Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
Day Thirty-One: Strangers in Space (The Sensorites, Episode One)
Dear diary,
The Sensorites has a bit of a reputation, doesn't it? It's the 'boring' story of Season One, and one of the most boring ever, supposedly. I've seen it said that many people give up trying to do a Doctor Who marathon while trying to get past these six episodes. A shame, really, because this first episode offers up a lot of promise.
Oh, now, don't get me wrong. Even in this first episode there were a couple of minutes when I noticed my attention wandering (Still, nowhere near as badly as during The Screaming Jungle*…). It's very much a *talking episode, isn't it? But although we've got all these characters talking to each other, none of them are actually saying anything. Whereas The Aztecs was full of lovely dialogue between the cast, this feels much more functional. It's all very much descriptive dialogue.
It's a good thing, then, that this episode sports some of the best direction that we've had in the series to date. Over Christmas recently, BBC Wales was singing praises to the heavens for the shot of Clara entering the TARDIS for the first time, in a camera move that takes us from outside the small box to the inside in one sweeping motion.
Here, though, we've got the opposite - a shot that follows the TARDIS crew from a discussion inside the ship, out through the doors and directly onto the spaceship. As if that wasn't a grand enough moment, Susan then turns back around… to face the police box exterior. It's very well done, so much so that I actively had to skip back on the DVD to watch it again and make sure that my mind hadn't just filled in some gaps itself.
The direction continues to be great throughout, as we see closeups of hands, with the Sensorite removing the TARDIS lock, and then John cutting out the door opening system so that he can stalk Susan and Babs around the corridors. It has to be said, John is one of the most disturbing things we've had in the series. Forget the Daleks, here we've a man staring solely down the camera lens in silence before clutching his head and breaking down. It's genuinely un-nerving, and the direction only serves to help.
And then we've that stunning cliffhanger, as a creepy figure paws at the window of the ship. I've seen that cliffhanger before, and it's still a bit off-putting now. The sheer weirdness of the creature helps to make it one of the best we've had…
…Which is certainly more than can be said for the cliffhanger to the last episode. The whole thing hinges on the fact that the TARDIS says that it has stopped, but is also still moving. The Doctor is stumped. Susan hasn't ever seen anything like it. It's Barbara who hypothesises that they've landed inside something, and then they're all surprised to find that it's a spaceship.
Coming at the same time as a scene in which our regulars reminisce over recent events, and the Doctor even talks of adventures he's had 'quite some time' before Ian and Barbara joined them, are we really supposed to believe that this is the first time the TARDIS has ever landed on a moving spaceship? Really? The Doctor even helps to fly it later on in the episode!
Still, it's a strong start to the story. Now fingers crossed that this is one which might surprise me. You see, I've seen this first episode before, but I've never made it to the end. But not because I was bored! That's a story for tomorrow… (how's that for a cliffhanger!)
Next Episode: The Unwilling Warriors
