The Sensorites

I do not make threats. But I do keep promises.

The Sensorites is story where I can see why it is generally looked down upon by the fans, but I myself greatly enjoyed. It is not an action story, nor is it a tense cloak and dagger one. It is instead, a paranoid Cold War drama. In fact, if you replaced the Sensorites with the Chinese and made the appropriate setting changes, you'd never know this was a science fiction story. Others may find that boring, but I find it quite entertaining and rather dramatic in it's own 1960's way. I can't imagine that it was a big hit with kids though. Not enough stuff blowing up.

Plot Summary

The TARDIS crew materialize on a space ship but the scanner is jammed, preventing them from seeing. They leave the TARDIS and find two crew members who appear dead. They are in fact in a deep sleep and begin to rouse. The team helps them come around and Captain Maitland and Carol relate how they have been held by an alien race called the Sensorites. They control their minds and put them into deep sleeps, preventing them from leaving the orbit of the planet known as the Sense-sphere.

A Sensorite sneaks aboard and steals the lock on the TARDIS door, trapping the crew on the ship. The Sensorites then try to scare the crew into submission by guiding the ship towards the planet. The Doctor helps them steer away and ease their minds. As they recover, Barbara and Susan venture into other parts of the ship looking for water. They end up locked out and trapped with the third member of the crew, John, who was quickly controlled by the Sensorites and has been reduced to a more fearful animalistic state. He has also locked them out of the bridge.

Ian and Maitland try to cut through the door to get to Susan and Barbara but the Sensorites arrive and paralyze Maitland and Carol. They try to manipulate John into subduing Susan and Barbara but their kindness towards him allows him to resist in his mind as he reduces things to good and evil. Ian and the Doctor bring the other two around and they are able to get to Barbara and Susan. John is sedated to ease the strain on his mind.

Ian and Barbara venture into the rear of the ship looking for the Sensorite boarding party. They find each other with each side fearful. Ian holds them off with a threat of violence while also resisting their attempts to subdue him with mind manipulation. At an impasse, the Sensorites tap into Susan's mind as she is more attuned to their mind communication. The two side agree to talk, the Sensorites insisting that the Earth team come down to the planet to be held in exile and the Doctor demanding the return of the TARDIS lock.

The Sensorites attempt to hold Susan as a hostage for further negotiations but the Doctor discerns that the Sensorites are very sensitive to darkness and orders Ian to cut the lights. Paralyzed by fear, the Sensorites are disarmed but the Doctor then orders the lights back up and continues to negotiate in good faith. To continue, the group is invited down to the planet. The Sensorites will help cure John as a measure of good faith while the Earth party behaves and helps them.

The Doctor agrees when he learns that the Sensorites were visited by a party from Earth ten years ago. They were hospitable but the Earth men quarreled with each other and when half the party attempted to leave, their ship blew up in the sky. Shortly after, the Sensorites began to die from a plague infecting their central city. The Doctor agrees to help find a cure for the plague. Barbara stays behind on the ship along with Captain Maitland and one Sensorite to monitor things from above.

The group is invited to the palace of the First Elder. His adviser, the Second Elder is skeptical but agrees to try and talk with the humans. The City Administrator however, is openly hostile and order a disintegration ray be prepared to kill the visitors. The Second Elder orders his assistant to stand down and takes away the arming key to ensure no harm comes to the party.

John and Carol are taken to the sick room to be attended to. John is the mineralogist and had discovered the Sense-sphere was rich in minerals. This opened his mind in a similar way to the Earth party ten years ago that the Sensorites saw danger in his thoughts and used their own powers to neutralize him. They will now close his mind to bring him back to his normal self.

The First Elder offers the others refreshment. He notices that they are offered water from the municipal source and orders that they be upgraded to the higher quality spring water reserved for the Elders. Ian, thirsty from the journey, drinks his municipal water before it is taken away. He quickly begins to fall ill, showing the same signs as Sensorite plague victims. The Doctor believes he is actually suffering from poisoning and demands access to a lab to try and find a cure.

Working with the Sensorites, the Doctor learns that while the municipal water comes from a single source, it is distributed in ten different locations. He has the Sensorites bring samples from each distribution point and in one he finds evidence of Atropine. He further learns that the Sensorites had tested the water before and never found it, leading the Doctor to realize that the poison was shifting around to different distribution points. He creates an antidote, first for Ian, and then to be distributed to the city as a whole.

Meanwhile, the City Administrator is growing increasingly paranoid that the humans are trying to take over. Acting on a chance remark by Carol, he kidnaps the Second Elder and poses as him, using the badge of office to cover his deception. He believes that Ian is faking and that the Doctor means to poison the city. He destroys the dose meant for Ian to see if he does in fact die or is jut faking.

