The Keys of Marinus

My name is SkyRider and I'm a Doctor Who fan.

(murmured response): Hello, SkyRider.

By that I don't mean a fan of the new glitzy, sassy series (though I do like it) but the old traditional long-scarves-and-jelly-babies-and-you-have-no-friends-except-your-anorak style of Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on 23rd November 1963 so is coming up to its fiftieth anniversary - I'm one of the few people that remembers the date of the Kennedy assassination by remembering that it was the day before Doctor Who hit the airwaves.

So why am I telling you this and what's it all got to do with a bunch of keys? Well, November is the eleventh month of the year and eleven actors have (officially) played the Doctor over the years so I thought I'd go back through the DVD collection and pick one adventure from each Doctor, watch one a month (first Doctor in January, second in February and so on) and (if I can find something sensible to say) briefly review it.

This month I watched The Keys of Marinus starring William Hartnell. The story sees the TARDIS landing on the planet of Marinus in the middle of a conflict; the elderly Arbitan cares for a machine called the Conscience of Marinus, a device designed to control the minds of all those on the planet to act in a decent and moral manner at all times. Sadly the device is broken and four vital parts (the Keys) are scattered about the planet. Free from the machine's influence, the evil Voords are mounting an attack on Arbitan's stronghold with the intention of using the Conscience to make everybody do their nefarious bidding instead. Arbitan blackmails the Doctor into locating the Keys and bringing them back so he can activate the machine and subdue the Voords before they take over.

It shows how much society has changed in the last fiftyish years (the adventure was broadcast in 1964) that the Doctor had no problem siding with Arbitan - if the story were to be revisited today, the Doctor would probably side with the Voords in promoting freedom. It's also interesting to see the way pacing has changed over the years. In the 60's, people would only have watched the programme as it was broadcast - one episode a week, no pause or repeat buttons. There had to be a great deal of repetition so if you were away for a week you could get back into the narrative without feeling that you had missed much. Because of this, old TV serials (not just Doctor Who) have a tendency to feel a bit sluggish to modern eyes.

The Keys of Marinus has a way around this though. In effect, each episode is self contained, concerning itself with the search for a particular key. This meant that there was very little story arc spilling over from one episode to the next and viewers weren't heavily penalised for not recalling the previous week's events.

After four adventures, the cast are beginning to settle into their roles and there are some great set pieces in this adventure. They're somewhat marred by the habit at the time of shooting 'as live' retaining the actors' fluffed lines but a strong story and some great performances make up for it. If I had to mark it out of ten I'd give it a six.

The actual Keys are small electronic circuits but since it's less than a week since I posted a photo of one of those I thought I'd take the title a bit more literally...