"Isn't it a better thing to travel hopefully than to arrive."
In one short sentence Susan sums up Doctor Who.
This story is Susan's turn in the spotlight and it's about time. She was the focal point of the first episode, but since then she hasn't been that well used. She's had a few good moments now and then; her run through the petrified forest on Skaro and The Edge of Destruction come to mind, but she's also been the least consistently written regular cast member. There are times that I think that Terry Nation thought that she was a ten-year-old to hear the crap he had her say.
I also suspect that someone on the Who staff was a closet foot fetishist with a fixation on Carol Anne Ford. Susan's shoes have been plot elements at least a couple times up to this point in the series and will be in and least one more story before she leaves. On Skaro it's mud from Susan's shoes that is used to blind the Dalek guard, on Marinus her shoe falls into a tidal pool revealing that the "water" is acid and in her final story her shoes actually factor into her goodbye. I'm tempted to say that it's Terry Nation who has the issue since he wrote those three stories, but I seem to recall something going on with Susan's slipper in Marco Polo.
Susan is great in this one.
We get to see more of what she's capable of, what her travels in the TARDIS before 1963 have prepared her for. The Sensorites are trying to mind-fuck John into scaring Susan and Barbara. John resists, but Susan isn't convinced that he can hold out for long. She tells Barbara about her experience on Esto a world of telepathic, screaming, plants (maybe this explains why Susan freaked out on Marinus; the Screaming Jungle was like a bad acid flashback to her.) Susan directs Barbara in how to project their thoughts jointly in order to cut John off from Sensorite influence.
They psychically shout out "we defy you" to the Sensorites and the pair onboard the ship immediately collapse at the strength of Susan's onslaught.
Later in the episode Ian is examining a spectrograph. Susan asks what he's doing. Ian, ever the science teacher, begins to not only tell her that it's a spectrograph, but explain what it is. Ang and I looked at each other. Susan's highly advanced intellect hasn't really been demonstrated since An Unearthly Child. The Doctor spent about five hours explaining a spring to her once for God's sake.
Susan just looked up at Ian and said "oh." There was almost a hint of "isn't that cute" in her delivery which is EXACTLY the way Susan should be about that sort of thing.
The Sensorites then use Susan as their contact to set up a face-to-face meeting with the humans.
The Sensorites aren't that impressive. They have disc feet, are bald and have white wispy beards that look like fourteen year old's "I'm going to get me some beer" facial hair. They are also sensitive to loud noises, and have trouble dealing with dim light.
I actually like the Sensorites. They aren't the greatest monster in Doctor Who history, but they aren't supposed to be monsters. Unlike the Daleks and the Voord the Sensorites aren't single-minded fiends. We don't see much of it in this episode, but there are a range of personalities throughout the population. It's also nice to run into an alien race that has some advantages as well as some weaknesses.
There are some nice bits of back and forth with them. At one point Ian tries to bluster his way through something only to have the Sensorite point out that all he did was lock a door that they then unlocked.
The Doctor asks for the TARDIS lock back only to be told that he isn't in good negotiating position. The Doctor's response was pretty much "give it back or I'll make your lives a living hell." This reminds me of some of Stephen Moffat's scripts in the new series.
The Sensorites plan on moving the humans down to the Sense Sphere where they'll be put in a secluded area/ preserve. They've had bad luck dealing with greedy humans before and don't want their planet turned into a strip mine. They don't want to kill the humans so the preserve is their best option.
This goes over like a lead balloon.
The episode ends with Susan "volunteering" to go down to the planet's surface. The others can't get to her before she's out the door.
Next up: Hidden Danger
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