The Keys of Marinus (Episode 6)

The one where we discover a secret romance...

Ooh, it's one of those rare occasions where an episode has the same title as the overall serial. I think it only happens three other times (five times if you include An Unearthly Child and The Edge of Destruction - some people do, including the BBC!) - for Planet of Giants, The Web Planet and The Space Museum.

Anyway, we rejoin Barbara, Altos and Sabetha, who must try to rescue the kidnapped Susan while the Doctor focuses on releasing Ian. There's a wonderful moment where the trio announce they're going to go to Kala's house to question her, and in the very next shot, Fiona Walker is opening the door to Jacqueline Hill, who looks a little flustered to be in the next scene so quickly! Walker (who gives good value for money as the unhinged Lady Peinforte in Silver Nemesis) is fabulous as Kala, bringing all her Shakespearean experience to the fore. She feigns mourning at the loss of Aydan, but as soon as her visitors are gone, reveals her true duplicitous self, and goads the gagged Susan in the next room.

But as deliciously evil as Kala is, she's just as stupid as her late husband, as she gives herself away to Barbara by revealing that she knows Susan spoke to her on the phone. This is obviously a Terry Nation staple, because used once, it's effective, but used three times in two episodes, it just smacks of lazy writing (in Sentence of Death, Aydan accidentally reveals he knows where the micro-key is hidden, while later this episode, Yartek makes out that "Arbitan" doesn't know who Altos is, when of course he should!).

Kala ultimately gets her comeuppance though, when Barbara and Altos apprehend her just before she intends killing Susan. But Kala isn't done yet - she gives a full confession, admitting that it was she who murdered Aydan (double bitchery!) but claiming that Ian was her accomplice! Triple bitchery! I know Lady Peinforte was pretty unpleasant, but I think Kala wins in the out-and-out evil stakes. As Tarron says, she is a "vicious, dangerous woman".

This brief moment of panic for Ian's safety is soon thwarted, however, when our heroes set a trap for the real bad guy, Eyesen. It's interesting that actor Donald Pickering said in an interview once that he couldn't remember doing this story (he was also in The Faceless Ones and Time and the Rani). I suppose it was only two weeks work, but while Eyesen isn't a very three-dimensional character, he is the villain after all, so I'm surprised Pickering had no memory!

"Whoopee!" exclaims Susan. "Now we can go and join Altos and Sabetha!" Hold on, "whoopee"? Who ever said that word in the history of spoken language outside the realms of comic strips? Long gone is John Lucarotti's intelligent scripting of Susan, who used 60s lingo such as "fab" and "I dig it" in Marco Polo. Nation depicts Susan as a very naive and immature teenager, mentally younger than her years. It's a shame, because we know this inconsistency in characterisation was what ultimately led Carole Ann Ford to leave the show.

Our heroes try to explain the magic of their travel dials to Tarron and Larn (who, incidentally, make for a very handsome pair, don't you think?). "Show them," says the Doctor, so Ian, Susan and Barbara search for the closest black background in order to affect their demonstration. Once they've all popped off, Tarron and Larn are left wondering at their disappearance, very much in the same vein as the traditional TARDIS dematerialisation at the end of a story, with the surviving guest characters watching on in wonderment. Then, Tarron reminds Larn (and the audience) that the Doctor and his friends are taking the keys back to Arbitan and the Conscience machine. Ah yes, Arbitan, who we last saw being assaulted by a Voord. Is he OK? At least Sabetha will be reunited with her father at last...

"Arbitan is dead! I, Yartek, am in control now!" Oh.

The Voords are so wasted in this serial. They only appear in the first and last episodes, but those costumes were so striking, and were probably quite expensive to run up, that they could quite easily have been written in to the intervening episodes, perhaps as a party pursuing the Doctor and friends, rather like The Chase would be the following year. I'm not sure how well Voord flippers would cope on ice in The Snows of Terror, however, because they have enough trouble on flat floors in the pyramid. There's a classic goof when a Voord brings Sabetha in to see Yartek and his flipper gets caught in the door!

