Review of The Keys of Marinus (#5)
DVD Release Date: 05 Jan 10
Original Air Date: 11 Apr – 16 May 1964
Doctors/Companions: One, Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright
Stars: William Hartnell, Carole Ann Ford, William Russell, Jacqueline Hill
Preceding Story: Marco Polo (One, Susan, Ian, Barbara)
Succeeding Story: The Aztecs (One, Susan, Ian, Barbara)
For the third installment of this series on Stories with a Bad Reputation, we turn to the oft-overlooked, fifth-ever serial The Keys of Marinus. In overall rankings, it doesn’t generally sink all the way to the bottom, but it almost always ends up in the lowest tier, rarely rising into the top half.
I’m sure part of that dismissal is due to the fact that it is, after all, a Hartnell story, and many fans—especially those who grew up on a faster-paced, all-color style of televisual storytelling—struggle to get through stories from this era. Further, it comes between the lost-but-much-revered Marco Polo and The Aztecs, perhaps my favorite First Doctor adventure. It’s hardly fair to ask Keys to compete with them, and yet there we are.
Despite being the neglected middle child, though, Keys has its own brand of charm. It’s a quirky little story that, in its own way, reminds me of the Fourth Doctor series The Key to Time (TKtT) that would come some fifteen years later. It begins with a setup wherein our TARDIS team is tasked with collecting several pieces of a larger whole necessary to save the planet Marinus (here, to restore a worldwide climate of law and order; to restore the balance of the universe, in TKtT), then takes them off to disparate adventures in each episode as they collect the items.
What we get is thus several little one-off plots with only the presence of a microkey as a through-line. Further, it allows for various cast members to have some time off (notably, the Doctor is not in three of the six episodes), and for some serious don’t-split-the-party hijinks. After (unwillingly) accepting their task, the TARDIS crew visit a luxurious, highly advanced society; an ominous, booby-trapped jungle; a frigid, wolf-infested mountain; and a city with a strict legal system that ascribes to the philosophy that a criminal is “guilty until proven innocent”—unfortunately for Ian, who is accused of murder. It is in this last where the Doctor rejoins them, coming in to serve as Ian’s legal counsel.
In each of these locations, our heroes encounter different challenges, with poor Susan usually getting the short end of the stick. Both Barbara and Ian get their chances to save the day along the way, and the Doctor begins to show signs of the clever clogs persona we later know and love. The result is a perfectly serviceable story that actually ends a little abruptly, given the amount of time that’s gone into tracking down the various keys. But it’s consistent with the style of the time, and works well enough.
So why do some people look down their noses at Keys? My best guess is that it’s a combination of factors: a First Doctor/black-and-white story doesn’t appeal to as many fans, the larger arc isn’t super compelling, the collection of each key is such a short snippet as to get lost among the hundreds of episodes out there, and it’s plopped between two much bigger hitters. In other words, it’s just plain mediocre.
If this isn’t a story you’ve had the chance to see, I do recommend it. There are some interesting twists, and plenty of great Ian and Barbara moments. Of course, you can also always be on the lookout for the famous Hartnell flubs (none of which are too egregious here), and some lapses in judgement by characters who ought to know better. If you have a hard time with this era, there are certainly other adventures I’d recommend first, but I wouldn’t dismiss Keys out of hand; it is better than its reputation (or lack thereof) suggests.
I had not idea that The Keys of Marinus had such a poor reputation. I’ve always enjoyed it – sure, it does not reach the heights of Marco Polo as far as we can tell from the audio, but it is a solid bit of entertainment with the original TARDIS crew.
The story’s flaws and strengths are largely the same thing – that for 60’s Doctor Who, it was pretty fast paced, but lacking in depth with its effective single 25-minute story narrative, as they kept jumping from location and story to new location and story. This narrative is also amazing in how well it coped with actors being on holiday.
Sure it is a Terry Nation script and lacks the charms of The Daleks, but I’ve always seen The Keys of Marinus as nothing but a strong Doctor Who story. I think it only suffers in relation to how strong the entire first season was. Compare and contrast it to, say, the worst of seasons 9 or 15, which are not usually considered terribly bad seasons.
I honestly think that the entire William Hartnell era stands up very well and I don’t quite understand the revisionist movement who seem to be looking for issues with it and give the impression of inventing them when they can’t find any – see Twice Upon a Time. The Web Planet is a bit of a mess, until you learn to love the Zarbi running into the studio camera. But generally, it is my favourite period of the entire series and it only grows stronger as it continues – oh for more of season 3 existing, which gives the impression of being one of (if not the) high points of the entire series.
Oh, speaking of revisionist First Doctor things… I highly recommend the “Sara Kingdom trilogy” in the Companion Chronicles from Big Finish. Gah – they were just on sale too, so my apologies for not posting that a few weeks ago, but there was nothing relevant to do so with.
Anyway, the trilogy is “Home Truths”, “The Drowned World” and “The Guardian of the Solar System” (listening to or reading the novelization of The Dalek Master Plan beforehand is recommended). I was rather skeptical of the Companion Chronicles, but I honestly believe that this trilogy alone justifies the existence of the entire Big Finish range, not just the CCs.
I never imagined a convincing way of bringing Sara Kingdom back, but they managed to do so in a way that worked really well and is really quite bizarre (which I also like).
I’ll have to look into that BF trilogy. I don’t tend to enjoy audio quite as much (I’m not a good auditory learner, so that story format is harder for me to process, though I do still like them), but that’s a strong recommendation.
I think “received fan wisdom” is kind of cyclical: sometimes one Doctor’s era is passé, and another time it’s de rigueur. That may well be the case with the First Doctor. Personally I’m quite fond of these early seasons, but I also know that some fans consider them nigh unwatchable.
Maybe it all depends on which subset of fandom one asks! 🙂