Episode: 1 (Strangers in Space)
Doctor: William Hartnell
Companions: Barbara, Ian, and Susan
Writer: Peter R. Newman
Director: Mervyn Pinfield
Producer: Verity Lambert
Original Air Date: 20/06/1964
PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE...IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAACE!
In which Team Tardis is united by Stockholm Syndrome, everyone is rubbish at First Aid, the 28th Century forgets, the Tardis is sabotaged by undead US Presidents, food preparation is gendered as hell, women have no sense of direction, and 28th-century mental health provision is fucking awful to the point that the Barbara Wright Cuddle Method is more effective than anything they have on the ship.
Here we go again! Our freshly-laundered Team Tardis is face-to-face with a new mystery: the Tardis has stopped and yet still appears to be moving. Are they on top of something, as Ian suggests? Or is Barbara (W)right, and are they inside something? She tells the Doctor to try the scanner, but it’s all messed up with static. Looks like they’ll have to go exploring.
Barbara wonders aloud why they ever bother to leave the ship; the shrewd Doctor reckons she’s still thinking about her experience with the Aztecs. Extraordinarily, Babs merely replies ‘I’ve got over that now’. Bloody hell, Babs, that was quick. Then something gorgeous happens: they all start talking about how much they've all changed. Ian's noticed how different he and Barbara are since they started travelling with the Doctor; the Doctor and Susan have been talking about it; Barbara thinks everyone has changed, not just the humans. Then stuff gets iconic:
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| Gifs by cleowho |
And to cap it all, Ian concludes that, despite having 'had some pretty rough times', 'even that doesn't stop us': 'It's a wonderful thing, this ship of yours, Doctor.' Well knock me down with a feather! Team Tardis is standing about congratulating one another about their character development. Also, Barbara and Ian don’t seem quite so keen to get home these days, do they? Also also, since watching the little documentary on Peter R. Newman in the special features of this DVD, I can’t now not read The Sensorites through a war veteran lens. I hope Barbara and Ian find themselves a good therapist when they get home.
Anyway, they reminisce a bit, and we get to hear about the time the Doctor deliberately pissed off Henry VIII by throwing a parson’s nose (a chicken’s arse) at him to get back to the Tower of London, where the Tardis happened to be. The Doctor has a long history with the British monarchy, it would seem.
Anyway anyway, Susan opens the doors, and the Doctor assures Ian that everything outside is normal and safe and that. Then this happens:
These two.
So Barbara was right: they’ve landed inside a spaceship...full of dead people. Well, there’s a first time for everything. Just two dead people, in fact – a man and a woman. I’d just like to draw everyone’s attention to the fact that Ian checks the man’s pulse while Barbara checks the woman’s, meaning that our two humans are now scarily blasé about being around corpses. Babs asks what could have happened; Ian suggests suffocation; the Doctor claims not to make uninformed guesses (ha!) but reckons that could be one answer. The Doctor muses about how tragic it is that the woman is only a few years older than Susan in much the same tone one would use when paying lip service to something bad that's happened to other people on the news.
Susan wants to get back to the Tardis because she has a Bad Feeling About This. Not to be outdone, Babs claims she can sense something too. Maybe it’s their wombs. Ian suggests it’s that whatever killed the space people could also kill Team Tardis.
But enough of that! The Doctor is now manhandling the corpses to show Ian how interesting it is that their Space Watches have stopped. There’s a nice bit of Sixties People Imagine Future Tech when the Doctor explains that their watches are non-winding and that the action of the wrist recharges them for twenty-four hours, so that the earliest they could have died would have been twenty-four hours ago. Morbid Susan decides to grab the dead man’s wrist and exclaims that he’s still warm. HOW DID YOU NOT NOTICE THIS BEFORE, GUYS? Babs grabs his other wrist and confirms it, despite having been the one who checked the woman. So they’ve only just died. Which, as the Doctor points out, doesn’t make sense. Unless they were in a coma for twenty-four hours or longer and have indeed only just died, but apparently I’m the only one who thought of that.
Anyway, the Doctor reckons there’s nothing more they can do here so they should leave. Barbara seems upset that they can’t even bury them. After last week’s moment in which Barbara felt like all the people who’d died in the Aztec temple were waiting for her to die too, I’m inclined to think that gaining a full appreciation of what it means to be a Time Lord (though of course the term hasn’t been invented yet) makes you morbid as hell.
But WHAT’S THIS? So close to and yet so far from getting the hell out of dodge before they get into trouble. Suddenly, the man moves. But he was dead! The Doctor and Ian grab one another in alarm (bless), and they all rush to the aid of the former corpse, who wants Ian to grab something off the shelf and give it to him. His heart starts beating again! The man then remembers Carol (the woman) and asks Babs to administer the space gadget to her chest. Babs tries to tell him Carol’s dead, but agrees anyway. And now she’s alive, too!
The man has now regained his composure and explains that the gadget was a heart resuscitator and that they were just in a long sleep when they found them. Anyway, he’s Maitland and she’s Carol, his fellow astronaut. EQUAL REPRESENTATION [OF WHITE PEOPLE] IN SPACE! Well, actually, he’s the captain, and another bloke turns up in a minute, but let me have my fun while it lasts.
Anyway, when Maitland informs Team Tardis he and his crew are from Earth, Barbara and Ian get super excited and ask how the Earth is looking. Apparently in the 28th Century, there are air cars, the whole lower part of England is called Central City, there hasn’t been a London for 400 years, and nobody knows what Big Ben is. I have to say, the way Barbara says 'it's a clock' (yes, yes, I know Big Ben is actually the name of the bell; pipe down, pedants) is one of the saddest things I've ever heard. She's having to explain what one of the most iconic and globally-recognisable landmarks of her hometown is and all she can manage is 'it's a clock' - a description that's particularly poignant given that what we're talking about here is time; Ian even brings it up in the context of a joke by asking whether Big Ben is 'still on time'. It's a landmark that measures and marks time, and its erasure from the cultural consciousness of what I'm going to assume are English astronauts is a big old temporal slap in the face for Barbara and Ian because, were it still standing, it would have been a constant that was also a testament to the amount of time that had passed since the teachers left. I actually can't think of anything more apt. And the crestfallen little look exchanged between the two teachers says it all. Also I love it when we get period visions of the future, seeing as they’re almost always about the time of writing. No ministers for the Northern Powerhouse in the 1960s.
Anyway, Carol thinks they really ought to leave, and Maitland agrees, seeing as there’s only danger where they are now. Ian protests that there’s still so much they want to know, and I do enjoy the understated background acting in this whole scene: Barbara looks upset and so does Ian (despite his curiosity), while the Doctor has been keeping resolutely schtum throughout the whole exchange. They may have learned their lesson about the past, but they haven’t learned any lessons about the future yet.
But there's no time now to absorb this 800-year culture shock, because now Maitland is talking about Danger and obviously Barbara wants to know what sort of Danger he means. Then this happens:
I see now why people refer to Team One as Team Curiosity: it’s what leads them all above all else, and as such they’re well-suited to one another. Things I also enjoy: Barbara immediately wanting to help; the Kenneth Williams-esque face Ian pulls when he's teasing the Doctor; the Doctor being the nosiest person alive; Barbara and Ian finding the Doctor’s eccentricities endearing and cracking up when he succumbs to his nosiness; the whole beautiful dynamic between the three. Things I don’t enjoy: Susan and Carol being out of shot doing whatever it is extraneous women do.
Anyway, Maitland explains that out there is a planet called the Sense Sphere, where the Sensorites live. The Sensorites are preventing them from leaving and also seem to have some control over their minds. And oh Susan and Carol have joined the conversation! Apparently the Sensorites often put them into a deep sleep but never attempt to destroy them. Which, as psychological warfare goes, sounds pretty nasty. The Sensorites even feed them. At any rate, Maitland says Team Tardis should skedaddle before the Sensorites prevent them from leaving, too.
BUT OH WHAT’S THIS? A gloved hand is fondling the Tardis lock and is now holding what looks like an ornamental catapult over it.
In definitely unrelated news, Barbara can smell something burning. So can Susan. Carol has no comment. The three men, meanwhile, are still trying to find a socially acceptable way for two of them to say ‘we would love to stay and help but we’re not going to’. Susan asks whether they can take their new humans home, but Carol says there’s someone called John to consider. Before we find out who John is, however, Barbara gets insistent and tells Ian there’s definitely something burning. Thus alerted, Ian translates this into Man Speak and asks Maitland if he's got anything sciencey that's shorting. He hasn’t.
BUT OF COURSE WE KNOW WHAT IT IS: it’s that gloved hand and the burning space catapult being held over the now smoking Tardis lock…which the hand then removes in its entirety! It still can’t get in, but oh em gee neither can Team Tardis now!
Barbara drags Ian off to investigate the source of the mysterious burning smell as the Doctor agrees his crew can’t do anything helpful and ought to be getting along…only for Susan to discover that the entire opening mechanism to the Tardis has been stolen and that it’s now permanently locked! Wow, the Tardis was easy to flummox in these early episodes. Seeing as they daren’t break down the door on account of disturbing the field of dimensions inside the Tardis, they have been ‘most effectively shut out’. The Sensorites are suddenly very much Team Tardis’s problem.
And then, OH DRAMA! Carol starts shouting about the Sensorites being back. There’s some classic shaky-cam work as Team Tardis struggles back to the controls (with Ian making an inexplicable beeline for Carol). It seems Maitland and Carol are powerless because the Sensorites are controlling their brains or something. The Doctor takes over the controls and yells to Ian for a velocity check; they’re travelling pretty fast. Maitland tells the Doctor that to try to control the ship is suicide; the Doctor tells Maitland to go away. Once the stabilisers are on and the camera has stopped shaking, there’s a lot of pilot-y dialogue as they fight to get the ship off its collision course with the Sense Sphere. The Doctor’s in charge, Ian’s helping Carol with her controls by having his arm around her shoulder, and Barbara gets to check that a few lights are on; Susan doesn’t even get to check stuff. They miss the Sense Sphere by a whisker, and Maitland is angsty because he couldn’t operate the controls when instructed by the Doctor.
I have a question: would the Sensorites really have let the ship crash into their own planet, presumably killing a lot of people? I’m not enormously Sciencey, but it would at the very least make a large hole if it’s a big ship, right?
Later on, the Doctor, Ian, and the two astronauts are discussing the Sensorites’ motives: the Doctor thinks the Sensorites are capable of controlling the astronauts’ minds and has in fact answered my question by speculating that it wasn’t an attempt to murder them just an exercise in fear. Nasty. Meanwhile, Barbara and Susan are making dinner. I’m not even kidding. Ian literally pats his stomach and demands a food preparation update. I cannot even.
