By Jessica Holmes

We’re halfway through our adventure across the planet Marinus, and we’ve seen some extraordinary sights so far: acid seas, screaming trees and brains with weird eyestalk things. Soon to come is a lot of snow, caves of ice and most extraordinary of all…a courtroom!

Let’s get stuck in, shall we?

THE SNOWS OF TERROR

We rejoin Ian and Barbara freezing on the mountainside. Fortunately for them, a trapper finds them and brings them to his cabin, where he gets them warm drinks and gives Barbara a rather tender hand-rub, ostensibly to stave off frostbite.

I don’t know enough about frostbite to say whether that’s a good treatment or not, but it did strike me as creepy.

I can’t speak for Barbara, but if I passed out on a mountainside, woke up in the cabin of a complete stranger, who then started caressing my hand, I wouldn’t have alarm bells going off in my head, it’d be an air raid siren.

They learn from the trapper that they aren’t the first to come to his cabin. He saw Altos not long ago, and aided him as he went up the mountain to look for Sabetha and Susan.

Off Ian goes to look for him, leaving Barbara with the trapper.

‘There,’ he says. ‘We’re alone.’

Oh, boy. Looks like my misgivings weren’t unfounded. Ian soon finds Altos slumped unconscious in the snow, with his wrists bound.

Back at the cabin, things are getting uncomfortable. Barbara, growing wary of the trapper, finds Sabetha’s chain as she pokes around the cabin, along with a number of wrist dials.

Barbara is ready to defend herself if the trapper tries anything, but she's got nowhere to go, and he has all the time in the world. Is this really appropriate for a family show? It’s giving me a bit of a queasy feeling.

Thankfully, Ian and Altos get back to the cabin just in the nick of time. With the trapper overpowered, Ian forces him to lead the way to where he last saw the girls, who are trapped up the mountain in an ice cave.

The group arrive to find the cave empty, so they head deeper into the labyrinthine passages to discover where Sabetha and Susan have gone. The trapper is reluctant to enter; there are demons in these caves.

Crossing a wobbly rope bridge over a crevasse, Susan and Sabetha come to a chamber, within which is a bunch of what look like medieval knights. Are these the demons the trapper was talking about? They don’t look demonic to me. The second group arrive at the same bridge, and all but the trapper cross over, meeting the girls as they come back the way they came. Hurrah!

You can see where this is going.

The trapper sees an opportunity. Everyone else is on the other side, so there’s nothing to stop him untying the other end of the bridge, leaving the others stranded.

I am shocked, shocked at his betrayal.

The group decide to look for something they can use to make a makeshift bridge, which leads them right back to the cavern with the knights/warriors/extras from the set of Becket.

They're all stood around a block of ice, and in the middle of the ice is the key. That’s handy. Half of the group work on sorting out the bridge problem, while the others see if they can find a way through the ice. Running around the ice block is a pipe which brings up hot water from volcanic springs under the mountain, melting the ice in a jiffy. Funny how these things work themselves out.

However, the key isn’t the only thing to thaw out. The knights wake up from their nap, and advance on the intruders.

Very…

Slowly.

Ian fights to delay the warriors while the others cross the crevasse with the newly-restored bridge, which seems a bit pointless given that I’m pretty sure I could outpace the warriors, and I’m barely mobile!

Back at the trapper’s cabin, he’s admiring his trinkets when the others return to reclaim their property. