Day 16 — January 16th 2021
Strangers in Space and The Unwilling Warriors
Strangers in Space (The Sensorites — Episode One)
I think it’s fair to say that The Sensorites has A Reputation. Even more than The Keys of Marinus, this is the ‘black sheep’ of Season One, generally considered to be one of the worst Doctor Who stories ever made. When Doctor Who Magazine ran their last big ‘every story’ poll in 2014, The Sensories placed 225th out of 241 stories. It wasn’t quite the lowest-placing Hartnell story (that honour went to The Space Museum at number 232), but the message was clear; fandom was not a fan.
And it saddens me, because this first episode is genuinely one of the best of the entire decade. Sure, the rest of the story might not be up to the same standard, and maybe the day after tomorrow I’ll be saying ‘everyone’s right, The Sensorites is rubbish’, but for today at least I don’t think there’s anything not to love.
I mentioned at the end of The Day of Darkness yesterday that the final TARDIS scene lets down that episode, and I stand by that. It’s a clumsy scene — Doctor Who is baffled that the TARDIS has stopped and yet is still moving, and the travellers are perplexed by the idea that they could be inside something. Are we supposed to believe that the ship has never landed on a spaceship before now? It’s a silly scene, and yet I don’t think I’d mind it half as much if it were only part of the opening here.
Because the TARDIS scene today is rather lovely! Doctor Who and his friends reminisce about the adventures they’ve had before, and seem genuinely at ease in each other’s company. Doctor Who even gives us a glimpse into an adventure he and Susan shared with Henry VIII before we joined them in the junkyard, and it’s a lovely little moment for the team.
I should say that I don’t reckon they list all the adventures they’ve shared to now — despite the scene in yesterday’s episode, I reckon there’s some time, and adventures, between The Aztecs and The Sensorites. Otherwise Barbara being ‘over that now’ seems a bit flippant following the lovely scene in the tomb.
If nothing else, I’m sure we can all agree that this scene gives us one of Hartnell’s very best Doctor Who lines;
‘It all started out as a mild curiosity in a junkyard, and now it’s turned out to be quite a, quite a great spirit of adventure, don’t you think?’
As if all that wasn’t lovely enough, we then get one of the best shots we’ve had in the series so far, as the doors open, and we follow the TARDIS crew out and onto the bridge of the spaceship. And then they turn back to face the police box exterior. It’s a clever bit of direction, utilising an especially early recording break, and I don’t think it’s ever bettered in Old testament Doctor Who for scenes that really sell the idea of the TARDIS being bigger on the inside. I’m amazed it’s not discussed more often.
Wit hall of this, we’re still only a few minutes into the episode, and there’s plenty more to rave about. The mystery of the two dead crew members who suddenly come back to life (and I love their uniforms, too. Part Space Captain, part Butlins). The tease of ‘John’ elsewhere in the ship, driven mad by the influence of the as-yet-unseen Sensorites.
I’ll admit to a slight disappointment at Susan and Barbara smelling the lock being stolen from the TARDIS while not spotting the Sensorite doing it only a few feet away (would it have killed them to have a little antechamber between the TARDIS and the bridge? Close the door after that brilliant shot of the crew arriving and you solve the problem here). All the same, the sheer threat of an alien that can take the lock from the TARDIS door is brilliant.
The whole episode is dripping with tension and menace, and it all builds perfectly to the best cliffhanger in the entire 1960s, for my money. The Sensorite crawling into view of the window, and Ian’s reaction to it are top-tier stuff, and I genuinely love it to pieces.
One other slightly odd thing I do want to mention — Maitland and Carol jump very quickly to the idea that the TARDIS crew have travelled in time to reach them, and don’t seem at all phased by the idea that they’ve come 800 years forward in time to meet them. I wouldn’t mind, but it’s an odd plot point not to pick up again!
So there we have it, the first episode of The Sensorites is an out-and-out classic, and I’d implore anyone to go and give it another watch. Perhaps my opinion of the story will head over a cliff-edge from here, but this one at least is definitely deserving of a 9/10.
The Unwilling Warriors (The Sensorites — Episode Two)
You get an indication that this episode won’t be as good as the last right from the start. It’s an episode where they completely recreate the cliffhanger, rather than dropping in a recording, and where the cliffhanger itself was brilliant, this reprise of it is not.
It lacks the eerie tension afforded to it before. The pace is quicker, the Sensorite at the window is less crawling up the side of the ship in a creepy manner and more stood there waiting to be let in. And, of course, it lacks having 22 minutes of rising tension setting it up.
I think it’s a really interesting example of how easily the production can make-or-break a script on a show like Doctor Who. We know they can do this scene brilliantly, so it’s a shame to see it undercooked. But anyway, it’s a minor quibble, and within a minute we’re onto something new.
As I’ve intimated, this second episode isn’t as good as the first. That’s not to say it’s bad, though. There’s plenty in here to like, still. John’s madness is genuinely scary to watch, and Stephen Dartnell turns in a good performance. I’m surprised to learn that he was Yartek — Leader of the Alien Voord — in The Keys of Marinus, and he’s another example that given a decent script, you get a better performance from the cast.
Where this episode perhaps suffers is in showing us the Sensorites in full. In the first episode, they’re a sinister presence off screen. Here, wandering about the ship and stopping to have a chat with each other, they lack the menace built up before. I wonder if they’ve have been better off keeping them out of the spotlight for another week? You have the one at the window, so now you know, and the characters know, that they’re on the ship. But you keep them off-screen, skulking around, making their presence felt by telepathic communication with Susan and John only? And then at the episode’s end you can slide up one of the big round doors and reveal them in full! It seems a shame to have set up so much atmosphere and tension last episode only to remove it almost entirely today.
They seems to have had a bit of a makeover since last week — the beards are neater, and somehow that makes them a bit less weird. That’s not to say they aren’t good-looking design; I think they’re probably second to only the Daleks from this first season of the programme. Yes, even with the dinner plate feet!
One last thought; is this the first time we’ve seen Doctor Who use a monocle? I can’t recall him doing so before — although he’s worn his glasses a couple of times — and I cn’t even recall him wearing a monocle as part of his costume before. A quick look at some photos from The Aztecs, Marco Polo, and An Unearthly Child seem to confirm there’s not one hung around his neck there.
The monocle seems to have become, over the last couple of years, the first Doctor Who’s ‘accessory’, and he appears wearing it prominently in a fair bit of material, from promotional images of David Bradley playing the part in Twice Upon a Time to the official portraits of the Doctors commissioned by the BBC in 2019.
I think it comes from the fact that there’s lots of nice photos of him using it taken during production on The Web Planet, and it seems to have caught on from there — these photos seemed to surface as a batch on the internet about a decade ago and have been fairly ubiquitous since then — the availability of them in high resolution making them a ‘go-to’ for Hartnell images.
A 7/10 today, so a step down but not as drastically as I’d feared.
