Customer Reviews

Doctor Who - The Sensorites [VHS]

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The penultimate story of Doctor Who's first season finds them in the 28th century. After their adventure with the Aztecs, they find themselves aboard an Earth ship whose crewmembers, Captain Maitland, Carole Richmond, and John, a mineralogist and Carol's fiancee and are under mental attack by a telepathic alien race called the Sensorites. However, the nature of the attack is bizarre. The aliens are keeping them around orbit of their world, the Sensesphere, yet they choose not to kill the crew, and at times come aboard to feed them. John is the worst of them, as he is under constant mental attack, as if his fear centers are reacting far above normal. The Sensorites render the TARDIS immobile so the travellers are stuck with the crew.

The reason the Sensorites are keeping the crew in orbit is the fear of mineral exploitation of their world by Earthmen. They had a terrible experience in their first contact with Earthmen ten years before, and now, their race is dying from a plague.

The concept of friendship between races is key, and is embodied in the wise First Elder, who seems a true philosopher/sage ruler. "It is the failure of all beings that they judge through their own eyes. What we must create between us is trust." Of political participation and responsibility, he says, "No opinion can be worse sometimes than a dogmatic one." However, there is always a xenophobic element in any society, and the Sensorites are not exempt. There is also a caste system oriented around "what each man is best fitted to do. The Elders think and rule. Warriors fight. Sensorites work and play. All are happy."

The Sensorites on first glance may seem lame, but their simplistic design of bulbous head, shaggy white beard and eyebrows, and flipper like feet make them unique.

Ian and Barbara's characters are really developed to that they've really become comfortable in their time travels. In the beginning, they tell the Doctor that "we're different from when we first started with you." The Doctor is delighted with his new companions and after a brief summary of where they've been, he remarks that "what started as a mild curiosity in the junkyard ...turned out to be a great spirit of adventure."

The best cliffhanger comes at the end of Episode 1, when Ian points at the window of the spaceship, and finds a Sensorite looking inside.

More character development comes from Susan when the Doctor and she argue about her taking action without his permission. She frustratedly responds that she's not a child anymore and is just growing up. The Doctor sagely replies that "the one purpose in growing old is to accumulate knowledge and wisdom and to help people." We also learn her telepathic abilities are advanced. She loves the travel but now has yearnings to find some roots. This growth in Susan comes to its fruition in the second story of the following season, when Susan leaves the TARDIS crew to find those roots.

Part alien-human relations, part medical drama-mystery, and part allegory on colonialism, The Sensorites succeeds admirably.

Now that the William Hartnell years are cool again...

There's so much to enjoy about "The Sensorites", and not just the obvious stuff, either. Obviously, we have to deal with the fluffs first. Hartnell had this great habit, in scenes requiring great technical dialogue, of grabbing his lapels, "Hmm!"ing a lot, wandering up to the camera, and squinting his eyes into the distance, in the direction of the Mary Tamm Memorial Cue-Card Boy. Do you think he would have tried, had he known that this story would be sold to the masses 40 years later, to learn his dialogue? But then we would have been denied such great non-sequiturs as "I rather fancy that's settled that little bit of solution." And, of course, the 28th century watches that he finds in "The Sensorites" are of "the non-winding time." They sure are, Bill, they sure are.

Anyway, "The Sensorites" is an astonishingly radical bit of pacifism. Part One concludes with the first-ever "monster face" cliffhanger in "Doctor Who": we'd already seen a Sensorite hand (in an ill-fitting wool glove) and heard how evil they are, but then we see a misshapen face, floating around in Spain, er, space, and the credits roll. But, by the end of Part Six, it's the Sensorites who are the heroes of the day. The villainy is traced back to three Earth soldiers, minds inadvertently warped by Sensorite telepathy, waging a war against an enemy that didn't exist. And yet, the Doctor lures him out into the open not with weapons, but with sympathy -- and with that wicked bit of psychological byplay that helped later Doctors defuse so many villains. The Doctor then carries the story's moral centerpiece when he says, after the Sensorite warrior refuses to kill that insane Earthman who has killed so many : "The fact is, you didn't kill him, shows great promise for the future of your people."

The Doctor's companion, Ian, again shows his natural aggression, which saved the Thal people in "The Daleks". On the Sense-Sphere, however, he's helpless. The Doctor admonishes: "Now let our own intelligence be our own offense, and attack!" Radical, too, is the fact that Earth Captain Maitland -- the first human we meet in the story -- is completely impotent. He can't even cut through a locked door in less than two episodes! Whereas in other stories, Maitland would have been the human hero, in "The Sensorites" it is Barbara and Susan and Carol (and the Doctor, the unpredictable alien) who are the actors, the voices of reason.

