The Sensorites

Summary

    The spectre of warfare fought through the mind looms up before the Doctor and his friends as they swap the bright illumination of the TARDIS for the dark, claustrophobic interior of an orbiting space rocket.
    At first the companions think they have stumbled across a dead ship; the crew lies slumped over the flight deck controls, their heartbeats non-existent. Remarkably, though, the condition of the pilots – a man, Maitland, and a woman, Carol – proves only temporary. With a little help from the time-travellers they wake to full consciousness, explaining their former state as a catatonic trance induced by the inhabitants of the world they are orbiting, the Sensorites.
    The Sensorites, it transpires, are a race of telepaths adept in the control of the mind. Ever since his ship approached this world – the Sense-Sphere – Maitland's crew have been subjected to telepathic assault, a process which has sent the vessel's mineralogist quite mad.
    The Doctor's party are drawn unwillingly into this conflict on discovering someone, or something, has removed the lock of the TARDIS – effectively stranding them aboard the rocket. Attempts to pilot the craft prove useless. The Sensorites' combined power of illusion is great enough to swamp even the Doctor's deductive abilities.
    A sensitive herself, Susan is first to feel the bids by the Sensorites to make telepathic contact. They want a meeting, they intimate, and are boarding for that purpose now.
    Confrontation with the two envoys is very eye-opening. Despite their gift as mental giants, the Sensorites are physically quite innocuous – small, corpulent and soft-spoken, they have extreme aversions to loud noise and darkness. These weaknesses the Doctor ruthlessly exploits in a bid to regain his lock. But the two 'warriors' explain that ever since the first Earth party came to the Sense-Sphere years ago, repaying kindness with treachery in a bid to seize control of the planet's rich stocks of the metal molybdenum, all humans are now made permanent prisoners. The Sensorites are pacifists and so cannot kill.
    The Doctor, Ian, Susan and Carol travel down to the Sense-Sphere capital, with John, whom the Sensorites have offered to cure, to meet the rulers and to try and negotiate a settlement of their differences.
    Though greeted with courtesy and politeness by the First and Second Elders, the intrusion of more humans onto the Sense- Sphere is covertly opposed by the City Administrator.
    Ian falls victim to a disease which, for a long time, has been killing the Sensorites and which the Doctor traces to the city's water supply. Venturing into the city's underground reservoirs the Doctor finds clumps of Deadly Nightshade growing, and also a party of human survivors from the first expedition.
    Led by a madman, the humans have been poisoning the water supply. With help from Susan and a recovered Ian the renegades are caught. With the wily Administrator also arrested for treason the First Elder agrees to release both the TARDIS and Maitland's ship – on condition no further human expeditions will journey to the Sense-Sphere...

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Original series broadcast on the BBC
Format © 1963
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