Review by Guy Clapperton
Stars William Hartnell, Carole-Ann Ford, William Russell, Jacqueline Hill | Written by Peter R Newman
UK cert PG | UK RRP £22.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 100 minutes | Directed by Mervyn Pinfield & Frank Cox
Let’s start by putting this in context. If I were to ask how any of Matt Smith’s Doctor Who stories were likely to stand up to scrutiny in a year, you’d probably say “most of them”. If I were to ask about a couple of years, you’d look at David Tennant and tell me yes, you’d happily watch them in a couple of years – or at least your view wouldn’t have changed. Good – so how about in the year 2060?
You wouldn't have a clue how 2060’s audience is going to be – so maybe it’s not surprising that a show designed to keep people watching until the following week some 48 years ago struggles to hold the attention at the moment. Unfortunately I suspect this one struggled at the time.
The Doctor (Hartnell), Ian and Barbara arrive on a spaceship which is being controlled by a race called the Sensorites. One of the crew has gone mad, the captain has blackouts and there’s a comparatively normal woman – and one of the aliens arrives. That, believe it or not, is the full extent of episode one. It gets worse; the Sensorites themselves are a bunch of bickering old men, visually very unimpressive indeed. The author thought so at the time, it says in one of the extras – so it’s not just a 21st century cynic at work here.
The most interesting thing about them is that they’re telepathic, and can control the ship’s crew. Indeed some of the best moments involve the mad crew member, John, struggling to resist their control. Other performances are lackluster; Hartnell is already starting to skip lines, sadly. Maybe he always did, even as a young man, but you’re reminded that this is 1964 and he was effectively invalided out in 1966.
It’s a drab story and overlong. Pace is different now but six episodes of this and you’re ready for a decent historical drama, which is what they got at the time – or maybe some Daleks, or maybe anything else. Not a classic but a potboiler – and a potboiler which has now been dating steadily for 48 years. Only a couple of months earlier viewers were enjoying The Daleks, which stands up remarkably well; perhaps it’s surprising that more of them aren’t like this. Trivia buffs might like to know that Russell T Davies wanted the Ood in the modern series to look a bit Sensorite, and indeed there’s a reference in a Tennant story to the Doctor having visited the Sense-Sphere.
EXTRAS ★★★ Not much is known about this story and its creators, and one of the most touching extras involves performer Toby Hadoke trying to track down writer Peter R Newman, whose last work was The Sensorites. There’s also a look at the early title graphics and a brief look at some of the sound interference that comes up in the story as a consequence of making the whole thing in such a rush, and William Russell and Carole-Ann Ford offer commentaries like good ‘uns. It feels a bit mean giving these elements only three stars; the Hadoke piece in particular feels as though it’s worth more. But on this occasion there simply isn’t much to say about this story – so the score reflects the quantity rather than the quality of the extras.