Customer Reviews

Doctor Who: The Keys of Marinus (Story 5)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's worth noting that you've been watching a cut version of this story all these years; read this from the Restoration Team website:

"[The film copies had] seven seconds of cuts to episode two and ten seconds of cuts to episode four. The most likely reason for these cuts is either physical damage to the transmission videotape or physical splice edits in the tapes, both of which might be expected to produce disturbing picture off-locks in the film recording.

It was decided to reinstate all the audio material back into the episode, leaving Peter Crocker with the problem of how to fill seven black holes in the picture! Using various combinations of cutaways, composite images and retiming, he was able to cover all the holes. Although this will obviously differ from what what would have been seen originally, it does at least allow the story to be enjoyed uncut for the first time since its transmission in 1964."

As for special features, read on...

* Commentary with actors William Russell and Carole Ann Ford, director John Gorrie and designer Raymond Cusick. Moderated by Clayton Hickman.

* The Sets of Marinus (dur. 9' 25") - designer Raymond Cusick recalls his work on this story.

* Photo Gallery (dur. 7' 25") - production and publicity photos from the story.

* PDF Material - Radio Times listings plus the entire set of Cadet Sweets 'Doctor Who and the Daleks' sweet cigarette cards in Adobe pdf format for viewing on PC or Mac.

Plus of course the usual Subtitle Production Notes and Coming Soon trailer.

Season one, 11/4/64-16/5/64.
My main gripe with this story is, it's just too ambitious on it's minuscule budget. Who plays to it's strenghts when it embraces it's limitations, and doesn't try to do a story that needs a Hollywood budget. Okay rant over.
This was Terry Nation's first non-Dalek story, Dalek popularity was still in the ascendancy when Nation hastily delivered this script.
The only other time he went Dalek-less was the "Avenger" like Android Invasion.
Mr Nation's strong points were ideas to capture the imagination, but with this story his weaknesses are revealed, he simple couldn't write easy flowing natural dialogue in the same way as Whittaker or Spooner. This was also the earliest of the quest like stories which later came out as The Chase, The E-space trilogy, the Key to Time season, and the Black Guardian trilogy.
The reason for Hartnell's disappearance for episode three and four was, he was on two weeks holiday, and it worked wonders, he comes back in episode five completely invigorated with no fluffs or dries.
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With six new sets required each week and only one designer (Ray Cusick).
This story does appear to have more production problems then most early Hartnell stories, example: when the secret entrance door swings open you catch a glimpse of one of the set workers operating it.
But episode four, "The Snows of Terror" sums up exactly why I always rate sixties Who above any other decade, and that is when Vasor is alone with Barbara he attempts to rape her. Very strong stuff for an early evening TV show. (A similar incident occurs with Edith in, "The Time Meddler".)
This touching on some of societies taboos was avoided in later decades. Which I felt was a shame, as it gave it an extra edge of realism.
Unlike most Who fans I can't slavishly mark every story as a five star one, If all stories are marked highly then that cheapens the quality of the real classics.
This is one story that needs to be criticized, in places.
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(Brief synopsis)
Episode One, Sea of Death, Arbitan stops the Tardis crew gaining entrance to the TARDIS. Forcing them on the quest for the four keys.
Episode Two, The Velvet Web, here in the city of Morphoton you can get anything you wish for, or so it appears.
Episode Three, The Screaming Jungle, in the jungle, scientists have speeded up plant growth, to a frightening degree!
Episode Four, The Snows of Terror, On the Icy tundra they meet a fur trapper called Vasor, who seems a nice man.
Episode Five, Sentence of Death, The travellers encounter a society in which the legal system is, guilty until proven innocent.
Episode Six, The Keys of Marinus, returning to the Island but only to find, trouble.
Overall opinion, not a classic story but the changing locations help to maintain ones interest.
Trivia.
This is the first time we see the Tardis land from the outside, albeit a model shot, all other times were shown to have landed from inside the Tardis.
What has this story got in common with the film Citizen Kane?.....Answer George Couloris starred in both.
Watch the conscience machine make a reappearance four years later as, "The Mind Robber."
Don't let the fact it's in B&W put you off.

