Serial E, in 6 parts:
- The Sea of Death - 4/11/64, 9.9m viewers
- The Velvet Web - 4/18/64, 9.4m
- The Screaming Jungle - 4/25/64, 9.9m
- The Snows of Terror - 5/2/64, 10.4m
- Sentence of Death - 5/9/64, 7.9m
- The Keys of Marinus - 5/16/64, 6.9m
Sound Bytes:
"The main thing I remember is that the director, John Gorrie, seemed totally disinterested. All the time we were doing this [model] shot, Gorrie was sitting at the other end of the studio reading a newspaper!" - Raymond Cusick, designer, quoted in The Handbook: The First Doctor by Howe, Stammers and Walker (Virgin, 1994)
"The Keys of Marinus is noteworthy because it is the first time that the Doctor visits a planet with many unrelated cultures. [Terry] Nation deserves credit for...offering a fictional world with the diversity of a real one." - John Kenneth Muir, A Critical History of Doctor Who on Television (McFarland & Company, 1999)
Comments:
And now the cheese begins...
The Keys of Marinus has its good points, but it's a big step down from the preceding stories. This is the serial that formally introduces the wobbly sets and monsters in fetish suits that Doctor Who's critics always complain about.
Terry Nation's script has a very loose structure, based around an epic "quest" that the Doctor and his companions undertake to scour the planet Marinus in a search for hidden circuits. They have a series of mini-adventures along the way, some compelling, others downright silly.
The segment set in the city of Morphoton is rather good, with Barbara saving the day again by seeing through an illusion cast by evil brain-creatures in bell jars. In one particularly side-splitting scene, the brain creatures hypnotize the hapless Doctor into believing that a dirty old mug is actually a state-of-the-art piece of scientific equipment!
The "screaming jungle" sequence is decent, but the ice cavern scenes fall flat. Those ice knights wouldn't scare a baby, and Terry Nation sees fit to treat us, once again, to another really boring chasm-crossing sequence. I generally like him as a writer, but I must admit that his bag of tricks was rather shallow sometimes.
In the last and perhaps best mini-adventure, Ian is put on trial for murder in the city of Millenius, and defended by the Doctor. (This interests me because it confirms that the Doctor has become genuinely invested in Ian, which represents a stark change from his former indifference toward humans.) The solution to the murder mystery is pretty simple, but involving nonetheless.
Probably the weakest thing about the whole production is John Gorrie's ho-hum direction. With a better director behind the cameras, The Keys of Marinus might've had more cohesion. As it stands, this serial is disjointed and rather mixed in the quality department. Even at its worst, though, it's still watchable.
Grade: B-