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Doctor Who: The Sensorites
[Performed by a Full Cast]
William Hartnell stars as the original Doctor in this remastered classic TV soundtrack. William Russell, who played Ian in the story, provides linking narration for these six episodes, first broadcast in 1964. In a bonus interview he also recalls the making of the serial and remembers his time on Doctor Who .
''They are hostile, these Sensorites. But in the strangest way . . . ''
The TARDIS, carrying the Doctor, his granddaughter Susan, and the two schoolteachers Ian and Barbara, materializes on board a drifting spaceship in the twenty-eighth century, in orbit around a planet called the Sense-Sphere. As the crew members wake from a catatonic trance, the TARDIS' door lock is stolen by two shadowy aliens also on board. Before long the travelers encounter the Sensorites - humanoid creatures who are sensitive to bright light and loud noise. Establishing a telepathic link with Susan, they request a meeting with the Doctor and friends down on the Sense-Sphere. The Doctor discovers deep mistrust between the humans and the Sensorites, whose people are afflicted with a strange disease. When Ian also falls ill, the Doctor must discover the cause of the disease while also trying to make peace between the two races.
William Hartnell stars as the original Doctor in this remastered classic TV soundtrack. William Russell, who played Ian in the story, provides linking narration for these six episodes, first broadcast in 1964. In a bonus interview he also recalls the making of the serial and remembers his time on Doctor Who .
''They are hostile, these Sensorites. But in the strangest way . . . ''
The TARDIS, carrying the Doctor, his granddaughter Susan, and the two schoolteachers Ian and Barbara, materializes on board a drifting spaceship in the twenty-eighth century, in orbit around a planet called the Sense-Sphere. As the crew members wake from a catatonic trance, the TARDIS' door lock is stolen by two shadowy aliens also on board. Before long the travelers encounter the Sensorites - humanoid creatures who are sensitive to bright light and loud noise. Establishing a telepathic link with Susan, they request a meeting with the Doctor and friends down on the Sense-Sphere. The Doctor discovers deep mistrust between the humans and the Sensorites, whose people are afflicted with a strange disease. When Ian also falls ill, the Doctor must discover the cause of the disease while also trying to make peace between the two races.
- GenresDoctor Who
3 pages, Audiobook
First published July 10, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 11, 2016
This was a fun audiobook to listen to! It's an early story featuring the First Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara, using the original sound tracks, and with the actions of the actors - that occur during what would otherwise be long silences - explained by William Russel, who actually played Ian in the show!
Also, there's a brief interview with William Russel at the end of each of the CDs, and at one point he notes that the directors were sort of experimenting with silences in the show, which was pretty interesting!
He also mentions that partway through the serial, the director responsibilities were handed over from one director to another, and I wonder if that's the cause for the rather abrupt shift in tone at the end of the last installment of the show. You see...
Spoilers
...the entire show was rather inconsistently paced.
The story starts out in space, where the Doctor et all land in a spaceship orbiting a planet called the 'Sense Sphere', or something like that, and find two seemingly dead human crew members, although they quickly prove to only be in suspended animation, although they're also sort of mind controlled when they wake up. A third crewman is way older than the others, insane, and locked in another compartment. It turns out that the ship is being held there by aliens, the Sensorites from the nearby planet, because the aliens, which are telepathic, realized that the humans discovered that their planet is rich in molybdenum. They spend quite some time exploring the ship, discovering that the aliens are afraid of the dark, and so on. It's very tense, as Ian arms himself with a club, but we see things from the alien's point of view too, and we see that they'll use advanced weapons to blast Ian and the others to death if the humans get violent. Then the aliens remove the lock mechanism from the Tardis so there's no escape... no one can get into or out of the Tardis with the mechanism gone. So, the Doctor negotiates their way onto the planet!
Once on the planet, we're introduced to three Sensorites. The First Elder is in charge of the entire planet, and is an all around great person who is willing to listen to the Doctor, but is super naive when it comes to subterfuge and lies, and trusts all of his people implicitly. The Second Elder is similar, but is more suspicious of the Doctor and his friends. Finally, the City Administrator is a bad guy who does everything he can to kill the Doctor and friends! There's a lot of long, drawn out plotting by the Administrator as he tries to have the humans disintegrated, poisoned, disintegrated again, eaten by monsters, disintegrated yet again, and so on. Basically, we find out that the Sensorites are suspicious of humans because there was a group of humans there before the current group, who had found out about the riches of their world, then escaped, but blew up their ship on the way out of the planet! Since then, there has been a disease pandemic wracking the Sensorite populace, which explains the unpopularity of the humans.
Here's the thing, and (along with the boring middle parts of the story) the major reason I took a star off of my review... The story goes out of its way to implicate the City Administrator as the main bad guy. He connives, discovers treachery (albeit at the level of a 5 year old), abducts the Second Elder and makes him do his bidding like a mob boss by threatening his family, then finally kills the Second Elder and actually takes over his job as the new Second Elder after the Doctor recommends him! Ian contracts the disease, but then it turns out it's actually poison in the water supply! The Doctor figures this out, devises a cure, which the Administrator destroys, so the Doctor has to make it again. The Doctor goes into the water supply section of the city and confronts monsters, then goes again and has his weapons and maps sabotaged by the Administrator as well!
Up until this point, it really seems as if this is all a ploy by the Administrator to usurp power from the First Elder. That he is the one poisoning the water, breaking the lights, putting up fake loud monsters and so on, and he's got a number of people following him to do his dirty work, all using the humans as scapegoats.
I'll just TL;DR this... it turns out in the last ten minutes of the serial that most of the humans from the first expedition are actually still alive, hanging out in the water area, and poisoning it because they all went insane because of the Sensorite's telepathy. The Doctor tricks them into thinking they've won their little war, and leads them out into the open to be arrested. Then they're just like, "Oh, that wacky Administrator! He's banished now!" and everyone goes home.
Oddities:
-I guess the Administrator was just a huge, anomalous, murderous jerk?
-Molybdenum seems like an underwhelming reason for all the excitement.
-Why is there so much 'deadly nightshade' around on these space ships?
-Why would the Sensorites believe that there were monsters in the water supply?
-The alien's weaponry is very odd... dangerous in space, but only paralysis on land?
-The Doctor's weapons were sabotaged, but it never came up again.
-What's the deal with John? I guess he wasn't put into cold storage like the others, so he kept aging? How long was he there for? Or was it just the affects of his insanity from the mind control?
-The mind control bits weren't explained very well. Later, it seems like it's just used for communication!
Cool stuff:
-Susan is still around, which is neat, and she openly mentions that she'd like to settle down at some point. She's left behind two serials later in 'The Dalek Invasion of Earth'
-At this point in the series, we don't know the Doctor is a Time Lord, or what that means. Susan, his Granddaughter, talks about her home planet, describing it as having an orange sky, and leaves of silver. So cool!
-The Doctor is often described as hating weapons of all kinds (although writers often forget that he's blasted an alien or two from time to time). Here, he is offered an alien weapon, and says, "I've never liked weapons at any time. However, they're handy little things." Hah!
-
Also, there's a brief interview with William Russel at the end of each of the CDs, and at one point he notes that the directors were sort of experimenting with silences in the show, which was pretty interesting!
He also mentions that partway through the serial, the director responsibilities were handed over from one director to another, and I wonder if that's the cause for the rather abrupt shift in tone at the end of the last installment of the show. You see...
Spoilers
...the entire show was rather inconsistently paced.
The story starts out in space, where the Doctor et all land in a spaceship orbiting a planet called the 'Sense Sphere', or something like that, and find two seemingly dead human crew members, although they quickly prove to only be in suspended animation, although they're also sort of mind controlled when they wake up. A third crewman is way older than the others, insane, and locked in another compartment. It turns out that the ship is being held there by aliens, the Sensorites from the nearby planet, because the aliens, which are telepathic, realized that the humans discovered that their planet is rich in molybdenum. They spend quite some time exploring the ship, discovering that the aliens are afraid of the dark, and so on. It's very tense, as Ian arms himself with a club, but we see things from the alien's point of view too, and we see that they'll use advanced weapons to blast Ian and the others to death if the humans get violent. Then the aliens remove the lock mechanism from the Tardis so there's no escape... no one can get into or out of the Tardis with the mechanism gone. So, the Doctor negotiates their way onto the planet!
Once on the planet, we're introduced to three Sensorites. The First Elder is in charge of the entire planet, and is an all around great person who is willing to listen to the Doctor, but is super naive when it comes to subterfuge and lies, and trusts all of his people implicitly. The Second Elder is similar, but is more suspicious of the Doctor and his friends. Finally, the City Administrator is a bad guy who does everything he can to kill the Doctor and friends! There's a lot of long, drawn out plotting by the Administrator as he tries to have the humans disintegrated, poisoned, disintegrated again, eaten by monsters, disintegrated yet again, and so on. Basically, we find out that the Sensorites are suspicious of humans because there was a group of humans there before the current group, who had found out about the riches of their world, then escaped, but blew up their ship on the way out of the planet! Since then, there has been a disease pandemic wracking the Sensorite populace, which explains the unpopularity of the humans.
Here's the thing, and (along with the boring middle parts of the story) the major reason I took a star off of my review... The story goes out of its way to implicate the City Administrator as the main bad guy. He connives, discovers treachery (albeit at the level of a 5 year old), abducts the Second Elder and makes him do his bidding like a mob boss by threatening his family, then finally kills the Second Elder and actually takes over his job as the new Second Elder after the Doctor recommends him! Ian contracts the disease, but then it turns out it's actually poison in the water supply! The Doctor figures this out, devises a cure, which the Administrator destroys, so the Doctor has to make it again. The Doctor goes into the water supply section of the city and confronts monsters, then goes again and has his weapons and maps sabotaged by the Administrator as well!
Up until this point, it really seems as if this is all a ploy by the Administrator to usurp power from the First Elder. That he is the one poisoning the water, breaking the lights, putting up fake loud monsters and so on, and he's got a number of people following him to do his dirty work, all using the humans as scapegoats.
I'll just TL;DR this... it turns out in the last ten minutes of the serial that most of the humans from the first expedition are actually still alive, hanging out in the water area, and poisoning it because they all went insane because of the Sensorite's telepathy. The Doctor tricks them into thinking they've won their little war, and leads them out into the open to be arrested. Then they're just like, "Oh, that wacky Administrator! He's banished now!" and everyone goes home.
Oddities:
-I guess the Administrator was just a huge, anomalous, murderous jerk?
-Molybdenum seems like an underwhelming reason for all the excitement.
-Why is there so much 'deadly nightshade' around on these space ships?
-Why would the Sensorites believe that there were monsters in the water supply?
-The alien's weaponry is very odd... dangerous in space, but only paralysis on land?
-The Doctor's weapons were sabotaged, but it never came up again.
-What's the deal with John? I guess he wasn't put into cold storage like the others, so he kept aging? How long was he there for? Or was it just the affects of his insanity from the mind control?
-The mind control bits weren't explained very well. Later, it seems like it's just used for communication!
Cool stuff:
-Susan is still around, which is neat, and she openly mentions that she'd like to settle down at some point. She's left behind two serials later in 'The Dalek Invasion of Earth'
-At this point in the series, we don't know the Doctor is a Time Lord, or what that means. Susan, his Granddaughter, talks about her home planet, describing it as having an orange sky, and leaves of silver. So cool!
-The Doctor is often described as hating weapons of all kinds (although writers often forget that he's blasted an alien or two from time to time). Here, he is offered an alien weapon, and says, "I've never liked weapons at any time. However, they're handy little things." Hah!
-
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 29, 2014
I don't remember the TV original of this. The alien Sensorites must have been quite a spectacle as whilst they conform in some ways to the weird stereotypes we have for aliens there were some quirky details, particularly around the feet.
I don't much care for First Doctor stories - William Hartnell's Doctor is not the most cuddly of incarnations, very brittle, and his companions wooden (of course they had no idea of their legacy) This started fairly wearisomely, but in the end I felt it was a good tale raising questions about trust and whether it is better to trust and be disappointed or to be always suspicious and yet still lose something along the way.
I don't much care for First Doctor stories - William Hartnell's Doctor is not the most cuddly of incarnations, very brittle, and his companions wooden (of course they had no idea of their legacy) This started fairly wearisomely, but in the end I felt it was a good tale raising questions about trust and whether it is better to trust and be disappointed or to be always suspicious and yet still lose something along the way.
January 14, 2012
If you aren't already a fan of Doctor Who, then go watch a couple of seasons of the Tenth Doctor, David Tennant. This is a book featuring William Hartnell, the first doctor.
Hardcore Whovians will enjoy this one. William Hartnell does an amazing job as the doctor.
Hardcore Whovians will enjoy this one. William Hartnell does an amazing job as the doctor.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews