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Story Five
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Story Code
E
Title
The
Keys Of Marinus
“Friends” Title
The
One With The Men In Wetsuits
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Episode Titles
The
Sea Of Death
The
Velvet Web
The
Screaming Jungle
The
Snows Of Terror
Sentence
Of Death
The
Keys Of Marinus
Current availability
All
six episodes exist.
Source
UK
Gold omnibus repeat transmission.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date
3100
BC.
Again,
there is no point of reference to place this story into an Earth time
scale. So why not date it as above?
Genre
Quest
Plot synopsis
1. The travellers land on an alien island,
and discover a glass beach and a sea of acid.
A number of creatures in wetsuits - the Voords - arrive in glass
submersibles. One by one, the TARDIS
crew fall through moving panels in the large building that dominates the island
and are imprisoned by a cowled man - his name is Arbitan, and he releases them
once Ian has saved his life from a Voord.
He asks the travellers to collect together microcircuit keys from around
the planet, so as to re-animate the Conscience Of Marinus. They refuse, and he imprisons the Ship in a
forcefield to leave them with no option.
He hands out travel bracelets programmed to transport them to their
destinations. Barbara vanishes early,
and the others soon follow. Arbitan is
killed by a Voord. The Doctor, Ian and
Susan arrive in a corridor to find Barbara’s bracelet with blood on it.
2. There is a cacophony of light and
sound, and Barbara is discovered in luxury, the blood having come from a
scratch. Their “Host”, Altos, claims
they are in the city of Morphoton, where everyone is contented - everything is
provided for them. They all sleep, and a
girl places discs on their foreheads:
Barbara’s falls off. In the morning,
Barbara sees the reality - rags and dirt - while the others remain
deceived. She runs off, and meets up with
Sabetha, the girl who placed the discs.
Altos reports to three Brains in jars, who order Barbara and Sabetha
killed. The other travellers are brought
under the Brains’ control, and Ian captures Barbara, taking her to the
Brains. She destroys them, and their
control vanishes. Rioters burn the
city. The travellers meet up with Altos
and Sabetha - both past emissaries from Arbitan (Sabetha is his daughter). The Doctor uses his dial to go ahead to find
the fourth key, while the others move to the second. Susan arrives first, finding herself in a
jungle full of horrible screaming noises.
3. The others arrive and calm Susan. They search the dense vegetation around a
nearby building. Barbara finds the key
on a statue: as she takes it, the statue
swings her through a wall. Altos and
Susan go ahead to the third destination, presuming that Barbara can now use her
travel dial, but Sabetha realises the key is a forgery. She follows Altos and Susan, while Ian goes
after Barbara. They elude a number of
traps, laid by an old man guarding the real key. The jungle’s growth has been stimulated, and
the vegetation attacks the building, killing the old man. Ian and Barbara find the key from his dying
clues, and escape to a bitterly cold environment.
4. They pass out from the cold, and are
taken in by a huge, bearded trapper called Vasor. Ian goes looking for Altos and finds him
unconscious, bound by Vasor, who has also filled Ian’s bag with raw meat to
attract wolves. They return to Vasor’s
hut in time to save Barbara from his advances, and force him to lead them to
the cave where he has left Susan and Sabetha.
They follow the girls along tunnels of ice through a mountain, but Vasor
traps them all by detaching a rope bridge across a ravine. They find the key in a block of ice
surrounded by four lifeless soldiers - as the ice melts, the soldiers come to
life. They improvise a bridge and escape
with the key. Vasor is killed by the
soldiers. Ian materialises in a vault
with the final key on display and a dead man on the floor. Someone knocks him out, steals the key and
escapes with alarms ringing.
5. Ian awakes to be interrogated by
Tarron, under suspicion of theft and murder.
The Doctor turns up, and agrees to defend him - the murdered man was
Eprin, another of Arbitan’s envoys. The
Doctor quickly deduces that the murderer was Aydan, the relief guard on the
vault, and gets Sabetha to name him in court - Aydan gives himself away and is
about to confess when he is shot down, much to the apparent dismay of his wife
Kala. Ian is taken for execution under
suspicion of working with Aydan.
Meanwhile, Barbara receives a phone call from Susan, who is being held
captive, and will be killed if the location of the key is revealed.
6. Barbara, Altos and Sabetha go to see Kala,
who accidentally gives her implication in the plot away - she killed Aydan and
has Susan tied up in the next room.