Babs asks about water, and Carol tells them it’s ‘down there on the right’. The Doctor asks whether they’ve met the Sensorites, to which Carol replies ‘John has’. John is their mineralogist, but the Doctor can’t meet him because of reasons Maitland would rather not talk about. Be cryptic, then.
Babs and Susan go off to find water, and walk right past the enormous cupboard with the word ‘WATER’ written on it in large, friendly letters; they suppose Carol meant the water was through the door they’ve just come up against. Because women have no sense of direction and are unable to notice shit that’s right in fucking front of them. I wonder if this means they’ll now wander off into a dangerous situation and need to be rescued. *GRINDS TEETH*
The door opens with a hand-wave, like an automatically-flushing loo. Susan gives us a Science lesson and speculates that the door opened because she broke a ray with her hand. Is that how automatic loos work? As they go off in search of water, the camera shows us a mysterious hand waving the door closed behind them – a hand belonging to a pretty zombified-looking chap who I think is meant to have gone grey before his time, though it’s difficult to tell in black-and-white.
Anyway, Babs reckons they oughtn’t to stay here, but Susan has found some books and declares the dark cubbyhole ‘bliss’ as she begins to read. OH SUSAN, you massive nerd, never change. I mean this was basically my childhood: room + books = bliss. Babs, however, has heard something, and gathers Susan to her.
Outside, Ian is trying to persuade the astronauts that John might be able to give them some valuable information; a clearly distressed Carol insists they can’t see him. The Doctor accuses them both of being rather secretive, which is funny given that the first time we saw the Doctor he was the one trying to bullshit Barbara and Ian into believing there wasn’t a teenager living in a police-box in junkyard.
At this point, Ian’s Barbarometer goes off, and he wonders where the others are. The astronauts immediately leap from their seats and start chastising themselves: ‘WE SHOULD HAVE WARNED THEM!’ Ian isn’t far behind and wants to know what they ought to have warned them about, but the door’s been locked from the inside so there’s only time to leg it round to the other door…which leads to another locked door. Ian demands to know what’s wrong, what’s going on, and why Babs and Susan are in danger. When Maitland just yells about it being no use, Ian shoves him bodily out of the way and starts yelling for Barbara and Susan and hammering on the door. Carol and Maitland manage to claw him away; he asks them if there are Sensorites in there.
Well, we’re about to find out: no, but a scared-looking Barbara and Susan are backing away from the lumbering zombie guy. After a few minutes of the two women trying and failing to open or block various doors, the guy starts sobbing and blunders off.
Outside, Carol and Maitland are arguing about going to find out about John. I do like Carol, actually: she tells Maitland that the Sensorites were making their decisions for them before, but the Doctor and the others showed them how to resist. Maitland insists it’s too dangerous, and Carol points out the elephant in the room: that he’s worried about her because she and John were an item but now he doesn’t even know her name. Which must be awful. But Carol won’t back down: there are ‘the girls’ to think of. Which is funny, as Barbara’s a good few years older than she is, so I’m going to say this is the writer being sexist not Carol being chummy.
At this point, Ian interrupts and tells Maitland to get the door open; Maitland goes to get the lock-cutter. Ian asks Carol (nicely, actually) what’s going on; she tells him she and John were going to be married when they got back to Earth, but that the Sensorites attacked him far more than the rest of the crew; he’ll be frightened of strangers and may become violent. Yikes. I don’t want to just assume that Barbara and Ian are an item at this stage, but whatever you think their relationship is or will be, it’s interesting that Ian is brought face to face with someone whose relationship with the person they care about most in their crew has been completely banjaxed during the course of their space travel adventures. It’s safe to say that, for whatever reason, something happening to Barbara is pretty much Ian’s worst nightmare, and he’s been brought face to face with someone for whom that nightmare is a reality. Though way to demonise a guy with mental health issues just to rack up the tension. (Speaking of which, why is the best method of helping someone with serious mental health issues in the 28th Century still on a par with the 'put your lunatics in the attic' method deployed by people in Victorian novels? I know Carol and Maitland have had their own shit to deal with, but they literally let him wander around the corridors in distress all this time.)
Back in the corridors, Babs and Susan are still sneaking about. John pulls a lever and locks some doors…and then collapses at their feet sobbing. Susan, helpfully, points out that he’s crying. John asks who they are, tells Barbara she looks like his sister, and asks whether they’ve come to help. Poor, poor guy. (How tragic would it be if John were actually a distant relation of Barbara’s?) Barbara immediately begins to kneel down to help but is prevented by a jittery Susan, who wonders whether he’s trying to tell them he’s ill. He says yes, he’s ill, and Barbara immediately puts him in the Cuddle Position, telling him not to be afraid and that they’ll take care of him; she can’t answer Susan when asked what happened to him, but I’m sure she’s sure the Power of the Cuddle – which seems to work whenever Ian’s temporarily lost his mind – will be effective. I’m glad there are two women in this scene, and that Barbara’s instant and unreserved compassion is contrasted against Susan’s wariness, or else this would be gendered as hell, but I do appreciate Babs’s compassion as a character trait quite a lot. And I’m glad the guy who is suffering from a distressing bout of mental illness is no longer the baddie but is being treated with said compassion.