"The Keys of Marinus" is on paper a sweeping outer-space epic. The TARDIS crew is solicited by a man named Arbitan -- the keeper of the Conscience of Marinus, a robed figure living in a pyramid on a deserted island surrounded by a sea of acid. Arbitan's played by George Colouris, who was part of Orson Welles' repertory and who had a role in Citizen Kane (Two-Disc Special Edition). So in the first part of this six-part story, the principal guest actor brings great gravitas to proceedings.

Then our heroes are sent across the planet in search of the hidden micro-keys that will reactivate the Conscience machine and set Marinus to rights. They travel to such terrifying locations as the Screaming Jungle and the Snows of Terror. They're imprisoned in a Velvet Web, and then later, in a fine "Perry Mason" pastiche, Ian is framed for murder and it's up to the Doctor to act as his defense counsel. This reads great on paper, as the novelization (Doctor Who and the Keys of Marinus) demonstrates.

So, how could this story go wrong? Well, a low budget, for one. The DVD release of "Marinus" looks fabulous -- the original videotapes for this story have long since been destroyed, but the existing kinescope transfers have been restored to a pristine VT look. Unfortunately, that process doesn't serve the story well -- with "Marinus" already well known for tons of technical errors, it's hard to look at this DVD for 45 seconds without spotting a stray stagehand or a roaming boom shadow or a wobbly set.

The writing isn't great, either. For "Doctcr Who"'s second adventure into outer space, Terry Nation was brought in on short notice (following a string of canceled scripts) to recapture the success of "The Daleks" (available in Doctor Who - The Beginning Collection). He fails. The story's biggest logical flaw is that Arbitan himself hid each key in an inaccessible location -- and then never tells his hand-picked agents how to overcome those traps.

The audio commentary to "Marinus" adds a lot of flavor. The director, John Gorrie, was from the BBC plays department, and this was his only foray into "Doctor Who". However, his inexperience was offset by that of designer Ray Cusick, who'd been largely responsible for the success of "The Daleks" just a few stories previously. Surviving original cast members William Russell (Ian) and Carole Ann Ford (Susan) recall details about their characters 45 years after the fact. It's all moderated by ex-"Doctor Who Magazine" editor Clayton Hickman. Similarly, the text commentary track ably matches dry production details with a keen eye for pointing out on-screen bloopers.

The last word belongs to Cusick, who in this disc's lone featurette, describes point by point the budget shortfalls that led to his ingeniously minimal set designs... and who then, when asked what about this story he'd keep,if he had to do it all over again, says "nothing".

When I watched the first episode, I couldn't stop laughing at the low production values. But after that, it became an excellent story. I enjoyed, partly for the thrilling story, and partly for how it shone the spotlight on Ian and Barbara, and they did well. The cliffhangers had be wondering what would happen next. I was also amazed at the suprisingly adult scene when the trapper Vasor tried to rape Barbara during Episode 4. This story had you in it, whether it was Ian and Barbara strggling to find the key before they are killed by the living jungle, or when their rope bridge breaks and they are trapped on a ledge with some unthawing monsters. The best story in the Hartnell era

Landing on the planet Marinus, with acid seas, and a glassy beach, the First Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Susan, are forced by Arbitan, the sole inhabitant nearby, to go on a mission to hunt down four keys that will help him redress the power of good on the planet. The Conscience of Marinus was a machine built to "eliminate evil from all men. Robbery, fear, hate, violence was unknown." Then came Yartek and his Voords, who overcame conditioning and are out to take over the Conscience.

Using travel dials, wrist teleporters, they go to where the four microcircuit keys are, first to the luxurious city of Morphoton, "sensuous, decadent, but pleasant" with kind hospitable people. Yet is all this luxury real?

