The Sensorites

"We must contain our emotions."

Writer: Nigel Robinson
Format: Novel
Released: July 1987
Series: Target 118

Featuring: First Doctor, Susan, Ian, Barbara

Synopsis

The TARDIS materialises on board a dark and silent spaceship. As the Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara penetrate the craft's eerie gloom they come across what appear to be the bodies of two dead astronauts.

But the astronauts are far from dead, and are living in mortal fear of the Sensorites, a race of telepathic creatures from the Sense-Sphere.

When the lock of the TARDIS is stolen the Doctor is forced into an uneasy alliance with the aliens. And when arrives on the Sensorites' planet he discovers that it is not only the humans who have cause to be afraid...

Verdict

The Sensorites was a very good novelisation of the televised story of the same name. This is an adventure I know really well from several stop-start marathon views back in my younger years, but it's one I haven't seen for around six years so the novelisation brought back a lot of memories and I really liked when I remembered what was going to happen before reading it. I think it might actually be a slightly better story in prose and reading in this format made me realise just how little of the action actually takes place on the Sense-Sphere. It's quite incredible really that more than half of the story takes place on the spaceship! That's a very contained setting for what is a very long period of time without much of an alien threat. We don't even get to see the Sensorites take the TARDIS lock as in the televised format of the story which was an interesting deviation and I liked the Doctor and Susan's differing reactions to that having occurred. It's quite a mad concept really and you can tell that this would just have no place in the modern era. I like that though as it shows how experimental things could be in these very early days of the first season with very little being off the table. Carol was a lovely character and it was really nice that she had a large role for pretty much the entire story. Her relationship with John and how he was eventually cured was a terrific aspect of the book. One humorous thing that was so much more obvious than in the televised story was the lack of Barbara for about a third of the content. I'm sure it was something like a holiday or illness for Jacqueline Hill during the filming of what I think would be parts four and five, but then she just reemerges out of nowhere towards the end as if she's always been there! That was quite funny. The First Elder was a somewhat frustrating character with his inability to believe that any Sensorite could do wrong. That was good to play on and I loved the lightbulb moment that went off in the Administrator's head when Carol joked how she wouldn't even notice if any of their sashes of office changed. That set the evil Sensorite's plan into motion and he was very clever about. The way he ended up manipulating the Doctor and his companions into promoting him to Second Elder following the murder he'd committed. The political nature of Sensorite society was very intriguing and quite different to any that has been seen in Doctor Who before, and I thought it was great how Susan remarked that Barbara would not have approved if she wasn't left as a hostage in the ship. I do think this book could have deviated further from the televised story with regards to the fate of the Administrator. I think it's a little weak that amending a map in his handwriting has him banished. There could have been some further elaboration there or we could have read the moment where he was found out and how he reacted. That was my only qualm really. I really enjoyed the story and it was paced very well. The use of two chapters per TV part worked very well and I liked that the book finished within itself, rather than leading into The Reign of Terror as the televised format would have. Overall, a lovely little read.

Rating: 8/10