Written by Peter R. Newman | Directed by Mervyn Pinfield | Produced by Verity Lambert | Original air date 06/27/64
It's interesting seeing how adventures feel when watching them in order. Though I've seen all of Doctor Who before this blog started over the years, I remember enjoying The Sensorites quite a bit, before. It's not godawful or anything, but this episode is a bit dull. Perhaps this is the episode that's padded the most to make sure the serial lasts six episodes long? It might be - there's a sequence over two minutes long where Ian and Barbara walk slowly through the spaceship looking for Sensorites. It's supposed to be tense - and it may have been in 1964, but this scene doesn't age well. Once they find the Sensorites, at least as they back away for another minute and a half, we get a few lines of dialogue and can get a good look at the things. It's still pretty dull, though.
We get another reference to a past adventure the Doctor and Susan had - they were on the planet Esto, which had plants that could communicate via thought transference, and Susan uses that example to explain to Barbara why she wants to have them both think - and only think- "we defy you." The force of the thought knocks the Sensorites to the ground, and lets the Sensorites know that Susan is telepathic later on. It's interesting, though - two episodes in a row, now, we've heard of adventures the Doctor has had that we haven't seen. It seems Newman likes to use the time before An Unearthly Child for plot expediency - explain what he wants Susan to do by saying she's encountered a similar situation before, one that we never have to actually show. However, all these years and episodes later, the references to the past stand out to me - the Doctor didn't seem like much of a traveler in An Unearthly Child, at least not one who enjoyed adventuring, yet. Perhaps Esto was a super boring trip, one in which the only interesting thing that happened was psychic plants. Susan, weirdly, seems to have an affinity for plants - she's obsessed with the flower in the petrified jungle back in The Daleks, is terrified of the screaming jungle in The Keys of Marinus, and had the run in with the psychic plants on Esto. I'm not sure what to make of it - surely it's unintentional on behalf of the production team, of course - but it's an odd coincidence.
Presumably, the Sensorite on the outside of the ship that acted as the cliffhanger for yesterday's episode is one of the ones that enters the ship here. It's never really explained, and everyone on the ship seems remarkably unconcerned with it, at least until it's among them. Why they didn't try to track it or shake it off is beyond me.
Molybdenum, a real mineral, is the reason the Sensorites won't allow the TARDIS crew or spaceship to leave. The Sense-sphere is loaded with it. Apparently humans had arrived on the Sense-sphere before and caused great harm to the Sensorites, somehow. They mention a sickness in this episode, but it's largely unexplained for now. It's apparently easy to harm the Sensorites, though - they're terrified of the dark because they can't see at all in it (they're eyes are the exact opposite of a cat, the Doctor notices), and loud sounds appear to irritate them (why the high-pitched screeching they emit doesn't bother them, I don't know - perhaps they can't detect it).
The episode ends with Susan having a conversation with the Sensorites telepathically, where we can only hear what she has to say. She tells everyone to stay where they are, and that she's going with the Sensorites to their planet so everyone doesn't get killed, and the episode ends.
It makes me sad that I'm not loving this serial as much as I did the first time I watched it. Perhaps it gets better, but the reputation it has may be appropriate, for once - it's fairly overlooked in fandom. It has some good ideas, but they might be spread a bit too thin over the six episodes. Poor Peter R. Newman - the bonus features on the DVD explain how he died tragically young, and we don't know a whole lot about him. Toby Hadoke goes and interviews some of his family, and it borders on slightly creepy, but doesn't cross the line due to the respect Toby gives the family and that they pay to their relative. I would have liked to see what else Newman would have written for Doctor Who - I think he's largely pretty good, and most writers improved the more they wrote for the show (Terry Nation aside. Sorry, dude, your work is a rollercoaster of quality). And while I'm not sure if it was Newman or script editor David Whitaker who put in lines like "it all started as a mild curiosity in the junkyard," it's a good line, and it's a shame we just have the one serial from the guy.
"Doctor Who" puns so far: 2 | Tomorrow: "Hidden Danger"
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