The Sensorites (ep 3-6)

Susan is being more rebellious and wants to not be treated like a child. I feel really sorry for the people in the Sensorite costumes. Also, are the Mon Calamari inspired by these aliens? I’m also noticing that there is trend in the serials so far to have funky doors to differentiate one culture from another — no doors are normal door-shaped openings so far: the Daleks had weird triangle-shaped doors that recede into the wall, there’ve been circular doors that recede, and the Sensorites have strange semi-circular doors that swing out.

The Doctor is surprised that Susan can read the Sensorites’ minds. And the serial quickly becomes a story about the internal politics of the society being visited… I suppose throughout the series we’ll see quite a bit of this “palace intrigue” genre.

Susan gets to reminisce and describe Gallifrey. Like Earth, burnt orange sky at night; silver leaves on trees. I wonder how this compares to future descriptions of the planet. It appears that Susan also wants to settle down somewhere — she will, of course, in the next season.

 

The Sensorites, episode 2

Continued watching The Sensorites, getting through Episode 2 despite YouTube trouble. Sensorites are actually shown this time. Susan speaks about her past travel, and proposes a method for fighting the Sensorites — having multiple people think the same thing at the same time, in order to have an effect on the Sensorites. Interestingly, the Tenth Doctor would have Martha use a similar method to give energy to the Doctor to fight the Master.

When the Sensorites decide to communicate with the human crew, they choose to communicate with Susan.  It is interesting that they choose a Time Lord for the communication — of course, the Time Lords have the ability to read minds of some sorts.  Is this just an accidental connection, or is this actually predictive exposition of this ability before it enters the canon?

Interesting to see where the serial is going, though, as Susan surrenders herself in order to save the rest of the crew.

 

The Sensorites

The quality is pretty low, but I’ve started on The Sensorites (serial #7).  The impenetrability of the TARDIS gets tested right in the very beginning, as the Sensorites steal the lock to the front door.  Interestingly this is a refreshingly science-fictiony serial, which comes on the heels of The Aztecs and other historical fiction interspersed with the sci-fi shows, setting the pattern for future seasons.  I’ve only watched the first episode of The Sensorites so far, so this isn’t really a full review just yet.

 

The Keys of Marinus

YouTube to the rescue: the entire serial #5 — The Keys of Marinus — is online, in 18 parts.  I had a reasonably enjoyable though longish evening of watching the entire serial, all six episodes.  The plot involves the doctor and his companions arriving on the planet Marinus (a land with acid lakes and sand converted into glass), and being sent on a quest to recover the five microchips — keys — for some machine that will bring justice and peace to the planet.  The story really has little to do with hard science fiction, but at least it’s not like the purely historical approach of The Aztecs serial that follows.  The characters didn’t change much, and exhibited the same traits as before: Ian the Brave, Susan the Frightened, Barbara the Investigative.  Notably, Ian was condemned to death at one point in the serial, and didn’t really do much on his own to get out of the predicament: perhaps that’s fine, he’ll have a chance to show off later, but he’s definitely one to get into trouble without a good plan, lately.  The Doctor was a bit Sherlock Holmesy here, but wasn’t really the star of the serial as much as the companions.

Also I continued filling out the spreadsheet, getting some of the basics filled out through season 4.