The Sensorites
review

Holistic Review: Easily my least-favorite Hartnell adventure, so riddled with poor acting, terrible dialogue, a weak plot and flubs galore that even the regulars have trouble lifting the material.

As you're watching it, you can tell that The Sensorites had some laudable goals in mind: it's trying to be a story that explores a truly alien culture in depth, in which humanity is actually the enemy, and it wants to help Susan mature. The fortunate thing - and one of two things that keeps it watchable, the other being (as usual) the regulars - is that it does manage to achieve these goals to a certain degree. The Sensorites - with their odd appearance, round feet, exotic-looking city, unusual customs, and fear of darkness and loud noises - do come across as a significantly different (albeit homogeneous) culture. It's also a rather nice twist that, rather than the ruthless threat they seem to be in the first pair of episodes, they turn out to be fiercely defending their planet against what they perceive as a deadly alien menace. And Susan, for once, actually gets a sizeable amount to do in this story, demonstrating both her maturity and her intelligence - in fact, she doesn't scream once!

However, all these lofty ideals are crushed under the weight of a script that is absolutely torturous to listen to. Apparently uninspired by the material, the casting department seems to have decided this was a good story on which to foist some of their bottom-of-the-barrel actors (although in the case of the Sensorites, I'm willing to allow the possibility that the sheer awfulness of the dialogue is obscuring their talent). By far the worst offender is the unbelievably wooden Lorne Cossette as Maitland, who I suspect - although I hate to say it - wouldn't be able to act his way out of a paper bag. When he gets dialogue like "Yes, you will have to", he doesn't make any effort to make it sound natural - on the contrary, his highly stilted delivery makes it sound even less genuine! Also witness "No, I do not mean hypnosis" and his horribly stagey performance, complete with dramatic burying-head-in-hands, of "Why couldn't I do it?" It's genuinely painful to watch.

The script throughout is littered with atrocious dialogue, although the worst of it seems to be confined to parts 1 and 2. It begins right at the very start, as the TARDIS crew investigate this fascinating mystery:

You almost expect Susan to say "But it's not possible, how could we land inside something?" Then, having raised this tense uncertainty, they decide to take a moment away from the mystery to cheerfully present "the story so far", namely a complete rundown of all the places they've visited in the series. Things look like they're about to redeem themselves when we get this line:

But, sadly, that's one of the very few times that good dialogue pays us a visit during this story. Throughout the story, most of the characters speak in a stilted way that's more like written than spoken English. It's not confined to the Sensorites - Maitland does it too - but as it only seems to affect that group, I suspect that most of the non-Sensorite actors realized they could rework the dialogue to make it sound more natural, and therefore give much better performances in the story. But there are times when the dialogue even threatens to make the regulars look amateurish. The script problems, and probably also a lackadaisical feeling on the part of the crew, lead to a story which probably has more noticeably flubbed lines than any other Hartnell adventure. Almost no-one is immune, and the sheer number of them certainly contributes to the unpolished feeling of the story.

Then there's the plot, which broadly described is rather good: an Earth ship is held captive by aliens who want to prevent them exploiting their planet, and when the TARDIS crew tries to intervene, they are attacked by a particularly xenophobic faction of aliens. Unfortunately, it doesn't get a great deal more depth than that. There's some runaround with a member of the ship's crew who's been driven out of his mind by the Sensorites, and a plot thread concerning the Sensorites' poisoned water supply, but it all moves at a rather slow pace.

Fortunately it's not all bad. The regulars, despite a shaky start, are as good as always, particularly Jacqueline Hill, despite being written out for two episodes (I love the look she gives Susan when Carol calls them strange), and Carole Ann Ford, who gets a decent role in the story for once. From the beginning, Susan comes up with helpful ideas, she is able to use telepathic communication in numerous useful ways, and when Barbara is on the ship and Ian sidelined with poison, Susan strikes out on her own to get things done. She comes across as very likeable and resourceful in this story, not to mention wonderfully headstrong. Susan's characterization is, in fact, the best thing about The Sensorites, and is undoubtedly the kind of role Carole Ann Ford thought she was getting when she auditioned in the first place. I quite like her performance the first time Susan attempts to communicate telepathically - she looks like she's really concentrating.

From the outset, it's also clear that Ilona Rodgers is miles better as Carol than Cossette is as Maitland. He enunciates like an android; she radiates warmth and concern. Even though Carol is given basically no character at all, aside from being "John's fiancée", Rodgers makes her likeable, and her friendship with the TARDIS crew is also nicely done. Carol interacts with the TARDIS crew as if they're all one big party of friends, rather than "the ship's crew" and "the strangers", which for some reason seems unusual to me, and a very nice change. Stephen Dartnell also makes a good impression as John; he's convincing as a mentally disturbed man in the first couple of episodes, and once he emerges from "raving lunatic" mode, we can see that he's also capable of making the pain-inducing dialogue actually work. It's also a pretty cool idea that in his crazed state, his mind is so open that he can tell whether people are good or bad. Of the Sensorites, most are crippled by the dialogue, but Peter Glaze makes a definite, and mostly positive, impression as the ravingly xenophobic and power-mad City Administrator. He oozes guile with every syllable, although one does get the impression that if they had trains on the Sense-Sphere, he would be tying Carol to the tracks. The astronauts don't get a whole lot to do, but John Bailey is rather entertaining as the Commander.

The design of the story is nice - the spaceship is different from ones we've seen before, and the Sense-Sphere has an airy, artistic feel with its swooping, shining white buildings and the occasional fountain. The Sensorites also have an interesting design - their heads are great, with the cotton-wool beards and the rather creepy hollow lidless eyes, although some of them are a little too husky to make form-fitting jumpsuits a wise idea, and it's hard to justify their saucer-like feet, given that the only time we really see them, the actors clumsily make them seem less than realistic. Not much to speak of, effects-wise, but the shot of the Earth ship flying away at the end is done quite well. The music doesn't leave much of an impression, but there's a nice sound effect when the Commander is shot.

Minor points:

This is one of those stories that comes alarmingly close to "so bad, it's good" territory. The regulars are good when they get something to do, but the story as a whole is so hamstrung by terrible dialogue and bad plotting that it's almost painful to get through. Good idea, shame about the execution.

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