Plot
The Doctor, while attempting to correct the TARDIS's faulty navigation circuits, causes a small explosion. The Doctor, Barbara, Ian and Susan are all temporarily rendered unconscious. After they awake, Ian and Susan appear to have slight cases of amnesia and everyone begins to act strangely. Unexpected events are happening in the TARDIS, the travellers are becoming suspicious of each other's motives, and the Doctor even accuses Ian and Barbara of sabotage. Fearing that they have been taken over by some alien force — or that they have intentionally sabotaged the TARDIS in order to force the Doctor to return them to 1963 — he drugs Barbara and Ian unknowing that Ian is also suspicious and has not taken the drink given to him. The Doctor attempts to explore the problem without interference.
Gradually it becomes clear that the strange events are an attempt by the TARDIS itself to warn the crew that something is wrong. Thanks to Barbara's clue gathering, the Doctor traces the problem to a broken spring in the Fast Return Switch. The malfunction is causing the TARDIS to head back to the beginning of time; the strange events were just the TARDIS's attempts to warn its passengers before the ship is destroyed. Fixing the switch brings all back to normal. Although the day is saved, Barbara is still affected by the Doctor's harsh words earlier. The Doctor is forced to do what he least enjoys — apologise, and admit that he was wrong about Barbara and Ian.
The story closes with the TARDIS materialising on a snowy landscape, where Susan spots a giant footprint in the snow.
Read more about this topic: The Edge Of Destruction
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)