Day 83: Trap of Steel

Peter Purves, the actor who played Steven, has stated his disappointment with this story, on the grounds that it wasn't actually written for him. The story was commissioned before it was known that he would join the TARDIS crew, and as such, it had to be rewritten to allow for a new character to be introduced. And so naturally, this young male hero, filling the gap that was left through the departure of Ian Chesterton, fulfils the role in this story originally taken by Barbara Wright. Which makes it a little awkward. We know that Steven is a little bit more action oriented than what he is given to do in this script, which involves using wits in an attempt to escape, a scene which does come across as quite nice, but it is obvious that it was written with someone else in mind.

So why was this decision made, why didn't Steven go off to have action based fun with the Doctor? Well, there are two reasons. The first is that we need someone on the ship, allowing what happens on the ship to become more relatable, as we know that when we cut back to the spaceship adventures, we know that they are worth viewing as a character that we already know is in immediate danger due to the events that happen on the ship, we want them to survive what happens here and so we remain interested in the story.

But there's also another reason, and it's simple. The writer, William Emms, may not have known about Steven, but they certainly knew about Vicki. And so, they are able to take the relationship of the Doctor and Vicki and have fun with it, bringing out some of the on screen chemistry between the two actors, and allowing to show a wonderful teacher-student relationship. This would have been impossible with Susan, as it is a fundamental part of the series that Susan knows more about the universe than the viewer, and thus to see her having to be taught betrays the whole concept of the character. But with Vicki, we are able to show her learning from the Doctor and his compatriots, a relationship that simply wouldn't transfer to the connection developed with Steven and the Doctor, which is more similar to what was developed with the relationship between the Doctor and Ian. Which, I suppose, brings up the question of what Ian's role in the plot would be, which I can't answer, but I assume that it would be him with the Doctor and Vicki, but as we need someone with on the villainous Drahvin ship, that role falls to Steven, as Vicki already has her place in the plot. For it is better to write one character well, and one character poorly, than to end up with all characters written poorly and a poor story to show for it.