Written by Tom
The Doctor and Ian go into the Aqueducts and find a platoon of human soldiers. These are the survivors of a previous crash who’ve hidden themselves away from the Sensorites and started poisoning the water. While bringing the humans into the open and promising to take them off the Sense-Sphere, Team TARDIS also get the evidence they need to prove that the Evil Sensorite was, indeed, evil. Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor decides to throw Ian out for literally no reason.
Even in its final episode, the Sensorites serial is adding new elements to its fascinating worldview. Previously, we’ve talked about how the serial refutes the idea that something being alien naturally means that it’s bad, hence why the Sensorites who were attacking the human characters in episode one have turned out to be a multifaceted collection of people worth following for four episodes. One of the few issues with this setup though has been that all the human(oid) characters in this serial have been good guys while the Sensorites have been split between good and evil. Statistically, the humans have still been presented as more good than the Sensorites. Well here we have the final refutation of this – in the Sensorite caves are a collection of asshole humans who’ve been poisoning the Sensorites’ water supplies, apparently unable to see any good in the Sensorites in the exact same way that the bad Sensorites can’t see any good in humans. The fact that there’s three bad humans (comprised of a leader and his two lackeys) even directly mirrors the three bad Sensorites (comprised a leader and his two lackeys). We’ve reached a point of full equilibrium, each group as good and bad as the other.
Despite this, there’s still something off-feeling about the way this plays out on-screen. Upon being found out, the bad humans are treated with utter contempt by everyone they meet. The serial has been pretty staunch that you don’t judge people based on how their actions initially appear and instead try to emphasise with people though. Indeed, the bad humans are actually quite understandable – trapped in a land they don’t understand, they’ve hidden themselves away and lash out at others who they feel threatened by. Their attacks on the Sensorites have been more distant than the bad Sensorite’s attacks on the humans too, a much different tact from the bad Sensorite’s more visceral approach of kidnapping, threats and subterfuge.
But here the serial’s morality actually trumps mine. The soldiers might have been more passive in their attacks but those attacks have killed hundreds of people. (Compare to the bad Sensorites who’ve only managed to kill one of their own species.) In terms of pure agony and suffering caused, the soldiers are indeed the most atrocious characters in the serial. The distance at which they’ve kept their victims only really makes their actions worse.
It’s at this point that we need to remember how much the human soldiers are designed to reflect members of the British Army. The chief soldier speaks in a posh British accent common to British commanders; they use Army terminology such as base camps; and they have a hierarchical system that matches that of the British army. These are literally World War II soldiers in space. And they are treated in absolute contempt for allowing their fear of the Other to justify committing war crimes.
Here we get the converse of the serial’s “something that looks alien doesn’t automatically make it bad” message – just because something looks like us, that doesn’t automatically make it good. The British have committed as many atrocities and deserve as much judgement as anyone else; just because something’s been drenched in the iconography of post-World War patriotism doesn’t make it something worth celebrating. This is a staggering message to get on Prime Time BBC1 in 1964. Hell, it’d be a staggering thing to say nowadays. It’s an even more fascinating thing to say in the context of Doctor Who, a serial that has coated plenty of things in post-World War iconography.
The result is a significant raising of the bar for Doctor Who as a programme. Utilising the show’s meta leanings, the Sensorites serial has made us aware of the problematic ways in which we relate to people and asks us to look behind ideologically charged iconographies, presenting us with an episode that only makes sense if we’re willing to stare at ourselves and see our behaviours be challenged. The Sensorites really encapsulates Doctor Who‘s idea of television as a black mirror: a screen in which we see ourselves reflected in characters from beyond our world. It is, by far, the best and most interesting set of episodes that Doctor Who‘s managed to date.
But while the Sensorites is polishing some of Doctor Who‘s oldest standards into a shiny new form, it also seems to be gesturing to the future. Let’s assume, for example, that Susan’s days are now numbered. A lot of the resolution for this episode is built around Susan guiding Barbara towards the Doctor and Ian when the later get trapped in the aqueduct, stepping up to take a heroic role once her grandfather disappears. This is in direct contrast to three episodes ago where she got in an argument with the Doctor after trying to help everyone and immediately deflected to his supposed superiority, having attempted to take a heroic role and failed. Back in the TARDIS (this being the Doctor’s ship), she complains about how her psychic powers will now fade, at which point the Doctor starts hugging her, once again treating her as a subordinate child. When in the Doctor’s orbit, Susan is powerless minor; the further from him she gets, the stronger a character she becomes. Put this all together and it appears that the Doctor’s influence in Susan’s life is actively restricting her, stopping her from being the hero she could be.
This is really just a thematic statement of something we’ve been noting for ages now – Susan just doesn’t fit Doctor Who as it stands. The writing team is consistently unable to give her actual material, she’s played by the worst actor of the main cast, and now the show itself is implying that she’d be better of as far away from the other characters as possible. Things aren’t looking good for her long-term viability.
Then again, things aren’t looking good for next week, what with this episode’s cliffhanger being the Doctor suddenly reverting back to the type of grouchy and violent characterisation we haven’t seen in over five months now. Given how unpleasant the show was when everyone was always at each other’s throats, the idea of suddenly reverting back to this setup isn’t a great one. Is the future going to continue apace or are we about to head straight back into the Stone Age?
FNORD 