10.04 The Edge


THE SECOND DOCTOR, VOLUME 01

The final adventure in Big Finish‘s The Second Doctor Volume 01 from their Doctor Who – The Companion Chronicles range sees the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe, arriving on an asteroid at The Edge.

As a scientific hub of experimentation, The Edge quickly attracts the Doctor and Zoe’s attention and they’re allowed access after first undergoing an “intelligence test” that Jamie can’t participate in.

Left to his own devices, Jamie follows a man who tries to peddle an “intelligence drug” to them.  The trail leads him to the head scientist who has trapped the Doctor and Zoe in an electrical field until they bend to his will.

The Edge is a dangerous place, but Jamie isn’t prepared to let his friends suffer – not even when that means putting on a space suit and venturing outside.

This story is probably the simplest of the four, and it’s also one that doesn’t feature any other cast member.  Although Zoe is part of the story, there’s no Wendy Padbury to voice the character as there was before which probably accounts for one reason for that.  There is another actor to voice the villain as with the more traditional Companion Chronicles stories.

It’s certainly a Jamie story and, in the behind-the-scenes element, the writer speaks of how he wanted to address that Jamie could be the important one despite is lack of education.  That’s all fine and everything, but we’ve had that lesson already in this box-set.  The fact that the writer/director isn’t aware of this is a bit odd, but it’s also telling elsewhere.  For instance, in The Story of Extinction, Jamie had learned that “the Doctor and I” is the correct word form but, by the time of The Edge, when Jamie is much older, he’s reverted back to “the Doctor and me”.  It’s hard to follow continuity when such elementary continuity fluffs are made.

The writer has a point, however, when he explains his desire to write a Jamie story was because, these days, there’s so much emphasis and focus on the female characters that we forget that Doctor Who used to do good male characters too.

For the adventure itself, Frazer Hines is back on top form with his Second Doctor voice, although his Zoe is perhaps less successful.  It would have been handy if Wendy Padbury had stayed on after The Integral long enough to voice Zoe’s dialogue here.  As an adventure set in a space environment and with the primary villain being a “mad scientist”, The Edge fits quite comfortably into the 2nd Doctor’s era – perhaps more so than, for example, The Story of Extinction.

Personally, my favourite story of this set has to be the first one, The Mouthless Dead.  Having Ben and Polly feature alongside Jamie, as well as the atmospheric setting of the train station in addition to the educational beat of the Unknown Soldier, all the elements come together to create the very thing Doctor Who is there for.