Outside, Maitland is cutting through the door with the power of electromagnetics. The Doctor rocks up and tells them to get a bloody move on because Susan’s in there. Maitland is stopped in his tracks, however, by a high-pitched whine, which means the Sensorites are on their way! Maitland tells the Doctor to take the controls, which he does with glorious cantankerousness. ‘What about Barbara and Susan?’ howls Ian. No time. The Sensorites fly past in their little jelly bean spaceships…to take over their minds…or to kill them? The Doctor just likes throwing that kind of shit out there.
Back in the corridors, John is still getting his cuddle therapy when the whining noise makes an appearance. John gets up, startled; Barbara tells him everything’s ok and he needs rest. John stands in front of them with his arms out and tells them he’ll protect them. Barbara, who understands a thing or two about overprotective men (well, Ian) manages to humour him with, again, an extraordinary amount of compassion:
Outside, Ian is about as much use as a marzipan dildo but keeps trying to stick his oar in. Maitland reminds them to use no violence unless the Sensorites are violent first; Ian, who has become a lot more violent over the past few serials, demands to know why not, and reckons they have ‘the right to protect ourselves’. Oh Ian, you’ve already been fighting for far too long. Or else you’ve decided the only good you are to the Team is in a fight. Which is sad. The Doctor tells his dear Chesterton that the Sensorites are after their brains not their bodies, and that they should therefore fight with their brains.
Carol’s spidey senses suddenly go into overdrive: she can sense the…er...Sensorites all around them! Maitland shushes them all and freezes; Ian walks over to the window and stares, calling the Doctor over in hushed tones as HATLESS UNDEAD ABE LINCOLN PUTS HIS HANDS AGAINST THE GLASS AND LOOKS IN AT THEM!
WHAT IS ZOMBIE LINCOLN DOING IN SPACE? IS THIS IN FACT A SENSORITE? HOW IS IT SURVIVING UNPROTECTED IN SPACE? WILL BARBARA AND SUSAN BE OK WITH JOHN ‘PROTECTING’ THEM? WILL IAN FINALLY CRACK AND START BREAKING DOWN DOORS TO GET TO THE BAE? WILL THEY MANAGE TO GET THE LOCK MECHANISM BACK? HOW DOES ONE NEGOTIATE WITH EXPERTS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE?
Is a woman 'spared' the ordeal of having to do/witness something unpleasant by a man who makes a decision on her behalf/keeps her deliberately ignorant? No.
Does a man automatically disbelieve or belittle something a woman (companion) says happened to her? No.
Does a man talk over a woman or talk about a woman as though she isn't there? No.
Does the woman companion have to be calmed/comforted by the Doctor/a man companion/a man? No. It's Ian who needs to chill out this week.
Is there past/future/alien sexism? Just good old-fashioned sixties sexism. Ugh.
Does a 'present'-day character call anybody out on past/future/alien sexism? No.
Does an past/future/alien person have the hots for a woman companion and is it reciprocated? No.
I’m cheating a bit because I’ve seen this all the way through, but it’s interesting that the Sensorites are out-and-out antagonists in this first episode. I don’t like the way John is basically a lumbering zombie out to menace ‘the girls’ for most of the episode, but he eventually gets some sensitive treatment. Ian is a bit of a spare part this week and it’s interesting to see him floundering when he can’t resort to action (and indeed violence). What’s also lovely is Team Tardis taking a moment to talk about how their experiences have changed them. Barbara is back to cuddling people and food preparation (still can’t get over that tbh), but after last serial it’s nice to see her compassionate side at play, and she’s far less easily spooked by lurking menaces in corridors than she was on, say, Skaro. She’s still very protective of Susan, but her relationship with the Doctor is developing nicely, to the extent that she can be pretty arch with him and he’ll appreciate it. Susan has a lovely moment when she finds a book corner and never wants to leave, and though she’s more overtly afraid than Babs, her wariness serves a purpose in making Barbara’s ‘MUST CUDDLE ALL DISTRESSED PERSONS’ reflex more a Barbara-specific trait than a gendered one. Carol and Ian have a nice moment when they’re talking about the worst thing that can befall a loved one…IN SPAAAAAAAACE, and even though she’s mostly there as John’s tragic love interest, she actually has a lot more gumption than Maitland. The Doctor is crotchety as hell and I love it. More to talk about than I thought, seeing as I mostly think of The Sensorites as ‘the one where nothing happens’, but maybe I just haven’t hit the weeks where Jacqueline Hill goes on holiday yet.
Anyway, they reminisce a bit, and we get to hear about the time the Doctor deliberately pissed off Henry VIII by throwing a parson’s nose (a chicken’s arse) at him to get back to the Tower of London, where the Tardis happened to be. The Doctor has a long history with the British monarchy, it would seem.
Anyway anyway, Susan opens the doors, and the Doctor assures Ian that everything outside is normal and safe and that. Then this happens:
These two.
So Barbara was right: they’ve landed inside a spaceship...full of dead people. Well, there’s a first time for everything. Just two dead people, in fact – a man and a woman. I’d just like to draw everyone’s attention to the fact that Ian checks the man’s pulse while Barbara checks the woman’s, meaning that our two humans are now scarily blasé about being around corpses. Babs asks what could have happened; Ian suggests suffocation; the Doctor claims not to make uninformed guesses (ha!) but reckons that could be one answer. The Doctor muses about how tragic it is that the woman is only a few years older than Susan in much the same tone one would use when paying lip service to something bad that's happened to other people on the news.
