The Chase The Dalek Master Plan The Sorceror's Apprentice |
BBC The Keys of Marinus |
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| Episodes | 6 |  |
| Story No# | 5 | |
| Production Code | E | |
| Season | 1 | |
| Dates | 4/11/64 - 5/16/64 |
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With William Hartnell, William Russell,
Jacqueline Hill, Carole Ann Ford. Written by Terry Nation. Script-edited by David Whitaker. Directed by John Gorrie. Associate Producer: Mervyn Pinfield. Produced by Verity Lambert. |
| Synopsis: A ruler of a lost people sends the Doctor, Barbara, Ian, and Susan across the varied and dangerous world of Marinus, in search of five micro-keys that could either free its people or enslave them. |
Around Planet Marinus In Six Episodes by Matthew Kresal 5/4/20
When one sees the name of writer Terry Nation on a Doctor Who story, one might assume Daleks are involved. More so, perhaps, if the designer Raymond Cusick is included in the same serial's credits. But, surprise, no Daleks feature in The Keys of Marinus, Nation's second outing for Who and something of a replacement when another story fell through. And what a story it turned out to be.
The Keys of Marinus is the first quest narrative in the show's history. By that, I mean that the TARDIS crew finds themselves given a mission to perform rather than getting themselves into trouble like, say, the earlier Dalek tale. In this case, to track down the five keys that control a powerful device known as the Conscience of Marinus. To do so, they must travel to different locations around the planet. They'll go from cities to jungles and icy mountains to do so and get back to their travels.
The episodic nature of Nation's scripts is part of what makes this story so compelling. Indeed, one might see a tribute to Jules Verne's Around The World In 80 Days and the 1956 film version with its all-star cast. Both feature planet-hopping narratives, varieties in locations, our protagonists becoming separated, and characters picked up along the way who join our main characters in their journey around the world. Ian's murder accusation and the delay in their quest late in the story share a point of similarity with Verne's Phileas Fogg, who finds himself arrested as an alleged bank robber late in Around's narrative. Even the appearance of George Coulouris as Arbitan (which Clayton Hickman calls Doctor Who's brush with Citizen Kane on the audio commentary) imitates the cameos of the later film version. If Doctor Who, in its earliest years, is paying tribute to the serial fiction that came before it, than Marinus sees Nation paying tribute to Verne's tale.
Nor is Verne the only source on display. One too might see echoes of The Day of the Triffids in the jungle episode with plants moving on their own, killing and destroying. As mentioned above, the latter parts of the serial feature a mini-courtroom drama, with the Doctor playing the role of Perry Mason to save Ian from a system that assumes his guilt rather than innocence. If variety is the spice of life, then this story is very rich indeed!
It's also full of ambition that is a hallmark of this era. There's a new set of locations practically every episode, not to mention changes in casts and costumes. The second episode, set in a city that isn't quite what it seems, perhaps speaks most to those efforts with director John Gorrie and designer Cusick doing everything they can to get the maximum effect. Fans often point to The Web Planet the following year as early Who at its most ambitious and, while there's no disputing the ambitions there, there's an argument to be made that this story is even more so. After all, it's trying to create an entire planet in the confines of the BBC's oldest studio.
Does it always work? Not quite, as one can see where photo blowups get used in the first episode, for example. Some of the dialogue, never a Nation strong suit, is clunky at times, especially where exposition gets involved. More than that, Susan's characterization is all over the place, inconsistent from scene to scene, let alone episode to episode. All of which serve to undermine the story slightly.
At the end of the day, it can be easier to forgive over-ambition where there's a good story to be told. And there is plenty to like about The Keys of Marinus, from its location-hoping, genre-changing narrative and the efforts made to bring it to life. It may not always succeed, but, by Jove, it tries. In the end, it's an overlooked tale from the opening days of the show and one that deserves another look.
Bad, But Never Boring by Jason A. Miller 26/12/23
I bought the novelization for this story in the dealers' room at my first Doctor Who convention, in Manhattan in July 1985. I was 11 years old, and read much of the book in the hotel lobby while waiting for the convention events to start. I loved the adventure, how it zipped from locale to locale, and the murder-mystery and trial subplot in particular grabbed my attention. I was that rare 11 year-old who loved courtroom thrillers, you see. A few months later, the episodes aired on PBS, and I got to see The Keys of Marinus for the first time. The story remained a favorite of mine for ages. Now I'm in the law for a living and in fact have the same job as Raf de la Torre's character in Episode 5. The Keys of Marinus has come a long way with me.
The passing years have not been kind to some of the earlier Doctor Who serials, as acting styles change and as special effects become more sophisticated. Much of Hartnell's Season 1 output remains superior, due to crackling dialogue and inventive direction. Marinus and The Sensorites, alas, are the worst-dated stories, with the weakest acting and the worst-realized effects and the limpest direction. But they each have their moments of charm. Marinus may not look good today, but I can't turn my back on it.
Marinus was written in a hurry, by Terry Nation, and it shows. The overall structure is sound. There's an urgent mission in Episode 1, resolved in the second half of Episode 6, and the rest of the story is made up of four segments in four different locations with four different sets of characters. There is no time at all to be bored by any aspect of The Keys of Marinus. But plot holes abound everywhere. Marinus is clearly an autocratic society with a libertarian veneer; i.e., the bad guys in any other Doctor Who serial. Arbitan's plan for universal peace and prosperity is to enslave the population to justice machines. The brains of Morphoton lure people into their "velvet web" by promising to satisfy their materialistic desires and then mind-controlling them. Arbitan runs Marinus and is clearly OK with this, even while his daughter and her boyfriend are ensnared in that web. Darrius is Arbitan's confidante but is also a crazy inventor who creates a run-amok jungle that must surely, at the end of Marinus' history, overrun the entire planet and crush everybody. Vasor is a murderous rapist. The courtroom in the city of Millennius is decorated with thinly veiled swastikas, and their harsh guilty-unless-proven innocent justice system fits the decor. Who, exactly, are we supposed to be rooting for here?
In any other story, this is a dangerous and destructive society, and the Doctor would oppose it, overthrow it and topple it gloriously. But, here, the TARDIS crew willingly go along with the adventure, and it's only Arbitan's death, at the hands of even-worse rubber-clad creatures, the Voord, that prevents everyone from being enslaved by the Conscience machine at the end. And then Altos and Sabetha happily go back to Millennius; that fascistic society is where they feel the most happiest. Really? Barbara is going to miss those two?
Even setting aside the politics, the mechanics of the individual B-movie plots make little sense. We never learn if the Voord are monsters or just men in fetish suits. We never learn if the Ice Soldiers were immortal humans who could survive centuries' worth of freezing or robots. Why exactly did Darrius have all those traps in his home? This was a person Arbitan trusted? How on Marinus could everyone see inside the caverns of that ice mountain without light?!?
Now, don't get me wrong, none of this is without charm. I like the idea that the serial is made up of several B-movie plots, with evocative titles. Not a web, but a velvet web. Not a jungle, but a screaming jungle. Not just snows, but snows of terror. The Millennius plot is a decent murder mystery, clearly inspired by The Postman Always Rings Twice, even if Kala's and Eyesen's affair has to be inferred by the viewer rather than stated on camera (Terry Nation having eased off on the sexual entendres traded by the Thals in The Daleks). Hartnell volunteering as Ian's capital defense counsel is the Doctor's first-ever stand-up-and-cheer moment, his first moment of outright heroism. After the Doctor antagonized Ian and Barbara in the first three serials, here Hartnell and William Russell get to do some Marx Brothers-style clowning in the pyramid's corridors in Episode 6, and the original cast's chemistry is second to none. Ian and Barbara's wordless interplay after Altos and Sabetha walk off arm in arm clearly proves that they're romantically involved by now. When the plot stinks, just watch what the regulars are doing, and you'll still get that warm glow.
The Keys of Marinus is exactly what it wanted to be, a disposable bit of B-movie shlock, with tons of expository dialogue just to make sure the audience can grapple with such difficult concepts as "The jungle is trying to kill us" or "If Ian is convicted of the crime, he'll be sentenced!" But there is sophistication to the plot, with the false Key in Episode 3 playing a role in the climax, with both Episode 6 plots (Susan's kidnapping, Yartek's treachery) mirroring each other, as they're resolved by the bad guy (or gal) talking too much. The Episode 5 cliffhanger is Doctor Who's first double cliffhanger, a "sentence of death" for first Ian and then Susan in consecutive scenes; that's good writing. The original cast is in top form, and the Doctor demonstrating a murder in Episode 5 by pretending to club Barbara on the head and then actually throwing her to the ground is hilarious. Watching Hartnell and Russell and Wright and Foreman in anything is a wonderful experience.
Unfortunately, Marinus was not, in the end, as disposable as its producers intended; it's been aired on TV endlessly, released on VHS and released on DVD, and now it's 57 years later and the seams are showing, showing badly, and there's a lot to pick apart with the visual gaffes and the verbal flubs and the fact that Marinus is the most backwards planet with the worst systems of government all at once, a true basket of deplorables. But from reading the trial scenes in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel on Madison Avenue 35 years ago, to my day job today (I don't get to wear a snazzy Raf de la Torre headdress), The Keys of Marinus arguably did more to influence my life than any other Classic Who story. I can pick it apart to my heart's content, but I can't ever abandon it, not like Vasor tried to do to Susan and Sabetha, in the heart of an icy mountain.