Doctor Who (TV Series) Strangers in Space (1964) User Reviews

Part 1 is so good, so much intrigue.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 8/10 · 31 January 2019]

The Sensorites, regarded by so many as one of the poorest episodes from Hartnell's era, and in deed Classic Who in general.

However I will be looking at the episodes individually. The first episode 'Strangers in Space,' I would have to argue is really rather good. It's loaded with mystery and intrigue. You come away from watching it with a host of questions. Just who are The Sensorites, what's their purpose, and just what power do they have over the crew?

It's nicely directed, the sets look nice, and it features some lovely performances, I particularly liked the crew of three. John is suitably creepy, in typical sixties style.

Great start, 8/10

Humans Bad, Aliens Good?

[JamesHitchcock · 7/10 · 21 December 2022]

The Sensorites were the second alien race to be introduced in "Doctor Who" after the Daleks. The Daleks, however, have gone on to become a frequent fixture throughout the history of the programme and probably the Doctor's most familiar adversaries, whereas this was the Sensorites' one and only appearance. (The Ood, who appear in some adventures in the post-2005 revival of the series, are said to be a related species). Unlike the Daleks, and some other races featured in the programme such as the Cybermen, Ice Warriors and Sontarans, the Sensorites are not an aggressive warrior race. (We learn that they do have a warrior caste, but never see anything of their fighting capabilities). They are a rather timid, nervous people with a particular fear of darkness and loud noises. Like humans they are aware of the difference between good and evil and of the responsibility to choose between them. (This is a moral concept incomprehensible to a Dalek who, faced with a choice between good and evil, would invariably choose the evil option).

The First Doctor, his granddaughter Susan and their companions Ian and Barbara visit the Sense-Sphere, the home planet of the Sensorites. They find that they are treated with suspicion by the Sensorites, whose previous interactions with humans have led them to be wary of them. (The Sense-Sphere is rich in the valuable mineral molybdenum, and the Sensorites believe that humans are only interested in exploiting this source of wealth). The planet is being afflicted by a mysterious disease, and the Doctor hopes that he can win the trust of the Sensorites by finding a cure. Some of the Sensorites, including the planet's ruler the First Elder, are won over, but another faction within their political leadership remains distrustful, and the Doctor and his companions find themselves in danger.

This serial marks something of a softening in the First Doctor's character. In some of the episodes during the programme's first season he could come across as a pompous, grumpy old curmudgeon, cowardly and selfish with an inflated opinion of himself and few moral principles. In "The Keys of Marinus" he actually manages to disappear from the middle two episodes of the serial without affecting it too much; an in-series explanation is given, but the real reason is that William Hartnell had gone on holiday. In "The Sensorites", however, although the Doctor is occasionally grumpy and frequently pompous, he also shows himself capable of both courage and selflessness, as well as the diplomatic skills to deal with the Sensorites. Susan reveals hat she has a gift for telepathy, which she puts to good use in these diplomatic negotiations. (Susan also reveals that her home planet, not yet named Gallifrey, is like Earth but with an orange sky and silver leaves on the trees. These details have not always been followed in subsequent serials).

The second "Doctor Who" serial, "The Daleks", was essentially a justification of the "just war" doctrine, with Ian persuading the previously pacifist Thals to stand up to the Dalek enemy. "The Sensorites", by contrast, takes a more pacific stance, advocating trust, mutual understanding and the peaceful resolution of differences. Its main drawback, however, is one which it shares with "The Daleks". That serial took seven episodes to tell a story which could have been told as easily in four or five; similarly "The Sensorites" seems very slow-paced at times, taking six episodes where four would probably have been enough. It probably didn't help that two different directors were used, with Mervyn Pinfield being responsible for the first four episodes and Frank Cox for the last two. With that one reservation, however, a found this an interesting and thought-provoking serial, a change from the normal "humans good, aliens bad" school of science fiction. 7/10.

A goof. The aqueduct which supplies water to the Sensorites' city plays an important part in the story; the mysterious disease is caused by poison in the water supply. At one point an actor playing a Sensorite refers to "the viaduct" when he means "the aqueduct"; either the director did not notice or there was insufficient time for a reshoot. There are a number of other verbal fluffs which go uncorrected, but this is the most noticeable one.

The Sensorites: Part 1 - Slightly below average adventure with some good, interesting aspects

[A_Kind_Of_CineMagic · 7/10 · 5 July 2014]

This story has some good ideas and has its moments but overall it has too many flaws and less interesting parts to be anywhere near top quality classic Who.

The Doctor, Ian and Barbara are up to their usual well written standard and the story has very interesting aspects. The alien race The Sensorites (relatives of the Ood from 21st Century series of 'Doctor Who') are interesting as they at first seem very menacing but turn out to only have a few members of real menace with the majority being gentle and friendly. They are pretty well realised aliens, somewhat more three dimensional than your usual TV or movie alien race.

The adventure involves tension at times, trust issues and devious schemes and maintains some interest overall though it sometimes loses momentum and drags. It is good in some ways but has flaws in execution at times. Not the best adventure by classic Who standards but a solid effort within the limitations.

My Ratings: Episode 1 - 6.5/10, Episode 2 - 7/10, Episode 3 - 7.5/10, Episodes 4, 5 & 6 - 7/10.

Overall - 7/10.

The Sensorites

[ametaphysicalshark · 13 July 2008]

"The Sensorites" gets off to a decent start with "Strangers in Space", a spooky and intriguing episode that sets up a story that, on paper at least, is inventive and which has some real potential. Sadly, the rest of the story never rises above mediocrity, with episodes 3, 4, and 5 sadly being fairly bad, if not outright terrible. I do wish "The Sensorites" was a bad story because at least then it wouldn't be so incredibly boring.

The story itself has potential and is an ambitious bunch of science fiction ideas, perhaps the most ambitious and interesting science fiction Doctor Who had created in its first season. Sadly, the script for this story is all over the place, dragging hopelessly across six episodes that feel much, much longer than they actually are. It's just not a good contribution to Doctor Who from Peter R. Newman. Bad dialogue, dragging, hopelessly boring plot... The acting is fairly good here, and I for one thought the Sensorites were nicely-realized. I must mention that the Target novelization works quite well, taking advantage of the potential present here.

I think that above all is is a complete lack of subtlety that kills "The Sensorites" as a television story. The dialogue is laughable, one of the few times "Doctor Who" really did talk down to its audience, explicitly explaining to us repeatedly the themes and ideas in this story. About as subtle as a sledgehammer Nothing else worth discussing here.

Episode 1: 7/10, Episode 2: 5/10, Episode 3: 4/10, Episode 4: 4/10, Episode 5: 4/10, Episode 6: 5/10.

Average: 4.83/10

'The Sensorites': an early First Doctor serial* - not amongst the Timelord's best outings but still entertaining

[jamesrupert2014 · 6/10 · 7 February 2024]

The TARDIS materialises in an Earth starship trapped in orbit around the planet Sense-Sphere by the Sensorites, aliens with telepathic powers who blame the crew of a previous Earth-ship for a deadly plague. Two of the ship's personal, the Captain (Lorne Cossett) and Carol (Ilona Rodgers) are under the partial/occasional control of the aliens and a third, John, appears to have been driven mad by the 'voices in his head'. The Doctor attempts to convince the highly suspicious Sensorites that he and his companions (Ian, Barbara, and Susan) mean them no harm (and may be able to stop the plague) but becomes embedded in a power struggle involving an unethical and paranoid 'City Administrator' who sees the governing Elders' growing acceptance of the strangers as evidence of their weakness and as a threat to the survival of the Sensorite race. The six-part serial is a bit stretched, notably the amount of time devoted to the renegade Administrator's treasonous machinations but, as vintage Doctor Who stories go, the plot is moderately interesting and the aliens and sets well done (for the budget and era). As usual, BBC parsimony is evident in the frequent muffing of lines that would have led to retakes in a more prosperous production. The premise that all Sensorites look the same, which allows convenient impersonations, is a bit of a stretch. Perhaps to Sensorite eyes that is the case but, since it is apparent to us viewers that the 'aliens' vary in size and build (one has a noticeable pot belly), the Gallifreyan and human characters should have been able to spot a counterfeit. Also, the Sensorites all have recognisably different voices - the serial would have been more clever if some effort had been made to match body types and to have all of the Sensorites speak through a single voice-over. All-in-all, not great but fans of Hartnell's interpretation of the venerable Timelord and of the first generation of companions should enjoy this reasonably imaginative adventure. Interesting to hear Susan reminisce about the burnt-orange skies and silver-leaved trees of her home world (presumably Gallifrey). *Score and comments pertain to all six parts.

Strangers in Space

[guswhovian · 9/10 · 25 May 2020]

The TARDIS arrives on a spaceship whose occupants are under threat from the mysterious Sensorites, who soon still the lock of the TARDIS.

"Strangers in Space" is an excellent opener. After the terrible camera work of The Aztecs, it's refreshing to see the camera move smoothly. There's a really nice scene of the camera moving from the TARDIS control room to the interior of the spaceship.

Mervyn Pinfield makes a nice sense of uneasiness throughout the episode, enhanced by Norman Kay's great incidental music. The four regulars are on top form, and there's a nice scene at the beginning where they recall their past adventures.

The guest actors are good, especially Stephen Dartnell. Raymond Cusick's set design is fantastic.

Perhaps The Most Boring Story Ever Seen In The Show

[Theo Robertson · 4/10 · 9 August 2013]

The Tardis arrives on stranded spaceship and the Tardis occupants explore the ship to find the two crew members unconscious . Reviving them they find out the crew are Captain Maitland and Carol Richmond are on an expedition from Earth to the Sense-Sphere home to a telepathic race called the Sensorites who hold the ship in orbit and refuse to let the crew leave . Maitland and Richmond find they can't visit the Sense-sphere but it turns out the Sensorites are about to visit them

This is a frustrating mixture of good and bad . It's one of those stories that when fan polls are taken on the classic series it receives very few positive or negative votes and it's easy to understand why . After a couple of very good , brooding , atmospheric episodes where mystery and suspense is built up then the story crawls along at a snails pace . It's rarely embarrassing but never reaches the brilliance and imagination that say the Dalek story from earlier in the season achieved . Say what you like about NuWho but one thing the modern show never suffers from is a near terminal plodding pace of story telling . Some die hards of the classic show might lament the extinction of longer stories but as The Sensorites proves a long story doesn't equate with a being good one

This is a pity because there are some good aspects to the story . The eponymous Sensorites would no doubt have an impact on young children watching this in 1964 and it's nice to know that the production team of the day tried to invent an alien race that is truly alien but the rather drab plotting means that once you've seen the story it won't hold up to repeat viewing . In fact being a fan who read the 1987 Novelisation by Nigel Robinson I knew where the story was heading and it was something of a hard slog to watch unfold on screen

A Sense of Brilliance & Boredom

[timdalton007 · 24 February 2020]

The first season of any TV show has its highs and lows. If you've watched the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, then you very likely know that fact painfully well. Doctor Who's opening season, running from late 1963 into the late summer of 1964, bucked that trend, by and large. Even with the issues that An Unearthly Child and Marco Polo have, they are still solid tales told in those serials. Which brings us to The Sensorites, I suppose.

It unquestionably starts off well. The opening episode, Strangers In Space, has some fine building-up of tension as the Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Susan explore the spaceship they've landed within. In the space of twenty-five minutes or so, they do some exploring, meet the craft's human crew, and have a mystery laid out before them. This episode, minus the daft moment of a Sensorite stealing the lock from the TARDIS door, is one of the archetypal pieces of writing for the series. It takes what Terry Nation did with the opening installment of The Daleks and turns it up to eleven. It's no accident that you can find echoes of it in the best episode of The Space Museum or the opening installment of The Ark In Space. It is genuinely a great piece of Doctor Who writing, encapsulating so much of the show in one place.

All of which makes the five episodes that follow all the more frustrating to watch. There's a particular school of thought that insists Doctor Who is a children's show and, if you watch The Sensorities, that would be an easy mistake to make. Peter R. Newman might have written one of the archetypal Doctor Who episodes with his others are simplistic to the point of being laughable. The actions of all the characters, from the Sensorites to the humans both on the spaceship and, as we learn later, on the planet below make little logical sense. The dialogue, too, is pretty atrocious, a good example being a sequence in which one Sensorite asks another where human hearts are. The Writer's Room podcast took the story apart in a 2014 episode, and I can only point readers there to give it a listen as Erik and Kyle do a far better job than I can here.

Worse, The Sensorites commits one sin that isn't easily forgiven: it's dull. Even by the standards of the time, it's a slow-moving tale. Part of that is down to Newman's writing and the six-episode structure he has to play within. A good chunk of it, though, is down to the direction of Mervyn Pinfield and Frank Cox, who take the script and turn it into a static, even lethargic, piece of work. What might the story have been like in the hands of directors such as Christopher Barry or Richard Martin, one wonders?

Which isn't to write off the entire story, as The Sensorites does have moments of interest. Beyond that opening episode, it does give Carole Ann Ford her most interesting material as Susan when the Senstorites tap into her latent psychic abilities in the story's middle. It is Susan, and indeed Ford, at their most interesting since the series began or if you want to be more accurate, the unaired version of An Unearthly Child. Raymond Cusick hands in some more interesting design work as well, adding visual interest where the direction is lacking. All of which helps to salvage the story to a degree.

But only to a degree. Yes, there's a spectacular opening episode. Yes, there's some interesting stuff for Susan and some interesting design work. Yet there are also five episodes paced at the speed of molasses drying with little effort made to give them any sort of flair. The end result is the weakest story of the opening season by some margin, unfortunately.

One of those 'zzzzzz' stories

[wetmars · 4/10 · 26 August 2020]

The Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan arrive in the TARDIS on board a spaceship. Their initial concern is for the ship's human crew, who are suffering from telepathic interference from the Sensorites, but Susan communicates with the Sensorites and finds the aliens fear an attack by the humans and are just defending themselves. Travelling to the Sense Sphere (the Sensorites' planet) the Doctor seeks to cure an illness to which the Sensorites and Ian have succumbed but finds it has been caused by deliberate poisoning. The political manoeuvring of the Sensorite City Administrator poses another threat to the TARDIS crew as he seeks to discredit and implicate them.

Yeah, this story is a mixture between good and bad. It's just that the story is so boring, felt nothing special about this.

What also really surprised me about this episode is that Russel T. Davies has acknowledged the Sensorites as an influence on the basic concept of the Ood. Computer readouts revealed that the Ood Sphere and Sense Sphere are part of the same star system, how cool is that?

4/10