Accompanied by Sabetha, Arbitan's daughter, and Altos, her love interest, the Doctor has the brilliant idea of splitting up. He goes to the civilized city of Millennius, while Ian and Barbara search a place where the vegetation is very dense and "when the whispering stars, it's death." Altos and Sabetha land on an icy area where they encounter a trapper Vasor, who isn't all he seems. On Millennius, Ian is falsely accused of murder and the Doctor becomes Sherlock Holmes in order to save Ian. A city where one is guilty before proven innocent cannot be all that civilized.

Ian shines the best in this story, as he comes out as reliable, trustworthy, and brave. One of his best hours. The interplay between Barbara and Susan remains. Susan trusts Barbara to tell her what she heard in the forest in the same way she tells her of the hand that touched on in the petrified forest in The Daleks. Barbara's her usual reassuring self here.

George Coulouris (Arbitan) is best known as the man who takes Kane from his parents in Citizen Kane and as the doctor in Murder On The Orient Express. Fiona Walker (Kala) would reappear in Who's 25th anniversary story, Silver Nemesis as Lady Peinforte.

The ultimate theme of this story is given in Doctor's final piece of advice to Sabetha: "I don't believe that man was meant to be controlled by machines. Machines can make laws, but they cannot be made to preserve justice. Only human beings can do that."

William Hartnell did not appear in Episodes 3 and 4 so he could take his holiday, yet he was credited for both episodes per his contract. A similar thing would also happen to Jacqueline Wright in The Web Planet a season later.

The Keys Of Marinus is interesting in that many concepts of the show later found its way to future Who stories. For example, the search for the four keys was expanded in the six Key To Time stories of 1978-79. The concept of the Conscience as a machine that bars evil, plus the five microkeys with a permutations of numbers and symbols was revisited in The Keeper Of Traken. An acid pool is also encountered in The Web Planet. Vegetation tha attacks appeared in The Seeds Of Doom. And it was written by the Chief Dalek himself, Terry Nation. Thank goodness this Hartnell story survived the BBC purge, because it's well worth it.

This is a story from the very first season of Doctor Who. Unless you are a huge fan of the first doctor, a completist, or someone interested in set design on a shoestring budget I would give this one a pass. If your local PBS station didn't show the William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton stories, and you would like to see this story, I recommend you rent or borrow this DVD.

The basic story has the Doctor and his companions, Susan, Ian and Barbara, land on the planet Marinus. They land on an island in the middle of a sea of acid and meet Arbitan, who is the Keeper of the Conscience of Marinus. Arbitan needs to reset the conscience of Marinus and requires 4 keys to work the machine. He prevents the travelers from entering the TARDIS and forces them to collect the keys which Arbitan has hidden across the planet. The TARDIS crew encounter many interesting people, situations and creatures on their travels across the planet to collect these keys.

The story sounds interesting. It was written by Terry Nation. There are some lovely performances by the regulars and a few of the guest actors. There were some very interesting bits such as the Morphoton from the second episode, the living jungle, the interesting justice system in the final segments, etc. However, these very interesting snippets never really gel into a cohesive story, and seem more like a series of vignettes.

There are some very nice things in this story: 1) It is delightful to see George Colouris in Doctor Who. 2) The Morphoton from episode 2 are quite interesting and would have made a great villain on their own. 3) Ian and Barbara are given very good roles and are equal to the Doctor in trying to work out the puzzles that confront them. 4) It's fun watching William Hartnell having a grand time playing Perry Mason in the last two episodes.

These things can't make the story hang together better. The character of Susan is either hysterical, or on the verge of hysteria for most of the story. The story also doesn't make a lot of sense. I just kept coming up with more questions than the story even tried to answer. (Who is Arbitan, and why is he in charge of the machine? Who or what are the Morphoton? Are they natives to the planet, does their influence spread far? Why didn't Arbitan do a little better job giving the travelers some clues to finding the keys, which are held in some very obscure places? Does that sea of acid spread over the entire planet?) I really wanted to like this story, but it just left me nonplussed.

