Inside the Spaceship is a bit of an oddity. Written to fulfil the intial order of episodes, writer David Whitaker was instructed to wrtie a story which utilised the expensive TARDIS sets. With the story focusing on the TARDIS and the TARDIS crew, Whitaker takes the opportunity to add some mystery to the TARDIS and consolidate the relationships between the TARDIS crew members.

The Edge of Destruction opens with the TARDIS crew recovering for the console exploding. Disorientated and without their short term memories, Ian and Barbara revert back into their stiff, school teacher personas. Meanwhile, Susan is concerned about the Doctor, who is still unconsious.

With the Doctor incapacitated, Susan attempts to close the mysteriously open TARDIS doors, but the console gives her a huge shock, knocking her unconsious. Ian and Barbara still have no idea what's going on, and so Ian looks after Susan while Barbara watches over the Doctor. What happens next is in my mind the most shocking and unsettling scene ever in Doctor Who: Susan threatens Ian with a pair of scissors, before stabbing her sleeping pallet in a repeated frenzied attack, a scene backed up by some well chosen stock music.

With everyone still in a state of confusion, relationships fray between all characters as the paranoia builds, and what should be the safest and most familiar place to the Doctor and Susan becomes foreign and alien, as Susan grows fearful of the silence and shadows, and the Doctor struggles to discover what's going on.

After a series of confusing images flash up on the scanner and all the watches and clocks melt, the Doctor drugs Ian, Barbara and Susan in order to be able to work in peace to discover what's happening to the TARDIS. Before he can begin this, someone beings to strangle him...

The Brink of Disaster opens with a possessed-looking Ian strangling the Doctor, leading to a paranoia fuelled Doctor deciding that Ian and Barbara are trying to blackmail the Doctor into returning to 1963. Just as the Doctor is about to eject Ian and Barbara from the TARDIS, the fault locator gives the Doctor another warning. Is the TARDIS trying to warn its crew of something happening? Barbara suggested this earlier, but this was dismissed by the Doctor earlier, prefering to believe that something got in.

At last the TARDIS crew decide to work together in order to find out what's going on with the TARDIS. This is the moment where the Doctor begins to fully trust Ian and Barbara, and Ian and Barbara accept their current circumstances. Here the foundations for their interactions in future stories is layed.

Barbara gets onto the idea that time is running out for TARDIS, and that the TARDIS has been trying to tell them that there is something wrong and they are running out of time to solve it. The idea of the TARDIS having a form of intelligence is an interesting one, and it's good to see that the Doctor doesn't dismiss this idea entirely. One problem though: was the TARDIS intially going about the wrong way to warn its crew, or were the TARDIS crew to closed-minded to consider this theory?

With its crew at last in tune with its message, the TARDIS shows the sequence of images on the scanner again; leading to the Doctor working out that the TARDIS is traveling backwards to the creation of a solar system; this explained in a wonderful little speech from William Hartnell, describing how a solar system is created.

At last the problem is revealed: the Doctor hit the "fast return" switch after they left Skaro in order to return to Earth in 1963, only it got stuck and they've gone too far. After the Doctor and Ian release the spring, the TARDIS returns to normal behaviour, and reveals the faults of the TARDIS - the fault locator can't detect broken springs, only broken mechanisms.

Amid all the celebration, the Doctor thanks and apologises to Barbara, for realising the problem and not listening to her in the first place; with the Dcotor revealing he has developed some respect for Ian and Barbara. In private, the Doctor again apologises for his behaviour to Barbara; showing that he is prepared to admit when he is wrong, and that he respects her opinion. Inside the Spaceship ends with the TARDIS crew exploring where they have landed, with a disturbing discovery made...

As a story written at the last minute in order to meet contractual obligations, Whitaker gives us an exploration of the main characters, revealing their strengths; such as the Doctor and Susan's relationship, Barbara's ability to calmly and logically find solutions to a problem and Ian's resourcefulness. Whitaker also manages to make the TARDIS seem like an alien place, which is backed up by the muted lighting setup used. The only problem I can see is that a stuck spring can cause such a large problem. As a story that explores the regular characters and their environment, Inside the Spaceship cannot be faulted at all.

8.1/10

Next time: The TARDIS breaks down, leading to a trek across Cathay with Marco Polo...