Your post about it did not disappoint, @Vaeran. You also got that line from Barbie Girl stuck in my head while I took the trash out this morning, thanks for that lol
It took me three tries to get through The Web Planet without falling asleep. It's almost impossible for me to watch all six episodes in a row without doing so. Watching one at a time really helps, though yeah, it's still boring.
Regarding Susan - I'm just going to lift an entire chunk from El Sandifer's Sensorites entry, as I think it explains pretty well why Susan got next to no characterization, and everyone that followed her, Vicki included, did:
"...The Sensorites is, ultimately, about Susan.
Susan, as you recall, is initially defined by her alienness. Here that is expanded on, with much of the story relying on her previously only hinted at psychic powers. She is, initially, the person with whom the Sensorites communicate. Unsurprisingly, this quickly brings her into conflict with the Doctor.
The main scenes of their arguments are tough to watch, mostly because they make it obvious why Susan is never going to work as a character. The Doctor’s response to Susan’s taking the initiative is to infantilize her, marginalize her, and declare her input to be worthless. Susan responds to this, basically, by completely caving and renouncing her efforts to be independent.
Bafflingly, the Doctor claims that he and Susan have never had an argument. This is clearly untrue – they argue in all of the first three stories. Given that the Doctor is already established as a bit absent-minded and prone to a bit of obliviousness, this statement can be read less as a lie than as a declaration of the Doctor’s absolutism. This can be a positive and a negative trait – and it will get played in both ways as time goes on – but here it seems clearly negative. The Doctor is unable to allow Susan to be an interesting character.
Eventually, Susan’s psychic powers provide a key element of the story’s resolution, as she uses them to help the Doctor, who is isolated in some tunnels. Thus we can see that Susan is capable of functioning on her own. But as soon as she is back in the TARDIS, it’s back to normal – with it being made explicit that her psychic powers will fade. The Doctor makes vague promises to work on the abilities when they return to their homeworld, but it’s obvious that this is not going to happen.
And this is the Problem of Susan. I take the name from Neil Gaiman’s short story of the same name, which is in turn written in response to C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, and the character of Susan within them. Susan is the lone member of her family not to ascend into Narnia at the end, blocked out of heaven because she is sexualized and, in the argument of her siblings and Aslan, no friend of Narnia due to her shallowness. C.S. Lewis, of course, died the day before Doctor Who premiered, and so it is fitting that the show would inherit this problem from his work.
Put simply, the Problem of Susan is the problem of sexual maturity in children’s literature. It is not, I assume, a horrific revelation to you, dear reader, that much of children’s literature is about sexual maturity. Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan are perhaps the most explicit classic examples. (Well, I suppose the most explicit classic example is Alan Moore’s Lost Girls, but let’s not go there.) The character who stares into a fantastic new world is changed by it, and for children, change is maturity. Susan, at sixteen, is torn between teenage sexuality and being the Doctor’s granddaughter. And, crucially, the two are mutually exclusive.
The problem is that they are, in addition to being mutually exclusive, are also interconnected. Because we have some pretty fucked ideas of teenage sexuality. And so whenever Susan is put in the vulnerable granddaughter position she is sexualized because vulnerable women in peril are considered sexy. And whenever she’s put in a position to take charge and do things, she is sexualized because she is made into an adult. Susan, in other words, is caught in a Catch-22.
Not only is this tension unsustainable, but its resolution furthermore has profound impact on the Doctor. The Doctor, in The Sensorites, is still forming. The words “Time Lord” are years away from being spoken. Sight of another Time Lord besides Susan is over a year out. The nature of the Doctor is still heavily obscured. His motivations for traveling appears to be the pure love of the adventure – the TARDIS crew discusses as much at the start of the story. The Doctor, at this point, is a creature of pure action – in most ways indistinguishable from the TARDIS.
And so when Susan, this episode, speaks of her planet, where “the sky is a burnt orange, and the leaves on the trees are bright silver,” she fences in the Doctor. When the First Elder of the Sensorites says that Susan wants to return home but also wants to wander, this has grave implications for the Doctor – because right now, the Doctor, endlessly running, and not yet established as himself, cannot return home. He’s not ready yet, and it will be a long time before he is. (And when he does, the price will be immeasurable.)
But more to the point, Susan is a constraint on the Doctor. As long as the Doctor’s primary goal is the protection of Susan, he is unable to be completely free. Susan drags the Doctor back towards home, and away from endless travel.
Susan, in other words, is unsustainable. It is unsurprising that, in three stories, she will be the first member of the TARDIS crew to go.
The result of this, hopefully, will be that endings like the ending of The Sensorites, in which the Doctor, for no visible reason, flips out at Ian and vows to throw him off the TARDIS, seemingly ignoring episodes of characterization. Because that is the consequence of the Problem of Susan. As long as she is on the TARDIS, the Doctor cannot continue developing as a character."
I know I quote El far too fucking much, but I really do enjoy her work.
You quoted my favorite scene in the Web Planet, though, when that weirdo bug kills itself by shoving its head in a wall, leaving an alien bug corpse next to Ian. That is some weird shit and I am here for it. Other than that though, the episode is pretty much a snoozefest lol.
Regarding Susan - I'm just going to lift an entire chunk from El Sandifer's Sensorites entry, as I think it explains pretty well why Susan got next to no characterization, and everyone that followed her, Vicki included, did:
"...The Sensorites is, ultimately, about Susan.
Susan, as you recall, is initially defined by her alienness. Here that is expanded on, with much of the story relying on her previously only hinted at psychic powers. She is, initially, the person with whom the Sensorites communicate. Unsurprisingly, this quickly brings her into conflict with the Doctor.
The main scenes of their arguments are tough to watch, mostly because they make it obvious why Susan is never going to work as a character. The Doctor’s response to Susan’s taking the initiative is to infantilize her, marginalize her, and declare her input to be worthless. Susan responds to this, basically, by completely caving and renouncing her efforts to be independent.
Bafflingly, the Doctor claims that he and Susan have never had an argument. This is clearly untrue – they argue in all of the first three stories. Given that the Doctor is already established as a bit absent-minded and prone to a bit of obliviousness, this statement can be read less as a lie than as a declaration of the Doctor’s absolutism. This can be a positive and a negative trait – and it will get played in both ways as time goes on – but here it seems clearly negative. The Doctor is unable to allow Susan to be an interesting character.
Eventually, Susan’s psychic powers provide a key element of the story’s resolution, as she uses them to help the Doctor, who is isolated in some tunnels. Thus we can see that Susan is capable of functioning on her own. But as soon as she is back in the TARDIS, it’s back to normal – with it being made explicit that her psychic powers will fade. The Doctor makes vague promises to work on the abilities when they return to their homeworld, but it’s obvious that this is not going to happen.
And this is the Problem of Susan. I take the name from Neil Gaiman’s short story of the same name, which is in turn written in response to C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, and the character of Susan within them. Susan is the lone member of her family not to ascend into Narnia at the end, blocked out of heaven because she is sexualized and, in the argument of her siblings and Aslan, no friend of Narnia due to her shallowness. C.S. Lewis, of course, died the day before Doctor Who premiered, and so it is fitting that the show would inherit this problem from his work.
Put simply, the Problem of Susan is the problem of sexual maturity in children’s literature. It is not, I assume, a horrific revelation to you, dear reader, that much of children’s literature is about sexual maturity. Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan are perhaps the most explicit classic examples. (Well, I suppose the most explicit classic example is Alan Moore’s Lost Girls, but let’s not go there.) The character who stares into a fantastic new world is changed by it, and for children, change is maturity. Susan, at sixteen, is torn between teenage sexuality and being the Doctor’s granddaughter. And, crucially, the two are mutually exclusive.
The problem is that they are, in addition to being mutually exclusive, are also interconnected. Because we have some pretty fucked ideas of teenage sexuality. And so whenever Susan is put in the vulnerable granddaughter position she is sexualized because vulnerable women in peril are considered sexy. And whenever she’s put in a position to take charge and do things, she is sexualized because she is made into an adult. Susan, in other words, is caught in a Catch-22.
Not only is this tension unsustainable, but its resolution furthermore has profound impact on the Doctor. The Doctor, in The Sensorites, is still forming. The words “Time Lord” are years away from being spoken. Sight of another Time Lord besides Susan is over a year out. The nature of the Doctor is still heavily obscured. His motivations for traveling appears to be the pure love of the adventure – the TARDIS crew discusses as much at the start of the story. The Doctor, at this point, is a creature of pure action – in most ways indistinguishable from the TARDIS.
And so when Susan, this episode, speaks of her planet, where “the sky is a burnt orange, and the leaves on the trees are bright silver,” she fences in the Doctor. When the First Elder of the Sensorites says that Susan wants to return home but also wants to wander, this has grave implications for the Doctor – because right now, the Doctor, endlessly running, and not yet established as himself, cannot return home. He’s not ready yet, and it will be a long time before he is. (And when he does, the price will be immeasurable.)
But more to the point, Susan is a constraint on the Doctor. As long as the Doctor’s primary goal is the protection of Susan, he is unable to be completely free. Susan drags the Doctor back towards home, and away from endless travel.
Susan, in other words, is unsustainable. It is unsurprising that, in three stories, she will be the first member of the TARDIS crew to go.
The result of this, hopefully, will be that endings like the ending of The Sensorites, in which the Doctor, for no visible reason, flips out at Ian and vows to throw him off the TARDIS, seemingly ignoring episodes of characterization. Because that is the consequence of the Problem of Susan. As long as she is on the TARDIS, the Doctor cannot continue developing as a character."
I know I quote El far too fucking much, but I really do enjoy her work.
You quoted my favorite scene in the Web Planet, though, when that weirdo bug kills itself by shoving its head in a wall, leaving an alien bug corpse next to Ian. That is some weird shit and I am here for it. Other than that though, the episode is pretty much a snoozefest lol.
Thanks again. I'll pepper in my own highlights of things you didn't mention: