Ep. 33 Hidden Danger

As a countdown to the 50^th anniversary of Doctor Who I and my wife will be watching an episode a day until we are caught up to whatever the Beeb has planned. This is a record of my initial reaction to each day's episode published with minimal editing and crappy synopsis.


"I want to have silence in my head."


   Things don't go well for the Sensorites after trying to return to the Sense Sphere with Susan.  The Doctor pulls rank on Susan and orders her to stay behind.  She's insistent that she understands the Sensorites and is the only one who can go down to the planet and negotiate.
   The Doctor gets angrier then we've seen him and gets Susan to see reason.  The Sensorites take out their weapons only to have Ian cut the lights.  The Doctor theorized that darkness would freak them out and it does.
   The Sensorites reaction to the dark is a bit embarrassing.  With the actors faces fully covered there was no way for them to convey their terror facially.  To make it clear that they are scared shitless in an Ex-Lax factory the actors fumble around, quake a bit and actually say that they are scared.  Amazing actors might have been able to pull this off, but the ones here are just OK.
    This did elicit an "awww" from Ang though.
    After the lofty heights she achieved in the last episode Susan got pulled back down to earth,  She was willing to go against her grandfather's wishes at first, but relented in the end.  The two quarrel over her independence.  It's been done to death, but it is something so universal that it's hard to fault the writer for going there.  The Doctor claims that this is his first argument with Susan.
    This may be setup for Susan's departure, but it's hard to say.  She makes three more trips in the TARDIS after this one.  The Sense Sphere is the last alien world that she'll visit.  She'll see Earth's past, it's "present" and it's future and then it's bye-bye Susan.
    Of course it will take nearly 20 episodes to get there.
    After the Doctor and Susan have settled their differences the negotiations with the Sensorites begins.  Barbara, Maitland and and a Sensorite will stay on board the ship while the others go down to the Sense Sphere to negotiate with the First Elder. 
   I'm pretty sure that Barbara's staying on board is to give her actor a week off.  It does make some sense though; they don't want to leave the ship empty, but the person who knows how to operate it is vulnerable to Sensorite thought transference.  Barbara is a sort of safety net for the humans in this situation.
   At this point I'd like to mention that there have been no exterior shots of the human spaceship or the Sensorite transport craft.  Unless they show a model in the next three episodes, or they have a spaceship appear over the French Revolution (they won't) then the first season of Doctor Who will will have only showed the exterior of one space craft--the TARDIS.
   As you might have guessed, I've been putting some thought into upcoming stories.  I've been taking a look at what's to come for practical purposes.  Figuring out which stories we'll have to watch online, listen to or actually watch on DVD.  I'm a little excited about coming to the end of the first season.  It's a nice little milestone.
   Back to the story.
   During all of this we discover that five years ago a team of five humans came to the Sphere.  Once they found out about the mineral wealth they started to take steps to exploit the planet.  Two of them exploded, along with there space craft, about a mile over the Sphere.  The other three presumably stowed away and caused the explosion when they tried to wrest control of the ship from their former allies.
    A short while after the explosion the Sensorites began to die of a mysterious ailment.
    There are some plot elements that seem a little clunky to me.  I figured out roughly what was the real cause of the disease was when I first watched it.  I do have to give the writer credit for playing fair, he gives us all of the clues that we need to figure it out.  There are some points where it seems heavy handed though.
    I mentioned this in an earlier post, but it bears repeating.  It's good to see an alien (not just humans on another planet, I'm looking at you Marinus!) race that isn't one homogenous interchangeable lump.  It works for the Daleks and a FEW others, but not every damn alien species that you stumble over.
    The Sensorites have the wise and humane living beside the xenophobic and reactionary.  It's not Les Mis, but it's a layer that adds to the story.
    It also takes us back to the problem that I had with the evil/ugly Daleks and good/pretty Thals.  There is good and evil in both Sensorites and humans alike.  Hell, John has become able to tell between good and bad people thanks to his mind being opened or something like that and he confirms that the First Elder is "good." 
    I'd like to give credit to the actor playing John, his facial expressions were great.  He didn't have much dialog, but he was able to convey a lot with just the look on his face.
   The city administrator  is the Sensorite heavy for this story.  Without having seen or heard the humans he is willing to have them killed via some sort of remote disintegrater.  He's also the one who thinks that humans are ugly and suggests that we might be on an intellectual scale with the animals of the desert.
    Just before the credits roll Ian collapses a victim of the Sensorite disease.
    So far I'm really liking Hartnell in this one.
 

Next up: A Race Against Death