The Doctor receives permission to head down to the aqueduct distribution. He is left alone as his Sensorite escort is terrified of the dark and of the creatures said to live in the tunnels. Other teams had been down and many had not returned, fueling the legends. The Doctor discovers Belladonna near one of the pipes, however he is attacked shortly afterward.

Susan, discovering that Ian's medication had not been delivered, goes and gets a new dose for him. Ian begins to recover and they soon learn that the Doctor has not yet returned from the aqueduct. The two go after him and drive off his attacker. The Doctor is mostly unharmed, although his coat is badly torn, leading the Doctor to suspect that the creatures and poison are connected.

Returning to the courtyard the group sees the City Administrator, still posing as the Second Elder receive the disintegration gun arming key from the Captain of the Guards. The Doctor tries to talk to him but he runs off. In the control room, the City Administrator tries to rearm the gun but the real Second Elder fights off his guard and destroys the key. He is then struck down and killed. The City Administrator orders the guard to accuse the Doctor of the crime and use the Captain to validate his story.

The First Elder, pleased at the Doctor's discoveries, offers the Doctor a long cloak to replace his damaged jacket. The guard then enters with the Captain and the City Administrator to accuse the Doctor. The First Elder is concerned but Ian finds a flaw in the story as the Doctor was not wearing either a jacket nor the cloak at the time of the attack and the guard is led away under suspicion of being the murderer (which he is). The City Administrator absolves himself and, with a suggestion from the Doctor and Ian, is promoted by the First Elder to the rank of Second Elder.

The Doctor and Ian propose to return to the aqueduct to find the source of the poisoning. They also request that Barbara be allowed to come down from the ship to help Susan, whom they do not want to know that they are returning to danger. The First Elder agrees and supplies them with weapons to help them. They do not know that the weapons are sabotaged by the new Second Elder and the guard, whom he has released from his cell.

As the Doctor and Ian go down, Carol goes looking for them to tell them that John is now fully recovered. She is kidnapped by the guard and forced to write a note indicating that she has returned from the ship. However, Susan knows this is a ruse as Barbara has just arrived from the ship. They show this to the First Elder who is concerned. They learn from him that the only unused location in the palace is the old disintegrator gun control room. John heads down there and rescues Carol, subduing the guard in the process who is taken back to prison. John also remembers that it was the City Administrator whom he sensed evil from while he was still undergoing treatment.

Susan and Barbara are concerned when they learn that the Doctor and Ian have gone back to the tunnels. Barbara and John head down and Barbara uses a Sensorite mental communicator to contact Susan who has a master plan of the aqueduct in front of her to help guide them.

In the tunnels, the Doctor and Ian discover three members of the human crew. They have been infecting the aqueduct with Belladonna, believing they are war with the Sensorites. They are also responsible for the deliberate sabotage of their own ship to kill the crew members who tried to escape when they realized the Captain and two others had gone mad. Barbara and John discover the group and trick the crew into thinking the war is over and they are a rescue party. Upon emerging, they are subdued by the Sensorite guards and taken to the Earth ship under arrest.

With the evidence presented by the Doctor, the new Second Elder is exiled from the city. The First Elder thanks the Doctor and returns the lock to the TARDIS. The Earth ship leaves orbit and the Doctor and his party also depart. Ian makes an off-hand remark that offends the Doctor and in a fit of pique, states that he will order them off the ship as soon as they return to Earth.

Analysis

As noted above, this is quite a good dramatic story. It has it's faults and those will be discussed, but this is not a story that should be dismissed out of hand as "one of the bad ones."

Again, this is really a Cold War story. Travelers in a foreign land that is fearful due to the previous actions of a similar race. A villain acting on paranoia for the purpose of defending his own race. Honestly, if you colorized this story and shifted things to include a car chase, this could be a Third Doctor story and people would probably love it. As I was watching the machinations of the City Administrator, I could help but be reminded of General Carrington from The Ambassadors of Death. The actions of the City Administrator where not much different from Carrington's. In fact, Carrington allowed the death of several people in his pursuits. The City Administrator's only victim was the Second Elder and that was not intentional.

I have to praise the acting of the Sensorites. I noticed a couple instances of line flubs but aside from that, I thought they did an excellent job, especially as they had to convey all expression using only their voice and body movements due to the limitations of the masks. In fact, I thought the acting of the Sensorites was superior to the Earth folks. John was pretty good, but Maitland and Carol had moments that were rather over-the-top and hammy. I know they were supposed to be agitated by fear but there was no subtly. John at least had some subtly, even if he was supposed to be more deranged than his compatriots.

Another thing I enjoyed about this story that actually surprised me was the lack of it feeling bloated. Often when watching stories that are over four episodes long (and sometimes even then) I can feel moments where there is obvious padding. Characters go back and forth to the same location or the exposition fairy sits down to have a cup of tea and instead of getting a quick info dump, the process takes half an episode. Here, there is a move to each plot element with relatively little extra information. What's more, each plot element introduced feels like it has a purpose in the overall narrative. The kidnapping at the end of Episode Five is a bit forced and slightly out of place, but even it has an ultimate purpose that does contribute.

If anything, I think this story could have stretched to seven episodes without a significant loss of cohesion. I thought the various story points in Episode Six were a bit rushed. The humans are introduced a third of the way through and then wrapped up after only about ten minutes. Likewise, the fate of the City Administrator is dealt with in a couple of lines of dialogue at the end. For a character who was the primary villain for four episodes, it seemed like he should have gotten a meatier send off rather than just a casual dismissal. But I've made the complaint about rushed endings before. Still, it is nice to note that without throwing in the additional complaint about how it could have been pulled forward and dismissing some of the running through corridors.

One of the areas that is interesting from a hindsight point of view is the somewhat casual racism of the story. A certain level of racism makes sense in the story. It is a common trope in sci-fi for one race to dismiss the other as looking all alike. I would have expected that. What I didn't care for was how the City Administrator easily embraced that idea. There is a somewhat valid point to his idea. President Calvin Coolidge made a point of walking around Washington D.C. without secret service and he was unaccosted as people were unaware of who he was, despite having his picture in the paper somewhat often. So the idea that the Sensorite plebs would not know the City Administrator from the Second Elder is not unbelievable.

However, we are not dealing with regular plebs in this story. The story is contained within the First Elder's palace. One can imagine that all the folks living and working there would be fairly familiar with the appearance of the Second Elder. This is where the casual racism seeps in. The writer makes the assumption that because we (from a Western perspective) think the Sensorites all look similar to us, they too would see themselves as looking the same. This is rather dismissive as the Sensorites should actually have been more sensitive to subtle differences that would have been overlooked by the Earth folk. To me, it speaks of the attitude of the writer and to the assumptions of the audience of the time.

While on the subject of the Sensorite's sameness, that is one of the areas where I can see a downside of this story. Doctor Who has a bit of a reputation for the use of rubber suited monsters which sometimes look pretty fake. The Sensorites is actually only the third story to feature an alien race (The Daleks and The Keys of Marinus being the other two) and it is probably the first one where the fake alien really rears it's head. It is very obvious from the get go that the Sensorites are men in rubber masks, some of which don't fit that well. The City Administrator at one point turns to the camera and you can clearly see the hole of his mouth moving independently of the flap of the mask around his mouth. The Sensorite beards do a little to hide things like this, but the contortion of the cheeks whenever one speaks just makes it so obvious that it is a mask. It didn't really bother me, but I have been known to be rather forgiving of 1960's effects, both in Doctor Who and other shows. I can see how it might have bothered others.

Another point that I should note is how much the character of Susan improved in this story. In many of the stories where she appears, Susan is shriek-y and timid. She still has these qualities in the first episode, but she begins to assert herself by the end of Episode Two and she is a fully functional member of the team with a real role and abilities through the rest of the story. It does help that Barbara is absent from the second half of Episode Three to the beginning of Episode Six. This promotes Susan into the role that might normally have been occupied by Barbara with Susan's normal outsider role being taken up by Carol. Still, it is a nice change for Susan and one that I had wished they been able to stick with rather than reverting her back to her mostly helpless self in The Reign of Terror.

One final thing that surprised me was how important this story is to the overall canon of Doctor Who given it's general dismissal by the fans. Susan's throw away line in Episode Six about the Gallifreian sky became lore that has been in every story set on Gallifrey. Likewise, the Doctor has several lines that have become iconic in the course of the series including the opening statement about how they are now embarking on a great spirit of adventure and his admonishment to the Sensorites that he keeps promises rather than making threats. The Tenth Doctor even makes a reference to the story in Planet of the Ood when he mentions that the Ood-sphere is in the same region as the Sense-sphere, creating a link between the Sensorites and the similarly designed Ood.

Looking over the story as a whole, I think this story is somewhat unjustly maligned. I will openly admit that it is not a story that everyone will enjoy and I can imagine that it was not popular with the kids when broadcast. However, I enjoyed it and anyone who enjoys a more political drama will enjoy it as well. I would easily be comfortable watching it a second time around if anyone else was interested.

Overall personal score: 4 out of 5