In case anyone is going "geeze, I wonder why Helen hasn't talked about that classic sixth doctor special BBCA ran!" well I didn't see it since they changed up the schedule on me and showed it Saturday night instead of Sunday so I plain missed it. I don't plan on having that happen again though, especially since I really like what I've seen of the seventh doctor so far. In any case, again no production values section on this one but I will note that this is what is referred to as a "bottle episode" (well, plural, two 30 minute episodes in this case) where they reuse the sets they already have and bring in little to no extra cast members, which in this case means our core four characters and the Tardis. Which is amusing since short of Journey to the center of the Tardis this season (and maybe The Doctor's Wife a few season's back) we've barely even seen the inside of the Tardis in NuWho, it's funny to think how the BBC actually had more than just a console set for it in the 60s!
Doctor Who: The Edge of Destruction
Summary: The Tardis is mysteriously malfunctioning and everyone is on edge as a result but nobody can figure out what's going on or how to fix it.
The Good: Finally the characters are starting to match up with the characters I met in The Aztecs, I actually hadn't been planning on seeing this episode (it was bundled together with The Daleks) until I looked at the summary for it and noticed that was the main point to this episode. The Doctor especially but even Susan and Barbara are changing a growing (Ian seems to be changing the least but he starts out the most "developed," already someone with a logical head on their shoulders with leadership skills). And it was a bit fun to actually see more of the inner workings of the Tardis, although considering how old the film is you still don't actually see that much of it.
The Bad: I was a bit thrown at how the Doctor was starting to be nicer in the previous serial and then goes back to being mean and suspicious here at first, I wonder if not all the writers were talking to each other and that's where the inconsistency comes from. And I also had a bit of a hard time following just what the characters were trying to do to fix the Tardis and why everyone was getting so mad. Part of this can be blamed on the quality of the footage and I'm sure some of it was because I had a damaged DVD again but I do think part of it was that the writing wasn't as clear as it could be (or maybe it just needed more camera angles so I could better see what was going on).
So, to watch or not? Well, it does help show how the Doctor of the very first episode becomes the nicer Doctor of later on and the serial is only an hour long, but I did find it a bit boring. There isn't exactly a better serial I can recommend instead but if you're not trying to watch every single serial and just casually picking and choosing then you might want to skip this one.