Obviously this story has whopping production flaws. Parts One and especially Two are dragged to a near standstill by a script that under-runs: seven whole minutes in Part Two are consumed by a few characters slowly creeping down a dark hallway. Think about that. Seven minutes of nothing. You could watch the Ali-Liston 1965 heavyweight title fight four times in those seven minutes! And, even though it's radical and progressive, "The Sensorites" still has the Doctor being overly protective of his granddaughter, and Carol tells the Sensorites that they all look alike. Actually, that last bit is clever -- on a planet of telepaths, wouldn't facial features be less important? -- but that bit has been laughed at for so long that it's too late to redeem it. And when Part Two ends with a door closing ominously, Part Three begins with Barbara opening the door. Wow. Now that, Peter R. Newman, is top-tier suspense.

In the end, the Sensorites are philosophical monsters who are scared of the dark. In the same year of "Doctor Who" that gave us the Daleks, maybe, just maybe, the Sensorites are the more representative alien species.

This is an excellent 6-part First Doctor space adventure.

The TARDIS lands on a space craft occupied by two astronauts in suspended animation. The ship is being held in orbit around the Sense-Sphere, and they are being terrorized by its inhabitants, the Sensorites.

Why are the Sensorites holding the human astronauts captive in orbit? Why are the Sensorites dying off so rapidly? What secrets are locked in the mind of the deranged madman who the other two astronauts keep sealed in the rear portion of their craft?

Those who liked the Rescue and the Space Museum will like the Sensorites.

well, this product is just what it says on the tin. Firstly, the tape is a very clean quality and there's a minimum of unneccessary stuff before the show begins - just the different logos (nb, for people used to dvds this may be disapointing. there are no commentaries or extras of course. For those who like me remember vhs tapes with interminable previews, it's a welcome relief).
The show itself is very daggy old bbc science fiction - very charming. There's a detailed review at the Dr Who part of the bbc.co.uk website. Hartnell fluffs a few lines, all else is entertaining cheapness.

This is a great oldie and classic. I got this one in the "End of the Universe" collection and I found it quite enjoyable. I'm surprised that it hasn't been released on DVD yet.

Let me get the bad stuff out of the way first. Episode 3 was kind of boring, but it picks up again in episode 4. There are many stuttered lines in this story. The Sensorites feet look ridiculous. And at one point, you even see a wall in the spaceship start to fall down before it is quickly put back up again. But other than that, this is a great story.

The acting was pretty good - some of it was actually brilliant. The sets look great. The dark spaceship was very spooky as well as the aqueduct on the Sense-Sphere. The Sensorites were very creepy in the first two episodes. Episode 1's cliffhanger was, in my opinion, one of the best in the series. The plot and the story were great. It has a lot of mystery and adventure in it. And although most of the Sensorites aren't really that threatening in the last three episodes, the story is so good and suspensefull by then, that it doesn't matter. It has a great surprise ending, and I really enjoyed Susan's charater a lot more in this story than in others. Her charater should have been like this from the beginning. This is also the very first story that has the Doctor himself taking on the heroic role instead of Ian, and he uses his mind and wits to defeat the enemy instead of brute force. I really enjoyed this one and I'm sure you will as well. Highly recommended!

While this is definaly one of the better 1st doctor adventures with a compelling storyline full of mystery and intrigue; like many dr. who adventures longer than 4 episodes is gets wearing and tends to drag around episode 3.

I like the political dynamic in this story, with everyone being born into a certain rank in society, and the realization by the villian that without their sashes of rank, they couldn't tell the difference between them, a sublte political staement.

I'm enjoying the end of the universe collection...this is a good one.

Pretty average episode with below average effects. The story
is pretty interesting. The Doctor (William Hartnell) discovers
two space travellers who are dead, or are they really dead?

The Doctor discovers that they are being mind controlled by
the Sensorites, an alien race. The costumes for the Sensorites
were great, but the story is way way too long and theres too much meaningless sequences with doors opening and locking.

The Doctor discovers that the Sensorites are looking for a special mineral called milipitin, but they are not allowing
anyone to leave the ship or the Tardis.

Overall there is a bunch of dialogue here and episodes is more
like morality lesson between two races (one earth, the other Alien) that dont trust each other. What will happen? Get the episode.