The Sea of Death (The Keys of Marinus Episode 1)

The one where Susan is terrified by the loss of a shoe...

After 20 weeks of the viewers getting to know Doctor Who and his band of intrepid space and time adventurers - and those characters getting to know one another too - it's almost like the production team has hit the reset button, as The Sea of Death opens afresh with no connection to previous adventures apart from Ian's Marco Polo shirt.

But hold on, not everything feels fresh. The Sea of Death is written by Terry Nation, in one of only two instances when he wrote a non-Dalek Doctor Who story (the other being 1975's The Android Invasion). And there's a lot in this episode which echoes his work on The Daleks just a few months earlier...

For instance, the episode begins with the Doctor checking the radiation meter, and Ian glimpsing movement outside on the scanner (which is monochrome, as the colour screen is "hors de combat", ie out of action due to damage!). This episode marks the first time we see the TARDIS materialise in its new location from the outside, although the familiar "wheezing, groaning" noise is absent. The little baby model TARDIS is very sweet, although the modelwork bears no relation to how the full-size police box prop is placed subsequently! Also, Ian says that "one thing's for sure, we're not at Southend". What makes him think that? All they've seen so far is sand and sea! It could very well be Southend!

Outside, we learn that this new alien planet is very strange indeed, complete with a glass beach and a sea of acid. When Susan drops her shoe in a tidal pool, it fizzes away to nothing in the acid water, which predictably renders Susan utterly traumatised. "And I was going to paddle in it!" she whimpers, before donning Ian's boots and going back to the Ship for a second pair of slip-ons. The dialogue feels looser in these scenes, and it feels like William Russell ad-libs the line: "They'll give you lovely corns, they will".

These first five minutes seem quite perfunctory, like the actors are just going through the motions, almost like a rehearsal. In comparison to John Lucarotti's scripts for Marco Polo, Nation's writing is quite simple, definitely written for children rather than young adults. When Barbara appraises the Doctor of recent events, telling him Susan's gone back to the TARDIS to get some new shoes, I felt like screaming: "Yes, we know! We just saw that, just get on with it!" It's worth it, though, for one of William Hartnell's most endearing fluffs: "If you'd had your shoes on, my boy, you could've lent her hers! You mustn't get sloppy in your habits, you know!"

Meanwhile, Susan is alone outside the TARDIS (Terry Nation plot generator klaxon!) but fails to see a beflippered rubber-suited alien hiding in plain sight. The Voords are interesting creatures because it is stated that they are wearing protective suits, so what do they really look like inside? Echoes of the Daleks (Terry Nation plot generator klaxon!). The fact the Voord found in the submersible has had his entire flesh and bone melted away by acid is a pretty grim discovery, especially for 5.40pm on a Saturday teatime! And they say Season 22 is gruesome!

"Look at that fantastic building!" exclaims Ian, unconvincingly. It seems there is a civilisation on this alien world, and the Doctor intends to visit it (Terry Nation plot generator klaxon!). Is that advisable, considering what happened last time on Skaro?

We then get some rather poorly directed shenanigans in and around the pyramid building, which seems to be designed like an amusement park haunted house, complete with comedy swing doors. Raymond Cusick's exterior pyramid set, with its forced perspective walkways, would have probably worked quite well on grainy 1960s TVs, but it's all too obvious on souped-up DVD, as is the tiny amount of space the actors have to move around, as they really cannot afford to walk very far.

John Gorrie's plodding direction goes from pedestrian to inspired during these unintentionally amusing swing-door abductions. When the Voord falls through the wall we see a rogue stage hand standing quietly at the back of the set, but then William Hartnell affects his abduction with the expertise of a veteran illusionist, and the brief glimpse of the cowled Arbitan for Barbara's abduction is wonderfully spooky.

But for every well-crafted shot, there are probably two or more clumsy ones. Inside the pyramid, Susan fails to spot a perfectly visible Voord right in front of her. She fails to emit her usual ear-shattering scream when the cowled figure appears behind her, but then the cowled figure inexplicably walks away and Susan carries on as if nothing happened, until the aforementioned Voord attacks her. But then we see that it isn't attacking her as it is already dead, having been stabbed in the back but bizarrely still able to stand upright. Then the cowled figure returns once more, fade to black. This entire sequence is very oddly edited and paced.

Suddenly reunited, the Doctor, Barbara and Susan are in captivity, but the Doctor doesn't seem all that fussed about the danger they might be in. Barbara suggests that their captor may yet kill them, to which he rashly replies: "I shouldn't worry so much about that." What?! Really? He has an awful lot of faith in Ian being able to find and rescue them.

There's another example of how Gorrie struggles with action and timing in scenes when Arbitan is attacked by a Voord. He walks slowly along a very short corridor and actually stops for a second to allow the Voord to jump him, before Ian comes to the rescue by pushing the Voord through yet another secret wall which sends the rubbery villain plunging to his watery death in the suspicious form of a flat piece of card. It's another poorly executed sequence, topped with a truly awful special effect.

The cowled Arbitan suddenly decides to get all friendly and cease his silent meanderings and random stabbings by info-dumping on the Doctor and his friends. The Conscience machine, which has made the people of Marinus a uniquely peaceful, crime-free race (Terry Nation plot generator klaxon!), is under threat of being abused by the villainous Yartek (or, as George Coulouris calls him, Yartak) and his rubbery Voords. Arbitan asks the TARDIS crew for help in locating the four remaining keys to the Conscience machine to make sure it stays under peaceful control, and also to help retrieve his daughter (but what's her name, Arbitan!?). The Doctor and friends refuse (off-screen!) and return to their Ship. All of this is heard by an eavesdropping Voord, who looks for all the world like he's squatting to take a poo...

But the Doctor finds he is cut-off from the TARDIS by Arbitan's invisible force barrier, and press-ganged into embarking on the quest to find the keys of Marinus. It's interesting to note that this is the third time in five adventures that the writer has had to find a cast-iron way of explaining why our heroes can't just jump in the TARDIS and fly away from this danger (in The Daleks, it was the mislaid fluid link; in Marco Polo, the Ship had blown its electrics and then Marco stole the TARDIS key). If you think about it, this authorial trick was employed quite a lot in the Hartnell era (eg, stolen TARDIS locks, collapsing rubble, clifftop falls etc). It's in contrast to how the show would develop in later years, with the Doctor and his companions becoming happily embroiled in events wherever they landed, with no thought of running away.

At the end of the episode we get a simple but effective special effect when Barbara stands against a suspiciously placed black background and is whisked away to somewhere never by the travel dial on her wrist. William Russell momentarily wanders into the masked-off portion of the camera shot before Ian, the Doctor and Susan follow on.

After they're gone, Arbitan is stabbed in the back by a Voord, although he bizarrely clutches his chest as he falls to the ground. We're going to have to remember this scene, because it won't be picked up on for another five weeks...!

First broadcast: April 11th, 1964

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Although obviously just rubber wetsuits, the Voord do have a suitably bizarre, slightly unsettling presence, particularly as they're mute (except for the screaming piece of card).
The Bad: It all feels a bit like a trial run, like John Gorrie filmed a rehearsal rather than the proper run-through. Gorrie's direction is more miss than hit, and as for that cardboard Voord...
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

NEXT TIME: The Velvet Web...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: The Velvet Web (episode 2); The Screaming Jungle (episode 3); The Snows of Terror (episode 4); Sentence of Death (episode 5); The Keys of Marinus (episode 6)

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-keys-of-marinus.html

The Keys of Marinus is available on DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Keys-Marinus-DVD/dp/B002ATVDHI