Susan wants to get back to the Tardis because she has a Bad Feeling About This. Not to be outdone, Babs claims she can sense something too. Maybe it’s their wombs. Ian suggests it’s that whatever killed the space people could also kill Team Tardis.
But enough of that! The Doctor is now manhandling the corpses to show Ian how interesting it is that their Space Watches have stopped. There’s a nice bit of Sixties People Imagine Future Tech when the Doctor explains that their watches are non-winding and that the action of the wrist recharges them for twenty-four hours, so that the earliest they could have died would have been twenty-four hours ago. Morbid Susan decides to grab the dead man’s wrist and exclaims that he’s still warm. HOW DID YOU NOT NOTICE THIS BEFORE, GUYS? Babs grabs his other wrist and confirms it, despite having been the one who checked the woman. So they’ve only just died. Which, as the Doctor points out, doesn’t make sense. Unless they were in a coma for twenty-four hours or longer and have indeed only just died, but apparently I’m the only one who thought of that.
Anyway, the Doctor reckons there’s nothing more they can do here so they should leave. Barbara seems upset that they can’t even bury them. After last week’s moment in which Barbara felt like all the people who’d died in the Aztec temple were waiting for her to die too, I’m inclined to think that gaining a full appreciation of what it means to be a Time Lord (though of course the term hasn’t been invented yet) makes you morbid as hell.
But WHAT’S THIS? So close to and yet so far from getting the hell out of dodge before they get into trouble. Suddenly, the man moves. But he was dead! The Doctor and Ian grab one another in alarm (bless), and they all rush to the aid of the former corpse, who wants Ian to grab something off the shelf and give it to him. His heart starts beating again! The man then remembers Carol (the woman) and asks Babs to administer the space gadget to her chest. Babs tries to tell him Carol’s dead, but agrees anyway. And now she’s alive, too!
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| Clinging: not just for Two and Jamie |
The man has now regained his composure and explains that the gadget was a heart resuscitator and that they were just in a long sleep when they found them. Anyway, he’s Maitland and she’s Carol, his fellow astronaut. EQUAL REPRESENTATION [OF WHITE PEOPLE] IN SPACE! Well, actually, he’s the captain, and another bloke turns up in a minute, but let me have my fun while it lasts.
Anyway, when Maitland informs Team Tardis he and his crew are from Earth, Barbara and Ian get super excited and ask how the Earth is looking. Apparently in the 28th Century, there are air cars, the whole lower part of England is called Central City, there hasn’t been a London for 400 years, and nobody knows what Big Ben is. I have to say, the way Barbara says 'it's a clock' (yes, yes, I know Big Ben is actually the name of the bell; pipe down, pedants) is one of the saddest things I've ever heard. She's having to explain what one of the most iconic and globally-recognisable landmarks of her hometown is and all she can manage is 'it's a clock' - a description that's particularly poignant given that what we're talking about here is time; Ian even brings it up in the context of a joke by asking whether Big Ben is 'still on time'. It's a landmark that measures and marks time, and its erasure from the cultural consciousness of what I'm going to assume are English astronauts is a big old temporal slap in the face for Barbara and Ian because, were it still standing, it would have been a constant that was also a testament to the amount of time that had passed since the teachers left. I actually can't think of anything more apt. And the crestfallen little look exchanged between the two teachers says it all. Also I love it when we get period visions of the future, seeing as they’re almost always about the time of writing. No ministers for the Northern Powerhouse in the 1960s.
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| When history forgets the constants of your cultural landscape. |
Anyway, Carol thinks they really ought to leave, and Maitland agrees, seeing as there’s only danger where they are now. Ian protests that there’s still so much they want to know, and I do enjoy the understated background acting in this whole scene: Barbara looks upset and so does Ian (despite his curiosity), while the Doctor has been keeping resolutely schtum throughout the whole exchange. They may have learned their lesson about the past, but they haven’t learned any lessons about the future yet.
But there's no time now to absorb this 800-year culture shock, because now Maitland is talking about Danger and obviously Barbara wants to know what sort of Danger he means. Then this happens:
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| Gifs by cleowho |
I see now why people refer to Team One as Team Curiosity: it’s what leads them all above all else, and as such they’re well-suited to one another. Things I also enjoy: Barbara immediately wanting to help; the Kenneth Williams-esque face Ian pulls when he's teasing the Doctor; the Doctor being the nosiest person alive; Barbara and Ian finding the Doctor’s eccentricities endearing and cracking up when he succumbs to his nosiness; the whole beautiful dynamic between the three. Things I don’t enjoy: Susan and Carol being out of shot doing whatever it is extraneous women do.
Anyway, Maitland explains that out there is a planet called the Sense Sphere, where the Sensorites live. The Sensorites are preventing them from leaving and also seem to have some control over their minds. And oh Susan and Carol have joined the conversation! Apparently the Sensorites often put them into a deep sleep but never attempt to destroy them. Which, as psychological warfare goes, sounds pretty nasty. The Sensorites even feed them. At any rate, Maitland says Team Tardis should skedaddle before the Sensorites prevent them from leaving, too.
BUT OH WHAT’S THIS? A gloved hand is fondling the Tardis lock and is now holding what looks like an ornamental catapult over it.
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| Midsomer Murders...IN SPAAAAAAAAACE! |
In definitely unrelated news, Barbara can smell something burning. So can Susan. Carol has no comment. The three men, meanwhile, are still trying to find a socially acceptable way for two of them to say ‘we would love to stay and help but we’re not going to’. Susan asks whether they can take their new humans home, but Carol says there’s someone called John to consider. Before we find out who John is, however, Barbara gets insistent and tells Ian there’s definitely something burning. Thus alerted, Ian translates this into Man Speak and asks Maitland if he's got anything sciencey that's shorting. He hasn’t.
BUT OF COURSE WE KNOW WHAT IT IS: it’s that gloved hand and the burning space catapult being held over the now smoking Tardis lock…which the hand then removes in its entirety! It still can’t get in, but oh em gee neither can Team Tardis now!
Barbara drags Ian off to investigate the source of the mysterious burning smell as the Doctor agrees his crew can’t do anything helpful and ought to be getting along…only for Susan to discover that the entire opening mechanism to the Tardis has been stolen and that it’s now permanently locked! Wow, the Tardis was easy to flummox in these early episodes. Seeing as they daren’t break down the door on account of disturbing the field of dimensions inside the Tardis, they have been ‘most effectively shut out’. The Sensorites are suddenly very much Team Tardis’s problem.
And then, OH DRAMA! Carol starts shouting about the Sensorites being back. There’s some classic shaky-cam work as Team Tardis struggles back to the controls (with Ian making an inexplicable beeline for Carol). It seems Maitland and Carol are powerless because the Sensorites are controlling their brains or something. The Doctor takes over the controls and yells to Ian for a velocity check; they’re travelling pretty fast. Maitland tells the Doctor that to try to control the ship is suicide; the Doctor tells Maitland to go away. Once the stabilisers are on and the camera has stopped shaking, there’s a lot of pilot-y dialogue as they fight to get the ship off its collision course with the Sense Sphere. The Doctor’s in charge, Ian’s helping Carol with her controls by having his arm around her shoulder, and Barbara gets to check that a few lights are on; Susan doesn’t even get to check stuff. They miss the Sense Sphere by a whisker, and Maitland is angsty because he couldn’t operate the controls when instructed by the Doctor.
I have a question: would the Sensorites really have let the ship crash into their own planet, presumably killing a lot of people? I’m not enormously Sciencey, but it would at the very least make a large hole if it’s a big ship, right?
Later on, the Doctor, Ian, and the two astronauts are discussing the Sensorites’ motives: the Doctor thinks the Sensorites are capable of controlling the astronauts’ minds and has in fact answered my question by speculating that it wasn’t an attempt to murder them just an exercise in fear. Nasty. Meanwhile, Barbara and Susan are making dinner. I’m not even kidding. Ian literally pats his stomach and demands a food preparation update. I cannot even.
Babs asks about water, and Carol tells them it’s ‘down there on the right’. The Doctor asks whether they’ve met the Sensorites, to which Carol replies ‘John has’. John is their mineralogist, but the Doctor can’t meet him because of reasons Maitland would rather not talk about. Be cryptic, then.
Babs and Susan go off to find water, and walk right past the enormous cupboard with the word ‘WATER’ written on it in large, friendly letters; they suppose Carol meant the water was through the door they’ve just come up against. Because women have no sense of direction and are unable to notice shit that’s right in fucking front of them. I wonder if this means they’ll now wander off into a dangerous situation and need to be rescued. *GRINDS TEETH*
The door opens with a hand-wave, like an automatically-flushing loo. Susan gives us a Science lesson and speculates that the door opened because she broke a ray with her hand. Is that how automatic loos work? As they go off in search of water, the camera shows us a mysterious hand waving the door closed behind them – a hand belonging to a pretty zombified-looking chap who I think is meant to have gone grey before his time, though it’s difficult to tell in black-and-white.
Anyway, Babs reckons they oughtn’t to stay here, but Susan has found some books and declares the dark cubbyhole ‘bliss’ as she begins to read. OH SUSAN, you massive nerd, never change. I mean this was basically my childhood: room + books = bliss. Babs, however, has heard something, and gathers Susan to her.
Outside, Ian is trying to persuade the astronauts that John might be able to give them some valuable information; a clearly distressed Carol insists they can’t see him. The Doctor accuses them both of being rather secretive, which is funny given that the first time we saw the Doctor he was the one trying to bullshit Barbara and Ian into believing there wasn’t a teenager living in a police-box in junkyard.
At this point, Ian’s Barbarometer goes off, and he wonders where the others are. The astronauts immediately leap from their seats and start chastising themselves: ‘WE SHOULD HAVE WARNED THEM!’ Ian isn’t far behind and wants to know what they ought to have warned them about, but the door’s been locked from the inside so there’s only time to leg it round to the other door…which leads to another locked door. Ian demands to know what’s wrong, what’s going on, and why Babs and Susan are in danger. When Maitland just yells about it being no use, Ian shoves him bodily out of the way and starts yelling for Barbara and Susan and hammering on the door. Carol and Maitland manage to claw him away; he asks them if there are Sensorites in there.
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| Tbh I made this gif in anticipation of the middle episodes. |
Well, we’re about to find out: no, but a scared-looking Barbara and Susan are backing away from the lumbering zombie guy. After a few minutes of the two women trying and failing to open or block various doors, the guy starts sobbing and blunders off.
Outside, Carol and Maitland are arguing about going to find out about John. I do like Carol, actually: she tells Maitland that the Sensorites were making their decisions for them before, but the Doctor and the others showed them how to resist. Maitland insists it’s too dangerous, and Carol points out the elephant in the room: that he’s worried about her because she and John were an item but now he doesn’t even know her name. Which must be awful. But Carol won’t back down: there are ‘the girls’ to think of. Which is funny, as Barbara’s a good few years older than she is, so I’m going to say this is the writer being sexist not Carol being chummy.
At this point, Ian interrupts and tells Maitland to get the door open; Maitland goes to get the lock-cutter. Ian asks Carol (nicely, actually) what’s going on; she tells him she and John were going to be married when they got back to Earth, but that the Sensorites attacked him far more than the rest of the crew; he’ll be frightened of strangers and may become violent. Yikes. I don’t want to just assume that Barbara and Ian are an item at this stage, but whatever you think their relationship is or will be, it’s interesting that Ian is brought face to face with someone whose relationship with the person they care about most in their crew has been completely banjaxed during the course of their space travel adventures. It’s safe to say that, for whatever reason, something happening to Barbara is pretty much Ian’s worst nightmare, and he’s been brought face to face with someone for whom that nightmare is a reality. Though way to demonise a guy with mental health issues just to rack up the tension. (Speaking of which, why is the best method of helping someone with serious mental health issues in the 28th Century still on a par with the 'put your lunatics in the attic' method deployed by people in Victorian novels? I know Carol and Maitland have had their own shit to deal with, but they literally let him wander around the corridors in distress all this time.)
Back in the corridors, Babs and Susan are still sneaking about. John pulls a lever and locks some doors…and then collapses at their feet sobbing. Susan, helpfully, points out that he’s crying. John asks who they are, tells Barbara she looks like his sister, and asks whether they’ve come to help. Poor, poor guy. (How tragic would it be if John were actually a distant relation of Barbara’s?) Barbara immediately begins to kneel down to help but is prevented by a jittery Susan, who wonders whether he’s trying to tell them he’s ill. He says yes, he’s ill, and Barbara immediately puts him in the Cuddle Position, telling him not to be afraid and that they’ll take care of him; she can’t answer Susan when asked what happened to him, but I’m sure she’s sure the Power of the Cuddle – which seems to work whenever Ian’s temporarily lost his mind – will be effective. I’m glad there are two women in this scene, and that Barbara’s instant and unreserved compassion is contrasted against Susan’s wariness, or else this would be gendered as hell, but I do appreciate Babs’s compassion as a character trait quite a lot. And I’m glad the guy who is suffering from a distressing bout of mental illness is no longer the baddie but is being treated with said compassion.
Outside, Maitland is cutting through the door with the power of electromagnetics. The Doctor rocks up and tells them to get a bloody move on because Susan’s in there. Maitland is stopped in his tracks, however, by a high-pitched whine, which means the Sensorites are on their way! Maitland tells the Doctor to take the controls, which he does with glorious cantankerousness. ‘What about Barbara and Susan?’ howls Ian. No time. The Sensorites fly past in their little jelly bean spaceships…to take over their minds…or to kill them? The Doctor just likes throwing that kind of shit out there.
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| Special effects are special. |
Back in the corridors, John is still getting his cuddle therapy when the whining noise makes an appearance. John gets up, startled; Barbara tells him everything’s ok and he needs rest. John stands in front of them with his arms out and tells them he’ll protect them. Barbara, who understands a thing or two about overprotective men (well, Ian) manages to humour him with, again, an extraordinary amount of compassion:
JOHN: I'll protect you.There’s nothing like pandering to ideals of masculinity and gender roles for rebuilding a shattered psyche.
BARBARA: Yes, all right. You protect us.
Outside, Ian is about as much use as a marzipan dildo but keeps trying to stick his oar in. Maitland reminds them to use no violence unless the Sensorites are violent first; Ian, who has become a lot more violent over the past few serials, demands to know why not, and reckons they have ‘the right to protect ourselves’. Oh Ian, you’ve already been fighting for far too long. Or else you’ve decided the only good you are to the Team is in a fight. Which is sad. The Doctor tells his dear Chesterton that the Sensorites are after their brains not their bodies, and that they should therefore fight with their brains.
Carol’s spidey senses suddenly go into overdrive: she can sense the…er...Sensorites all around them! Maitland shushes them all and freezes; Ian walks over to the window and stares, calling the Doctor over in hushed tones as HATLESS UNDEAD ABE LINCOLN PUTS HIS HANDS AGAINST THE GLASS AND LOOKS IN AT THEM!
WHAT IS ZOMBIE LINCOLN DOING IN SPACE? IS THIS IN FACT A SENSORITE? HOW IS IT SURVIVING UNPROTECTED IN SPACE? WILL BARBARA AND SUSAN BE OK WITH JOHN ‘PROTECTING’ THEM? WILL IAN FINALLY CRACK AND START BREAKING DOWN DOORS TO GET TO THE BAE? WILL THEY MANAGE TO GET THE LOCK MECHANISM BACK? HOW DOES ONE NEGOTIATE WITH EXPERTS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE?
Summary (as applicable to this episode)
Does it pass the Bechdel test? Yup!
Is the gaze problematic? Nope.
Is/are the woman companion(s) dressed 'for the Dads'? No.
Does a woman fall over/twist her ankle (whilst running from peril)? No.
Does a woman wander off alone for the sole dramatic purpose of getting into trouble so she can be rescued later? Yup. Barbara and Susan wander off so they can be menaced by a guy with mental health issues on the pretext that they are so dumb they can't see an enormous box with 'water' written on it in very large letters and walk right past it.
Is/are the woman companion(s) captured? No.
Does the Doctor/a man companion/any other man have to rescue the woman companion(s) from peril? It would appear so at first, though it turns out John isn't dangerous, he's just ill and freaking people out. Doesn't stop Ian tearing his hair out while Maitland makes his painfully slow attempt to get to 'the girls' on the other side of a locked door.
Is a woman placed under threat of actual bodily harm? Implied but the threat turns out not to be serious.
Is/are the woman companion's/s' first/only reaction(s) to peril gratuitous screaming? No.
Does a woman companion go into hysterics over something reasonably minor? No.
Does it pass the Bechdel test? Yup!
Is the gaze problematic? Nope.
Is/are the woman companion(s) dressed 'for the Dads'? No.
Does a woman fall over/twist her ankle (whilst running from peril)? No.
Does a woman wander off alone for the sole dramatic purpose of getting into trouble so she can be rescued later? Yup. Barbara and Susan wander off so they can be menaced by a guy with mental health issues on the pretext that they are so dumb they can't see an enormous box with 'water' written on it in very large letters and walk right past it.
Is/are the woman companion(s) captured? No.
Does the Doctor/a man companion/any other man have to rescue the woman companion(s) from peril? It would appear so at first, though it turns out John isn't dangerous, he's just ill and freaking people out. Doesn't stop Ian tearing his hair out while Maitland makes his painfully slow attempt to get to 'the girls' on the other side of a locked door.
Is a woman placed under threat of actual bodily harm? Implied but the threat turns out not to be serious.
Is/are the woman companion's/s' first/only reaction(s) to peril gratuitous screaming? No.
Does a woman companion go into hysterics over something reasonably minor? No.
Is a woman 'spared' the ordeal of having to do/witness something unpleasant by a man who makes a decision on her behalf/keeps her deliberately ignorant? No.
Does a man automatically disbelieve or belittle something a woman (companion) says happened to her? No.
Does a man talk over a woman or talk about a woman as though she isn't there? No.
Does the woman companion have to be calmed/comforted by the Doctor/a man companion/a man? No. It's Ian who needs to chill out this week.
Is a woman the first/only person to be (most gratuitously) menaced by the episode's antagonist(s)? While we still think John is some sort of malevolent zombie, I'd say it's pretty gratuitous.
Is a man shamed into doing/not doing something because the alternative is a woman doing/not doing something? No.
Does the woman companion come up with a plan? No.
Does the woman companion do something stupid/banal/weird which inspires a man to be a Man with a Plan? No.
Does a woman come up with a theory and is it ridiculed by the Doctor/a man? No.
Does a woman call the Doctor out on his bullshit? No.
Does a woman get to be a badass? Not in the violent sense, but Barbara.
Is the young, strong, straight, white male lead the person most often in control of the situation? It's not really clear who's in charge but the Doctor is the one who's most in control when everyone else goes to pieces.
Is there past/future/alien sexism? Just good old-fashioned sixties sexism. Ugh.
Does a 'present'-day character call anybody out on past/future/alien sexism? No.
Does an past/future/alien person have the hots for a woman companion and is it reciprocated? No.
Did a woman write/direct/produce this episode? No/No/Yes.
VerdictI’m cheating a bit because I’ve seen this all the way through, but it’s interesting that the Sensorites are out-and-out antagonists in this first episode. I don’t like the way John is basically a lumbering zombie out to menace ‘the girls’ for most of the episode, but he eventually gets some sensitive treatment. Ian is a bit of a spare part this week and it’s interesting to see him floundering when he can’t resort to action (and indeed violence). What’s also lovely is Team Tardis taking a moment to talk about how their experiences have changed them. Barbara is back to cuddling people and food preparation (still can’t get over that tbh), but after last serial it’s nice to see her compassionate side at play, and she’s far less easily spooked by lurking menaces in corridors than she was on, say, Skaro. She’s still very protective of Susan, but her relationship with the Doctor is developing nicely, to the extent that she can be pretty arch with him and he’ll appreciate it. Susan has a lovely moment when she finds a book corner and never wants to leave, and though she’s more overtly afraid than Babs, her wariness serves a purpose in making Barbara’s ‘MUST CUDDLE ALL DISTRESSED PERSONS’ reflex more a Barbara-specific trait than a gendered one. Carol and Ian have a nice moment when they’re talking about the worst thing that can befall a loved one…IN SPAAAAAAAACE, and even though she’s mostly there as John’s tragic love interest, she actually has a lot more gumption than Maitland. The Doctor is crotchety as hell and I love it. More to talk about than I thought, seeing as I mostly think of The Sensorites as ‘the one where nothing happens’, but maybe I just haven’t hit the weeks where Jacqueline Hill goes on holiday yet.
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