Product Details

• Actors: William Hartnell, Jacqueline Hill, William Russell, Carole Ann Ford
• Directors: Mervyn Pinfield, Frank Cox
• Writers: Peter R. Newman
• Producers: Verity Lambert
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: BBC Home Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: February 14, 2012
• Run Time: 148 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B005SH65GI
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #22,350 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

For a series aimed at children, Doctor Who can take some tantalizingly eerie turns, and The Sensorites is a prime example. The Doctor (the very first Time Lord, William Hartnell) and his companions land inside of a spaceship where the crew, still seated at the controls, are dead--and then suddenly come back to life. An alien being with black eyes, a blank face, and a wispy, silken beard appears in a window that looks out into space. Stumbling around in a dark tunnel, the Doctor is attacked by an unseen roaring monster. This is the substance of childhood nightmares. Furthermore, as the Doctor investigates the planet of the Sensorites and uncovers a conspiracy to overthrow the government, the unveiling of the opposing sides leads to some surprising moral complexity. On the other hand, the pace of this six-episode serial drags at points, narrative logic is a bit hit-or-miss, and the quotient of scientific babble is pretty high ("Where's the power come from?" "Electromagnetics!"). It's best to approach The Sensorites not as a coherent story but as an unsettling dream. William Hartnell launched the Doctor with a grandfatherly air (one of his companions is his granddaughter, Susan, played by Carole Ann Ford), but the Doctor's high-handed intelligence, insatiable curiosity, and stern scruples are already there, as are hints of the capriciousness that would later become a more significant character trait. Extras include audio commentary, some behind-the-scenes stories from a "vision mixer," and an oddly intriguing investigation into the obscure writer of The Sensorites. --Bret Fetzer

Product Description

The Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan land on a spaceship orbiting a distant and mysterious world, where a human crew lies frozen somewhere between life and death. The planet is the Sense-Sphere, home of the Sensorites, beings of immense intelligence and power. Unable to leave, the Doctor and his companions must deduce the Sensorites’ intentions: are they friendly, hostile, or frightened? And what is the deadly secret at the heart of the Sense-Sphere?

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars "The Sensorites... they're near us now!" January 3, 2012

By Jero Briggs

Format:DVD

This six-part adventure is a great oldie and classic. I first got this one on VHS in the "End of the Universe" collection and I found it quite enjoyable. I'm surprised that it took this long to be released on DVD.

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 are great. It has a lot of mystery and adventure in it. It has a great surprise ending, and I really enjoyed Susan's character a lot more in this story than in others. Her character 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!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The Doctor Meddles Again! February 16, 2012

By Claude L. Parish

Format:DVD

In The Sensorites, the first Doctor trips over a race of beings who are hypersensitive and they all look alike. Even to each other.
The six chapter serial may seem to drag a bit, but there's enough political intrigue to keep this early adventure watchable.
Barbara is missing for most of the story, but that doesn't matter as the Sensorites are the focus of it.
Misunderstanding leads to fear and treachery and ignorance gets put in its place in this unexpectedly well acted show.
It's not perfect. Early BBC allowed many mistakes and goofs. There's missed cues and at one point late in the story you can see the microphone as if it was meant to be part of the cast of characters.
Those bits aside, William Hartnell is great as ever and Carol Ann Ford is not annoying at all.
There are enough special features, including a documentary about the writer of the episode, Peter R. Newman, to justify the expense.
I'd give it five stars, but the clunky sets are hard to get over.
The writing is fantastic, though.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Underrated story, slightly blah DVD January 16, 2013

By Little Roy Blue

Format:DVD

This is definitely a minority opinion, but I think the first season of Doctor Who was the best. William Hartnell's sinister characterization of the Doctor is very underrated, and he was well-supported by excellent companions - particularly Ian and Barbara, who are the most convincing representations of "normal" people in the show's history. Sure, the Doctor's granddaughter Susan was a criminally under-used character; but here in The Sensorites, she gets to shine a little by defying the Doctor's wishes and using some cool telepathic powers.

I'm also a fan of season one because of the (generally) great scripts. And while The Sensorites is far from the best-written story of the season, I do think that Peter R. Newman's script features some compelling ideas. In defiance of Doctor Who conventions, Newman depicted the Sensorite race as mostly benign and sympathetic creatures (an interesting contrast to the show's usual "evil monster" aliens); indeed, the Sensorites only do "bad things" in this story in order to protect their planet from exploitation by humans who want to strip-mine the place. In a sense, then, this is the sort of left-wing (or at least politically aware) story that didn't become commonplace for Doctor Who until the Pertwee era.

