Hidden Danger (The Sensorites Episode 3)

The one where the Doctor and Susan have their first argument...

So, Doctor Who is back after its enforced two-week break to accommodate Wimbledon, and we can finally catch up with what the Sensorites plan to do with Susan. But first... some awkward captioning! It's always amused me that the actors had to work pauses into the action to allow the captions to be displayed on screen, usually between the reprise and the resolution. Here we get the Sensorites pulling down the bulkhead door, as they did at the end of The Unwilling Warriors, and a long pause of nothing while "HIDDEN DANGER WRITTEN BY PETER R. NEWMAN" is displayed, before Barbara rushes in. It's all rather silly!

The Doctor is not happy with Susan going off alone with the Sensorites, and so uses their newly-discovered defense of darkness against the creatures. When Ian turns the lights off, the Sensorites tumble into a pit of despair and unconquerable fear which reduces them to gibbering children. They drop their hand rays and in that second, the Sensorites lose all credibility. "They do not carry any weapons yet I am frightened of them..."

Susan and the Doctor have a real stand-off here. Susan wants to go with them on a diplomatic mission, whereas the Doctor thinks she's too young and naive to do so. He doesn't believe she has the ability to represent them. This is a patronising point of view, yes, but let's be honest, it's one based on plenty of evidence. We've seen very little from Susan which suggests she'll act with maturity and wisdom when negotiating with the Sensorites. In the past she's reacted hysterically and pathetically to most unusual situations (and sometimes usual ones), so I can see why the Doctor doesn't trust her to get his TARDIS lock back. It's interesting that, despite her initial defiance, Susan chooses her grandfather over her own strength of mind in the end.

William Hartnell gives the Doctor plenty of bubbling rage in this scene - "Dictated to by petty thieves and my own grandchild!" - but in the following scene, where the Doctor and Susan talk things through, he's more tempered and conciliatory. It's a marvellous demonstration of tone in a performance, and Carole Ann Ford rises to the occasion too: "I won't be pushed aside! I'm not a child any more, grandfather, I'm not!" The Doctor is firm but understanding, and actually rather more annoyed that the Sensorites have caused the two to have their first ever argument.

"Why do you make her unhappy?" asks one of the creatures. "We can read the misery in her mind."
"Yes, and it's a good thing you can't read the anger in mine!" returns the Doctor. Great, juicy stuff.

We get another demonstration of how good an actor Stephen Dartnell was when we see Carol trying to get through to her lover John. The desperation and anguish Dartnell conveys is powerful, and streets ahead of the hollow, melodramatic deliveries from Ilona Rodgers and Lorne Cossette (thank goodness this is his last episode). "I don't like the voices," mutters John. "I want to have silence in my head."

Ten minutes into Hidden Danger is where The Sensorites changes from a mildly intriguing mystery into a pedestrian political thriller (albeit low on the thrills). Maitland and Barbara agree to stay on the spaceship while the others travel down to the Sense-Sphere to broker an agreement with the Elders, which also gives Jacqueline Hill her turn to have a couple of weeks in the sun. Hill looks ready to catch her flight already, while Cossette didn't act for another 18 years (he wasn't that bad!).

Moving the action down to the planet's surface gives the narrative a new lease of life, but Newman doesn't introduce us to this strange alien world with much gusto. We get two minutes of Sensorites arguing about whether to trust the strangers, the First Elder gently asserting his authority and the Second Elder basically relinquishing his protestations at the drop of a hat. But we also get introduced to the City Administrator, who is, without a shadow of a doubt, the best thing about The Sensorites.

What a complete bastard he is. Better evidence of why he's such a git will emerge over the next few episodes, but even here we see what a scheming, two-faced, manipulative, oily little civil servant he is. Peter Glaze communicates so much character through the static face mask, a haughty self-importance integral to making the Administrator convincing as the baddie. The City Administrator is a distrustful xenophobe who sees his duty as defending his people from the strangers, and you can see his point - the last time humans came to the Sense-Sphere, they brought with them greed and disease. So while the City Administrator is something of a straight-up cad, we can at least see why he acts as he does, thanks to Glaze's wonderful performance and Newman's astute writing.

At the end of the episode, after the Administrator's murderous disintegrator gun has been stood down, the Doctor, Ian and Susan sit down for nibbles with the First Elder. He explains that the Elders only drink the peachy crystal spring water found in the yellow mountains ("We are very proud of our aqueduct"), not the common or garden normal water that everybody else drinks, and as soon as Ian collapses after drinking some of the aforementioned "normal water", it's obvious why the Sensorites have been dying from a mysterious, invisible disease. The Elders are not affected because they don't drink the commoners' water.

William Russell strings Ian's decline out cleverly. He drinks the infected water, then we get a bit of info-dumping from the First Elder, interrupted by a splutter and a cough from Ian. The scene continues, with Russell rubbing his burning throat, with another cough, and all this time the scene continues as normal. The verisimilitude in the way it's played out is refreshing. Ian doesn't just collapse instantly after drinking the water, it works its way into him and has a gradual effect on him. Until Ian does actually collapse, you could be forgiven for thinking Russell genuinely has a frog in his throat and is trying not to upset the scene. This was "as live" TV, after all.

A quick parting tip of the hat to director Mervyn Pinfield (pictured right). He was a BBC veteran, a man steeped in tradition and routine. A safe pair of hands who got the job done. But what he lacked in imagination, he made up for with experience. Just look at the way he stages every scene, how every actor is perfectly positioned to serve both the performance and the requirements of the scene. Very rarely is anybody out of shot or in the wrong place, and the whole thing looks well-organised and expertly arranged. The screenshots which accompany this review demonstrate my point well. Pinfield may have been a somewhat dry director, but it works when there are this many performers to accommodate.

First broadcast: July 11th, 1964

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Time to give an official shout-out to Stephen Dartnell, whose performance as the fractured John is too easy to overlook.
The Bad: While Peter R Newman's script has so far been a pretty slow-paced affair, as soon as the action moves to the Sense-Sphere, it grinds to a halt and all gets very talky.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

NEXT TIME: A Race Against Death...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Strangers in Space (episode 1); The Unwilling Warriors (episode 2); A Race Against Death (episode 4); Kidnap (episode 5); A Desperate Venture (episode 6)

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