Time Stream #5 - The Keys of Marinus

            One of the things I have always loved about Doctor Who is that it has never been afraid to be ambitious. When that ambition is shared by all aspects of a production, Doctor Who is matchless. When there is something, or multiple somethings, that let down the side, then you get things like "The Keys of Marinus". Perhaps if I had spread it out over six weeks, I may have not found it so plodding. But watching all six episodes in an evening, I started thinking bad things about Terry Nation.

             

            To be sure, there are ambitious roots in this story: six episodes, ranging from psychological drama to a monstrous attacking jungle to a courtroom procedural, all reads like there would be something for everyone.  This might be where the faults begin.  The production simply didn’t have the strength to get from set piece to set piece without lagging along the way. The Doctor is missing for two episodes and frankly I think he got the best of the deal.  By the time we get to episodes 5 and 6, even the perpetually good Jacqueline Hill is stumbling over lines out of what could only be sheer boredom. Hartnell’s vacation seems to have invigorated him so that by the time he returns in “Sentence of Death” he is acting circles around the rest of the cast.

             

             This isn’t to say it’s entirely dire. Just mostly. Barbara again comes off as the strongest member of the TARDIS crew in episode 2. She is the first to realize the truth of Morphoton, and she even offers Ian a consoling shoulder – “It’s alright, Ian” – when he comes around at the end of the episode. If it sounds like I’m damning with faint praise, I am. It’s in this story that I could see why Carole Ann Ford started to get disillusioned with playing Susan. Her default emotion is HYSTERIA ALL THE TIME!!! If she was like this back in Coal Hill School, she would have been less “Unearthly” and more “Please stop crying over the decimal system, Miss Foreman.”

    

        Terry Nation had said that his writing of the Daleks was a “take the money and fly like a thief” kind of work for hire. It shows if you look for it, but not badly. “Keys of Marinus” in contrast feels like it is ENTIRELY made up of “Here’s an idea  -- gotta go!!” moments. Nation gets a lot of flak as the series goes on, but I was surprised that his phoning it in started this early in his Doctor Who career. At least later he has the Daleks, the Voord are laughably bad.

    

        I love this show, warts and all. I was disappointed to find such an ungainly wart this early in the show’s history, but as one of Hartnell’s successors noted, we have to take the rough with the smooth.  I am aware that there will be rough spots to come and The Keys of Marinus is going to be a lesser road bump in comparison.  But after a high degree of quality up to this point, hitting this first stumbling block hurts a little bit. Fortunately the next story more than makes up for things...

NEXT EPISODE: The Aztecs

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