The story's production design, meanwhile, is pretty good (given the era and budget). The Sensorites may look a little fake, but to me they're perfectly respectable aliens by 1960s TV standards; certainly, Doctor Who produced much stupider-looking aliens even in the 1980s (like the Ergon, to name one of many). Also, the set design for the human spaceship is effective, and enhances the tense and claustrophobic atmosphere of the opening episodes.... Unfortunately, both the set design and the pace of the story take a bad turn once the action shifts to the Sensorite planet, but the drop in quality is not nearly as bad as some critics suggest.

In short, The Sensorites is an interesting story that lacks energy sometimes; it's not a classic, but it deserves to enjoy a somewhat better reputation. Unfortunately, given the lowly status of this tale in the Doctor Who canon, the BBC didn't put too much effort into giving us a great DVD. The special features, though not bad, are rather thin. The most interesting featurette involves Doctor Who fan Toby Hadoke investigating Peter R. Newman's background; he uncovers a surprising amount about the little-known writer, including some genuinely emotional material. Unfortunately, this feature is undermined slightly by Hadoke's snarky "I'm a self-aware sci-fi geek" persona. Also featured is a short interview with Doctor Who's vision mixer, which is less boring than it sounds.

While I wish I could give this DVD four stars, the presentation is pretty bare-bones and the actual story has a few flaws. So I'll settle for three stars, but it's more like three-and-a-half. If this is arguably the worst story of Who's first season, that's a testament to how strong the era really was. Read more ›

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The Sensorites So Old It's New September 28, 2012

By mary

Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase

It was very nice to finally get to see a fresh doctor who story from the old days, one i'd had yet to see before. It was a good story and reminded me why i've been so attracted to doctor who, the show for somany years now...besides i love to catch the old black and white episodes any chance i get anyway...and there where some nice extras along with this too!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Shh, Not so Loud, the Sensorites are, um Sensitive... June 4, 2012

By Nancy A. Fox

Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase

The Sensorites commits the biggest sin that any Doctor Who story can commit: it's dull. Stretched out over 6 episodes with very little actually happening, it seems to last forever. However, it's not without a few good points.

In brief, the TARDIS lands on a spaceship where the human crew is kept in a state of suspended animation. The Sensorites, or native population of the planet the ship is orbiting, are keeping the crew in a state of suspended animation so that the humans won't let anyone know about the valuable mineral to be found on the Sense-sphere. The TARDIS crew, sans Barbara, and most of the human spaceship crew are taken down to the Sense-sphere where political intrigue, plotting, racism and misunderstandings flow.

On the positive side: This is a terrific story for the character of Susan. She isn't merely a hysterical teenager, and she seems to have telepathic powers that her grandfather doesn't have. I also thought it was interesting to have a species where individualism is so devalued that the only way they can tell each other apart is from details of their clothing. A couple of the guest actors do a nice job, and there are some nice set designs that unfortunately don't always make it to the screen.

On the bad side: Did I mention that the story is dull? It's too long, but even if it had only been 3 or 4 episodes it probably would have dragged a bit. There's also a lot of holes in the plot: If the Sensorites are so sensitive to darkness, why are they o.k. traveling through space in a bubble? If the Sensorites have the ability to keep the human crew basically comatose, why couldn't they have wiped the human's memories of the rare mineral? Etc., Etc....

For the extras, let's just say that it doesn't speak highly of any of them that my favorite extra was the photo gallery. The commentary featured a large rotating cast that seemed to keep having less and less to do with Doctor Who as the episodes progressed. I recognize that with some of the oldest stories there are fewer people still around, but I think they were scraping the bottom of the barrel by episode 6. I wish they'd let Carole Ann Ford stay for a few more episodes. I thought she had some very interesting things to say about what she thought the direction of the Susan character should have been. William Russell was pleasant with a few interesting memories, as always. I also enjoyed Joe Greig who played a number of the Sensorites, he turned out to be quite a character and he added a number of pithy comments along the way. The info-text was o.k. There was no making of featurette, instead Toby Hadoke went searching for the "elusive" author of the story. It was sort of interesting, but not that special.

Personally, I would have enjoyed seeing an omnibus version of this story. If it had been edited down to a 1 and a half hour movie, the pacing probably would have been better. However, that's not an option.

So, should you buy it? Well, I'd really only recommend it for the completists and the William Hartnell fanatics. It is worth a watch, at least once, to see what might have been with Susan's character... Read more ›