A Desperate Venture (The Sensorites Episode 6)

The one where Barbara returns and damn well sorts things out...

First things first: I'm loving the tribal beats on Norman Kay's score at the start of the episode. They might have been there all along, but I only really noticed them here. Good stuff, Norm. Sadly, he wouldn't write music for Doctor Who ever again...

Anyway, the plot... That duplicitous little toad the City Administrator (or should I say, Sir) is bullying kidnapped Carol into writing a note to John pretending she has gone back up to the spaceship. He's really not a nice Sensorite, telling her: "Your life means nothing to me!" The amusing thing about all this, of course, is that the note Carol writes is not the same note we see Barbara reading in the very next scene. You'd have thought the props department could've got them identical, especially as they're so sparsely written. Compare the notes below and play your own spot the difference game!

But wait! Babs is back?! Hooray! Jacqueline Hill is looking refreshed and rejuvenated following her fortnight off, and she's wasting no time in sorting this mess out. After a convenient summary of the situation from John, it really feels like Barbara is going to get to the bottom of all this: "I've been away in the ship so perhaps I can see things more clearly, and I think we're being used by one of the Sensorites who wants to gain power." Yes! Thank god she's back!

She's back and she's taking no nonsense. When the First Elder laments about the Doctor and Ian being lost and unarmed in the aqueduct, she ripostes: "I'm afraid that answer isn't good enough!" Barbara's annoyance with the continually interrupting City Administrator is amusing too, with Hill rolling her eyes in frustration at one point. It's so good to have Hill back on board, and it's hard to disagree with the First Elder's admiring summation of her when he says she is "a very capable human being. Gentle, yet with strong determination and courage."

The Doctor and Ian are in the aqueduct tunnels trying to find the source of the deadly nightshade poisoning, but they notice that the weapons and map they've been given are both useless. "Someone's been jiggering around with it!" exclaims the Doctor. "Jigger" is actually a word too, I checked. As well as their useless hand rays and map, they have no food and the only water available is poisoned. "It's a charming outlook!" harrumphs the Doctor. I bloody love William Hartnell.

There's also a lovely, tiny moment between the two when Ian hears the monster's cry in the tunnel, and the Doctor briefly clocks his apprehension and decides to rally his companion: "Courage, my boy! Both hands, come on!" It's the First Doctor's "Brave heart, Tegan" moment. I'll just mention at this point also, that it's never properly explained where the monster's roar comes from. We're to assume it's being created falsely by the humans, but we don't know for sure. Maybe there really are monsters in the tunnels which we never meet?

The aforementioned humans have been hiding in the aqueduct tunnels all these years, poisoning the Sense-Sphere's water supply because they believe they are at war with the Sensorites. They are led by a deranged Earth commander, played by the fantastic John Bailey, who always gives value for money and lifts every production he's in (he's cracking as Edward Waterfield in The Evil of the Daleks too, and is one of the best things about The Horns of Nimon). Bailey gives the commander so much pathos - his mind has clearly snapped, but the resolute way he sticks to established military protocols is sad. Bailey gives the character so much depth in what is a small performance.

Susan and Barbara are working together to try and find the Doctor and Ian in the tunnels. Susan uses her telepathic skills to project directions to Barbara via a Sensorite receptor device. A lot of effort has gone into building a Perspex model of the aqueduct system, which we barely see, and that's a shame as it looks pretty cool. Quite why you'd have a physical scale model of a tunnel system is beyond me, but then the Sensorites are very proud of their aqueduct...

There's a lovely scene between Susan and the First Elder where she remembers her home planet, perhaps the first clear indication that she and the Doctor are aliens rather than humans from the future. Peter R Newman's dialogue is richly visual, and has of course directly influenced the way Gallifrey is depicted in the new series.

"Grandfather and I don't come from Earth. It's ages since we've seen our planet," says Susan wistfully. "It's quite like Earth, but at night the sky is a burnt orange and the leaves on the trees are bright silver." The Elder sees the wanderlust in her mind, but also the need to see her home again. Watching this in the summer of 1964, viewers might be forgiven for thinking that they might get to see the Doctor and Susan visit their homeworld soon enough, but it wasn't to be. The only way Susan will ever get to see Gallifrey again is when she's timescooped into the Death Zone in The Five Doctors. Not the ideal return visit. It's all very sad, particularly when you know how things will pan out...

Everything's wrapped up a little too easily and quickly when the humans are overpowered by the Sensorites (and I'm glad the commander was only stunned, not killed), but it's a massive oversight not to show the City Administrator getting his comeuppance. He's caused so much trouble these last few episodes, he's been the main bad guy, responsible for deaths and sabotage, but the audience isn't given that reward, which is a real shame. Newman stumbled on that one.

In the TARDIS, Susan gives a delightful coda to how she's feeling: "Sometimes I feel I'd like to belong somewhere, not just be a wanderer." The seeds are sown in the Doctor's mind ready for his ultimate self-sacrifice in The Dalek Invasion of Earth, where he forces Susan to find that place where she belongs. It's interesting that this should rear its head months before Susan was due to leave the series, but behind the scenes, Carole Ann Ford must have made her decision not to renew her contract around this time. A Desperate Venture was recorded on July 3rd, and by July 30th, Terry Nation was being asked to incorporate Susan's departure into his next serial. Maybe that fortnight's holiday she took during the recording of The Aztecs gave her the thinking time to take the plunge and leave?

The end of the episode sees the Doctor have a right old strop at Ian, almost totally out of the blue. Ian happens to mention that the humans know where they're going in their spaceship, which the Doctor takes as a personal insult suggesting that he in his TARDIS does not. He plans to put Ian (and innocent Barbara!) off the Ship at the very next destination. This is all very sudden, and somewhat out of character. After everything these four have been through, the Doctor reacting like this just does not feel right. At the start of this serial, in Strangers in Space, the four of them were reminiscing about how much they'd changed and thinking back to their adventures together, and only earlier this episode the Doctor and Ian were comrades in the aqueduct tunnels. It's simply unfair to propel the Doctor back to being his grumpy old self from the earliest stories of Season 1. I don't like how the episode ends at all!

Overall, The Sensorites is far too talky and bland, but its early episodes are actually quite spooky and engaging, and there's some good acting from Stephen Dartnell, Peter Glaze and John Bailey. It's certainly no classic, but there's plenty to enjoy if you have the patience.

First broadcast: August 1st, 1964

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: John Bailey makes so much out of very little. Such a good actor, who takes things very seriously and doesn't send it up.
The Bad: The resolution is all very rushed and convenient, and the fact we don't see the City Administrator being carted off in handcuffs is a big narrative clanger.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ (story average: 6 out of 10)

NEXT TIME: A Land of Fear...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Strangers in Space (episode 1); The Unwilling Warriors (episode 2); Hidden Danger (episode 3); A Race Against Death (episode 4); Kidnap (episode 5)

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/the-sensorites.html

The Sensorites is available on DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Sensorites-William-Hartnell-x/dp/B006H4R9HA