unwilling travellers and the only thing Ian and I really want to do is go home. But, Susan, were all in this together whether we like it or not and we have to learn to trust each other.” p63.
The sense of unease and psychological intensity of the story is brilliantly highlighted by the addition of the recurrent motif of the breathing sound of the TARDIS. The device allows Robinson to create the illusion that the crew are being stalked by the TARDIS. It acts as a constant refrain throughout the book, personifying the TARDIS. Each time it resurfaces Robinson does something fresh, adding to its sinister quality. For example, Barbara imagines it is sounding out her name: “Still she could hear the in-out breathing of the TARDIS life-support system. Crazily she thought she could hear it changing its rhythm and tone, almost as if it was calling out her name: Bar-bar-a…Bar-bar-a.” (p83-84)
Before The Doctors Wife and Journey To The Centre Of The TARDIS, there was Robinson’s novel to help excise the horrors of The Invasion Of Time’s TARDIS interiors. But though enjoyable and evocative, the additional journeys within the TARDIS fall short of adding to the mythos and remain conservative. An organic element could have been introduced to add to the richness of the piece, but instead Robinson plumps for a very sixties concept of the TARDIS as the Doctor’s ship complete with Heath Robinson inventions. That said, it is not all steam-punk. The anachronistic reference to an LED display on the food machine sees to that. Indeed the Doctor here is more of a cross between Hartnell’s irascible pilot and Cushing’s absentminded professor.
Those new series adventures within the TARDIS are nonetheless both inspired either directly by Robinson’s work or from shared sources, notably the horrors of the doors being locked trapping the companion within (c.f. Ian – Rory) and the TARDIS corridors being reconfigured. Anyone who shared the frustrations of playing the 90s computer game Destiny of The Doctors will identify with the annoyance of the ever changing corridors and the maze like quality of the dimensionally transcendental craft. Robinson is not adverse to a little retconning, hinting at the cloister bell to signal that the TARDIS is dying (p94). In the wake of The Doctor’s Wife it would be fascinating to know what other elements Robinson might have retconned had he been writing the novelisation today. There is a lovely passage when after the Doctor says “my machine cannot think” the narrator adds: “The truth was that the Doctor was so convinced of his own superiority he had never before even considered the possibility” (p104)
With the source scripts lacking any great deal of plot, Robinson can flesh out the 120 pages with explorations into the four characters. Rarely divided in the televised piece, Robinson contrives to separate Ian and Barbara from the Doctor and Susan, emphasising that the two pairs seem at times so very alien to each other. The narrator agrees with Ian’s assessment that “The old man had a completely alien set of codes and morals to those of him and Barbara” (p56). The otherness of Susan in relation to the two teachers is differently spelt out, describing her early on as Asiatic in appearance and later noting she sounded Dalek-like to Barbara.
After fighting her possession, Susan becomes the peace-maker and the one to make the move to unite the disparate crew members. In a bold addition to the script Robinson has Susan attempt to inject some sympathy for her Grandfather by telling Barbara to go easy on him for “you don’t know the terrible sort of live he’s had. He’s never had any reason to trust strangers before when even old friends turned against him in the past.” In all likelihood this is a hint at the Doctor’s relationship with the master or maybe even the meddling monk, but it is an intriguing line nonetheless, thrown out there to keep the reader interested (p78).
Considering the Doctor has been travelling the galaxies with abandon, flitting about across all of time and space, he is remarkably closed minded to the possibility of forces beyond his imagining. It is Barbara, whose world has been blown about from her brief travels with the Doctor, who challenges him to think outside the box “what if it isn’t logical? Why don’t you admit that things are not always logical? After all we’ve been through” Back then only three episodes in, the series was largely educational, focusing on history and science over fantasy. Consequently, the plight of the crew was very much down to a logical series of causes and effects. A more satisfying tale would be one that opened the possibility of unseen, illogical forces at work. Robinson chooses instead to stick to the original resolution, even though his exploration of characters would have been a nice set up for a different ending altogether.
Compared to the television story, the novelisation is a huge improvement and the whole thing makes much better sense. Robinson explains the slightly confusing aspects of the story, for example expanding upon the significance of the melting clocks. The reality altering effect of the TARDIS’s actions are explored more fully, with some interesting new dimensions added, such as Barbara believing the TARDIS is the school staff room, and the stand out scene of Barbara being prevented from opening the door to the Doctor’s most hazardous experiments by the TARDIS effecting some telekinesis. Robinson adds new depth to both the characters and the TARDIS environment. Yet despite all this, the story retains its peculiarly and paradoxically claustrophobic feel. But, it is the moral of the story that shines through - the need to be open to infinite possibilities, it is that openness of spirit to explore and learn together that breaks through the claustrophobia:
“There is a boundless universe out there beyond your wildest dreams, Miss Wright, a thousand lives to lead, and a myriad worlds of unimaginable wonders to explore. Let you explore them together and not in anger or resentment, but in friendship.” p118.
This article is the second in our “Story by Story” series running all this week celebrating The Edge of Destruction (or Inside the Spaceship!). We welcome all submissions and pitches on the theme throughout the week at [email protected]
In future weeks we shall be celebrating Marco Polo (Nov 10 – 16), The Keys of Marinus (Nov 17 – 23), The Aztecs (Nov 24 – 30), The Sensorites (Dec 1 – 7) and The Reign of Terror (Dec 8 – 14).
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