As for the DVD itself, there have been other Doctor Who stories that haven't been stellar classics but the DVD had enough wonderful extras to make it worthwhile. Unfortunately, this DVD is extremely sparse on the extras. The main extra is a 9 minute interview with designer Raymond Cusick, which is wonderful. There is the obligatory option for watching the story with commentary, this was actually my favorite mode of watching the story. William Russell, Carole Ann Ford, Raymond Cusick and director John Gorrie are moderated by Clayton Hickman and it is a lively interesting discussion. There is also the option of watching the story with production notes subtitles. There is some interesting info, but it gets bogged down with some of the most boringly detailed minutiae (ex. "This scene called for 6 legal pads, 3 pencils, 2 cups, a book, and a beat up cupboard with a lock"...).

So once again, if you are new to Doctor Who and want to watch some of it's earliest episodes, don't start here. Why don't you give "An Unearthly Child", "The Daleks" or even "The Aztecs" a try if you want to see early stories from the show's first season. If you are a Doctor Who fan, but haven't seen many of the early stories, go ahead and watch it, just don't expect too much.

Given one and only one sentence to describe "The Keys of Marinus", it would have to be: a fun entry in British science fiction mounted on a budget of approximately two and a half school plays.

And if that description doesn't throw you off, you'll probably enjoy it. It has better writing than most American TV shows produced at the time, as well as American movies. Dramatically, it lies halfway between the heaviness of "Battlestar Galactica" and the ironic humor of "Burn Notice". The acting is quite good, with notable performances by William Hartnell (The Doctor), Jacqueline Hill (a strong heroine for the 60's), William Russell (knight in shining armor without an ego to match), Francis de Wolff (the guy you hope doesn't come to your door at 3am), Donald Pickering (the prosecutor you don't want at your trial) and Stephen Dartnell (dictator in-waiting with brains as well as ambition). The action is... well, if you are a fan of Old Time Radio, where you are forced to imagine how exciting everything is... you're more than ready.

If black and white bothers you, stay the heck away. If noticeably low budgets cause you to use your remote faster than a gunslinger can sling a Remington, buy something else.

But if you're in the mood for some vintage popcorn-for-the-brain from the UK, this might be the DVD for you.

When I was a senior in high school, my parents tried to ban me from watching Dr. Who, which at the time one of my local PBS stations was showing the B&W episodes at 11:00 PM Monday-Thursday-one episode per night in addition to their saturday afternoon broadcasts and the saturday night ones on my other local PBS network. Not to be outdone tho, I snuck an old portable B & W TV into an attic room and watched most of the old episodes. I found "The Keys of Marinus" to be a much more entertaining story than I expected or remembered. The Acting was good for the most part, and except for some rather bad models in the begining, the effects and costumes were very good. You can definatly see the hand of writer Terry Nation in this one (true Brit- Sci-Fi fans should notice the travel dials are very similar to the transport devices used in Terry Nation's later creation "Blakes 7"). I'm looking forward to my next purchses, which will bring me even closer to finally catching up on my collection.

It was great. The old Doctor was himself. It contained 1964 special effects and a shoestring budget. It was a classic.

I was a bit weary before I watched this episode, because I heard mixed reviews, but I was amazingly impressed with this story. I don't watch Dr. Who for the set designs or props, but for the character and story. Usually the story is outrageously chataclismic or absurd, and thats what I like about the different directions the Doctor takes in the Tardis. There are no limits with the Doctor, he can go anywhere and do anything really (because come on, very rarely does he fail). However, this takes some imagination, especially when looking back all the way to the 60s in some cases.

Here, though, I found a classic Doctor Who adventure story creatively written by Terry Nation of The Daleks. We land on a glass strewn island surrounded by acid, which is insane. How crazy is that, honestly, poor Susan almost went for a paddle in it! And unlike later seasons, the sense of awe and discovery is still fresh in all the characters, each constantly amazed by their ever changing surroundings. Ususally I find it hard to sit through 6 episodes, but when each episode takes us to a unique, and original location, it felt like a great old time movie. The sets aren't as fantastic as the plot, but did anyone ever really think they were, even back when it first aired? I don't think realism is really the point of Doctor Who. Try using your imagination. Immerse yourself in the original storyline and plot twists, and you'll have one of the best Doctor experiences ever.