Susan is rescued just before Kala is about to kill her: she is arrested, but names Ian as her
accomplice. This is proved false when the
Doctor and some of the local guardians lie in wait for the mastermind as he
collects the key - it is the court prosecutor, Eyeson, and the key is hidden
inside the murder weapon. The travellers
leave Millennius and return to the island.
The Voords now control the Conscience, and their leader, Yartek tries to
gain possession of the final key, first by interrogating Altos and Sabetha,
then by impersonating Arbitan in an attempt to trick Ian and Susan. Ian gives Yartek the false key, and they all
escape from the building before Yartek inserts it in the Conscience, setting
off a chain reaction that blows the whole lot up. The Doctor advises Sabetha that Arbitan’s
work can go on, but without a machine to control men’s minds. Altos and Sabetha plan to return to
Millennius, and the travellers depart in the TARDIS.
Pitch
Six
stories for the price of one.
The Money Shot
The
opening model shot of Arbitan’s island. (Episode 1)
The TARDIS log
•
The Ship is not heard to make its usual groaning sound on arrival and departure
from the island. Is this because we see
both from a distance? Or is that sound
only heard inside the TARDIS?
•
The Ship’s colour television is on the blink.
Alien Worlds
•
We see many different areas of Marinus, suggesting it is as varied and natural
a planet as our own. Which is nice.
•
Two thousand years ago, the technology of Marinus reached a peak with the
development of the Conscience of Marinus, a machine that acted as an infallible
judge and jury, which was eventually improved until it controlled the minds of
everyone on the planet, eliminating evil.
The planet prospered for seven centuries. A man called Yartek overcame it, with his
followers, the Voords. Arbitan, the
keeper of the Conscience, removed the five vital microcircuit keys, keeping one
and spreading the rest around the planet, thus keeping control of the machine
from the Voords but allowing the possibility of reviving the Conscience one
day.
•
The Conscience is kept in an enormous labyrinthine building on a well-defended
island, blessed with a glass beach and surrounded by a sea of acid. It’s covered in large spiky bits, and there
is a complete absence of life (birds etc.)
•
One city on Marinus is called Morphoton, and at the time of the travellers’
visit, is ruled over by three Brains who outgrew their bodies, and use
hypnotism - via their subtly-named “mesmeron” and “somno-discs” - to make the
humanoid population serve them. True to
form, this regime had been overturned by the time the TARDIS crew left.
•
Another city, Millennius, is described as “a highly advanced society”, despite
the topsy-turvy laws - here, a person is guilty until proved innocent, and
sentence comes at the start of the trial.
•
The rarity of murder in Millennius, and their inability to forge an adequate
legal system, suggests the effects of the Conscience’s withdrawal - on the plus
side, crime has remained at a low, but on the other hand the citizens are
unprepared to deal with what crime there is.
•
However advanced Millennius is, they still use telephones.
•
There is a freezing cold, possibly polar region of Marinus, with miles between
villages. Volcanic springs are to be
found deep beneath the ground.
•
In another region, the dense jungle has had its “tempo of destruction”
increased so that hundreds of years’ erosion on a building is done in a matter
of days. How did this happen? Ian and Barbara read about it in the old
man’s diary. He was a biologist - did he
somehow cause this?
•
We are told that Yartek and the Voords overcame the Conscience. Then we discover they look nothing like
anyone else on Marinus - they have enormous handles on the backs of their
heads, for starters. Were there always
two distinct races on the planet? - Yartek claims “there are many races of men
on Marinus.” Was the Conscience always
ineffective on the Voords? Why do some
of them have spikes on their “noses”, but Yartek doesn’t? How much of what we see is Voord, and how
much is wetsuit? I think we should be
told, as it’s a curious omission from the script.
Script Heaven
•
The Doctor “Sensuous and decadent...but rather pleasant. I say, is that a pomegranate?”
Script Hell
•
Barbara “I believe you’re under some deep form of deep hypnosis.”
Catchphrase
•
Tarron “Who is he?” Ian “Who? He’s a
doctor.”
Name-dropping
•
The Doctor claims to have met Pyrrho.
The Doctor’s Achievement
•
The TARDIS crew have prevented the Voords from controlling the minds of the
population of Marinus - and, while they were at it, have freed the oppressed
population of Morphoton and uncovered a conspiracy in Millennius.
Body Count
Three
Voords in episode one, one more in episode six (plus all those destroyed in the
climactic explosion). Other casualties
include Arbitan, Eprin, Aydan, Vasor, the old man in the jungle, one ice
soldier and the three Brains of Morphoton.
So the total is, at the very least:
13.
Don’t move! Or the girl gets it!
•
Vasor grabs Susan as the ice soldiers attack his hut. “You’ll stay!” he demands, “or I’ll kill
her!”
Hypnotised left, right and
centre (and friends)
•
The entire population of the city of Morphoton, as well as on the TARDIS crew.
•
Hypnotism: 2 instances.
Chekhov’s Plot Device
Chekhov’s
Fake Key Of Marinus. At last! A true Chekhov’s Gun moment!
EffectsWatch
•
The effects in episode one veer from a great model shot of the island to the
iffy illusion used to make Arbitan’s building seem huge to the
Thunderbirds-style arrival of the submersibles to the appalling effect of a
Voord falling down a shaft.
•
The hands grabbing Barbara in episode 3, supposedly those of a statue, are
clearly human.
Whoops
•
If you look closely, I’m sure there’s an unexpected foot in the bottom right
hand corner of the screen just as the Doctor falls into Arbitan’s building.
•
An awful lot seems to have happened between episodes one and two - Barbara has
changed her clothes and been introduced to Altos - yet only seconds have
passed.
•
The Doctor inexplicably knows Altos’ name.
To be fair, maybe this is a by-product of the mind control (but we’re
really stretching things here).
•
When Aydan knocks Ian out at the end of episode four, he blatantly hasn’t
touched him.
Notes
•
Ian is still dressed as he was in Marco
Polo, suggesting - but not proving - that this story carries on directly
from the last.
•
The Doctor is absent from episodes three and four, as the actor took a
holiday. Maybe this is why he gets some
great stuff to do when he returns - notably his Poirot act at the scene of the
crime, and his barrister act in court.
•
Catch Susan and Barbara’s excuses for Ian’s sexism/chivalry in The Screaming Jungle. Wow, revolutionary feminist stuff. Girl power.
•
There is some surprisingly adult content in this story, from attempted rape
(Vasor and Barbara) to wife-beating (Aydan and Kala).
•
The Doctor claims he has never encountered a sea of acid before in all his
travels. Odd, you wouldn’t think such
things were that rare. Plus, he and the
others instantly assume that it and the glass beach are a defence mechanism
deliberately engineered. It never seems
to cross their minds that such things could be natural.
•
Yartek’s people are referred to both as the Voords and the Voord.
•
After Marco Polo’s omni-electrometer,
this story gives us a mesmeron and somno-discs.
The galaxy seems to have a distinct lack of imagination, as well as
prevalent Latin and Greek roots.
•
The Brains are supposed to be very intelligent, yet are not above intoning
“kill them” over and over again for no very good reason.
•
Ian observes that Altos doesn’t blink.
Why is this? They aren’t
hypnotised through the eyes.
•
The Doctor describes a cyclotron as a “simple toy.”
•
There are many great sights in this story, and one of the best is the Doctor
admiring a dirty mug, speculating about what he might be able to achieve with
“instruments like these.”
•
Was Arbitan supposed to warn his emissaries about the old man’s traps? Why didn’t he?
•
Ian claims the ravine in the mountain is too wide to jump, but it looks no
wider than the one in The Daleks.
•
The scene in episode 5 where Eyeson answers the phone completely destroys any
suspense about who the villain might be.
Why is this scene there?
•
The Doctor gets Sabetha to deliberately perjure herself (under our law, at any
rate).
•
Try watching the scene in episode 6 where the Doctor unmasks Eyeson without screaming
“And I would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t of been for you
meddling kids!”
•
Check out that disguise Yartek tries on Ian and Susan! Oh come on!
No-one’s going to fall for that!
•
Ian says he will give the surviving Key of Marinus to the Doctor as a keepsake.
Queries
•
What is DE3O2?
•
Are the glass beach and the acidic sea natural?
Or did Arbitan create them?
•
How do the Brains of Morphoton speak?
•
It seems very easy to defeat the Brains.
What exactly did Barbara smash?
Wouldn’t you have gone for the Brains themselves?
•
Why do Ian, Barbara and Altos leave the dials and keys in Vasor’s hut when they
go to the mountain? It would have made
things much easier if they’d taken them along.
•
What’s the deal with those ice soldiers?
Who froze them? How? Are they alive? Dead?
Undead? Are they, as Vasor
claims, demons? No-one even stops to
wonder about this, and it seems a massive plot contrivance.
•
So what does cause that encroaching jungle, then?
•
If the Doctor can just claim to be from Arbitan and have the key in Millennius
handed over by the judges, why didn’t Eprin do this when he first arrived? Why did he and the Doctor plan to steal it?
•
If it’s impossible for the mesmeron to work on anyone who’s seen the truth, how
did they ever get it started in the first place?
•
Why does Susan always have to act like such a pathetic little child?
•
We really can’t ignore the language thing any longer. Somehow, the TARDIS crew are able to
understand everything said to them by cavemen, Daleks, Thals, Voords, and
people all over Marinus (the amount of hopping around they do, on Earth they’d
have run into at least three language barriers). How is this possible? Come to that, it’s unlikely enough that the
Doctor and Susan speak fluent English.
And while we’re on the subject, what language exactly were the Mongols,
Venetians and other races in Marco Polo
speaking? Unless some kind of
explanation is given, this is a big cop-out.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On-screen Credits
Taken from The Television Companion.
CAST
Dr.
Who - William Hartnell, Ian Chesterton - William Russell, Barbara Wright -
Jacqueline Hill, Susan Foreman - Carole Ann Ford, Arbitan - George Colouris
(1), Voords - Martin Cort (1,6); Peter Stenson (1,6); Gordon Wales (1), Altos -
Robin Phillips (2-6), Sabetha - Katharine Schofield (2-6), Voice of Morpho -
Heron Carvic (2), Warrior - Martin Cort (3), Darrius - Edmund Warwick (3),
Vasor - Francis de Wolff (4), Ice Soldiers - Michael Allaby; Alan James; Peter
Stenson; Anthony Verner (4), Tarron - Henley Thomas (5-6), Larn - Michael
Allaby (5-6), Senior Judge - Raf de la Torre (5), First Judge - Alan James (5),
Second Judge - Peter Stenson (5), Kala - Fiona Walker (5-6), Aydan - Martin
Cort (5), Eyesen - Donald Pickering (5-6), Guard - Alan James (6), Yartek -
Stephen Dartnell (6).
CREW
Written
by Terry Nation. Title Music by Ron
Grainer with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
Incidental Music by Norman Kay.
Costumes - Daphne Dare. Make-Up -
Jill Summers. Studio Lighting - Peter
Murray. Studio Sound - Jack Brummitt;
Tony Milton. Production Assistant -
David Conroy; Penny Joy. Assistant Floor
manager - Timothy Combe. Story Editor - David
Whitaker. Designer - Raymond P.
Cusick. Associate Producer - Mervyn
Pinfield. Producer - Verity Lambert. Directed by John Gorrie.
Familiar Faces
George
Colouris can otherwise be seen in Orson Welles’ chart-topping film Citizen Kane, as Kane’s banker
guardian. “I think it would be fun to
run a newspaper!?!”
Review
The
extended plot explanations above, as well as the unusual number of queries,
give the correct impression. Terry
Nation has taken a handful of passably good ideas, and sandwiched them all
together into six episodes, which gives the story a disjointed feel. The events in Morphoton, for instance, could
surely have supported a story by themselves, while those in Millennius
certainly could - the Doctor’s scenes defending Ian are amongst the most
enjoyable in the story. This resembles
nothing more than a collection of short stories, and suffers as a result - the
casual viewer has nothing to grab hold of to make one care what happens next
episode, and those of us looking deeper into it find glaring plot holes. Frankly, with about 20-30 minutes per section
there is nowhere near enough time to explain any given situation, so we are
left completely perplexed as to what happened to that jungle, for instance, or
where those ice soldiers came from. The
only linking thread is the regular cast, and unfortunately they are largely
becoming rather annoying. Susan is
forever squealing and crying, while Barbara and Ian spend all their time not
believing each other. To be fair, it’s
more an aberrance in this story than a universal trait of the series, but they
do all appear slightly thick. The
exception is William Hartnell as the Doctor, but this is attributable in part
to his complete absence from the most irritating episodes. Even the framing Conscience plot is not
wholly thought out, and by the end everything seems very unsatisfactory. Although there are many things to like here -
there are strong guest performances from Fiona Walker and Katharine Schofield,
and the direction is occasionally inspired, especially in the “point-of-view”
sequences in Morphoton - it has, in the end, to be marked down as Doctor Who’s first real failure.
Rating
3 / 10
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