1.5: The Keys of Marinus
- Doctor: William Hartnell
- Companions: Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright
- Creators: Verity Lambert (Producer), Terry Nation (Writer)
- Season 1
What's the rating?
Endless crap.
What's interesting about it?
A sprawling mess of a story crammed with ideas and themes bumping against each other: Acid sea; glass submarines; priests protecting an omniscient computer that provides the perfect society through mind control; The Doctor as Perry Mason.
Evil brains-with-eyestalks in jars.
No, really.
Some interesting visuals, swamped by cheap sets and sloppy filming and directing. The actors don't seem to be trying very hard either, especially in the first episode; their amateurish mime routine while pretending there's an invisible force field around the TARDIS is particularly embarrassing.
William Hartnell, wanting a vacation, disappears for two of the six episodes.
The plot -- requiring the obtaining of a batch of keys, one at a time -- would come back later in the Tom Baker series of episodes known asThe Key to Time.
The first episode is pure alien planet science fiction, while the second inexplicably veers into being a historical, and by the third we're in a jungle setting. Then, already exhausted with changes of setting, we're off to a snowy forest and ice caves, and finally to a fascistic society and courtroom. There are so many sets that they had about 50 cents for each, and it shows. The man in charge of the sets, who called it "the most unloved" story, on being asked if he was proud of anything they accomplished: "Am I proud of anything in The Keys of Marinus ? I can really say…no."
Susan -- Carole Ann Ford having been originally hired on the promise of having an exciting intelligent female role a la The Avengers -- completes her transformation into a simpering wimp in this story, screaming about some little thing ever few minutes until someone comes to take care of things for her. Each time Carole Ann Ford has to scream in a story, I cringe, knowing what's it's doing to her inside, and how it will drive this fine actress from the series prematurely.
Nothing to see here. Move on.
How can I see it anyway?