Day 35: Kidnap

One of the lovely things about Doctor Who is its tendency to reuse actors that they got on with at the time. Such is the case (presumably, I'm not familiar with the making of the story), with Stephen Dartnell, who plays John, the terrified spaceman, in this story, but only a couple of weeks ago, played Yartek, leader of the alien Voord. It's nice to see his range, he is instantly believable in both roles and is actually quite powerful as John, a man who has had the mental capacity to stop being afraid turned off, thus he wanders around in a constant state of fear, always untrustworthy, and looking for support, but finding none. If there's one thing to recommend 'The Sensorites' for, it's his performance.

Fear is indeed a prevalent theme in this story, featuring mostly as a fear of outsiders, something that is instantly recognisable, even today, almost 50 years after this was first broadcast, with our fears of migrants coming over here, taking over the country and removing all sense of the way things used to be. And acting out of this sort of fear is seen to be a bad thing, especially when considering the City Administrator of the Sensorite race, who is so untrusting and afraid of the outsiders that he conspires to be rid of them and kills one of the Sensorites who is perhaps more open to them, half by accident, but also it turns into a way to get more power. And all of this is due to fear, death has now occurred and is a possibility to occur at any moment. We have no idea who will survive come the end of the story (indeed after the last adventure, we're not even guaranteed a happy ending), and so we're drawn to watch the programme again. Out of fear, mostly.