Voord leader Yartek has taken control, donning Arbitan's cloak in order to impersonate him when the Doctor and co turn up with the keys. We also learn that, apparently, Altos and Sabetha are in love, and have been all along. News to me! They've barely exchanged a word for the last five episodes, but then unexpected proclamations of love between two previously remote characters is something Doctor Who will return to, and much more awkwardly too (I'm glaring at The Myth Makers and The Invasion of Time here).

The scene where the Doctor is reunited with the others in the corridor is delightful, and shows what great chemistry the four actors had at this point. Our heroes then divide their resources, and Ian and Susan go to see Arbitan, quickly figuring out that something's wrong. "Arbitan" claims to have a deadly disease, which means his voice has changed, he can't show his hands and he must have his hood up at all times to hide his face. Not suspicious behaviour at all, Yartek! I love the bit where Ian throws the key to the ground for Yartek to pick up, and we briefly glimpse William Russell checking that the key has landed in camera shot!

But suspicious Ian has given Yartek Darrius's false key from The Screaming Jungle (very clever plotting there, actually) and Altos says that the Conscience machine will explode when it's inserted. William Hartnell takes his cue too early at this point, and rushes off set, trying to take the others with him, even though Robin Phillips hasn't finished his lines yet! Phillips and Russell insist on completing the scene, despite Hartnell's premature departure!

And so we have pleasant farewells outside the TARDIS, just like Nation had in The Rescue, accentuating the writer's cookie-cutter approach to structuring The Keys of Marinus (remember all those similarities I mentioned in The Sea of Death?). Hartnell gets a lovely scene with Katharine Schofield about the death of Arbitan and how his work will go on, but Sabetha seems so unmoved by her father's demise that it carries no weight. It seems lovebirds Altos and Sabetha plan to return to Millennius and start their life anew, presumably to marry (but who will give Sabetha away?).

"Oh dear, I will miss them," claims Barbara, as Ian pats her gently on the shoulder and beckons her inside the TARDIS. I'm really not sure why anybody would miss Altos or Sabetha as they're such wet lettuces who hung around for five episodes not doing very much. Nevertheless I think I'll miss Robin Phillips's magnificent thighs. It'll be a while until we see a bare thigh in Doctor Who again...

(Side note: Altos leaves the spare key to the Doctor, so I wonder what he did with it? It would be prime material for a sequel of some sort, but we never get one, not in the TV series anyway. The Doctor does encounter the Voords again (on audio and in comic strips), but we still await a rematch with these deadly rubber foes in the programme proper, over half a century later...)

The Keys of Marinus as a whole is a great quest serial with a changing location every week, and a number of guest characters along the way. Sadly, Nation writes more incident than character, and the likes of Sabetha, Altos, Darrius and Eyesen never really get into three dimensions. There's some great villainy from Vasor and Kala, though, and although the pace flags sometimes, the changing face of the serial keeps viewers on their toes. I used to think of The Keys of Marinus is a rather shoddy story, but watching with fresh eyes, it's only really The Sea of Death which fails. A perfectly enjoyable romp which smacks of Nation's trademark Flash Gordon-style adventuring.

First broadcast: May 16th, 1964

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: I really love that tiny scene where the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan reunite in the pyramid corridor. It seems so natural, fluid, a little bit ad-libbed, and speaks volumes about how close this cast had become. Also, I like how Nation brings the false key back into play.
The Bad: If Katharine Schofield had been a better actor, she'd have risen to the quality of the scene with Hartnell at the end. It's not simply that Nation didn't write Sabetha well: a good actor can still turn in a good performance with poor material. Schofield, almost without exception over the course of five episodes, is simply poor.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (story average: 7.2 out of 10)

NEXT TIME: The Temple of Evil...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: The Sea of Death (episode 1); The Velvet Web (episode 2); The Screaming Jungle (episode 3); The Snows of Terror (episode 4); Sentence of Death (episode 5)

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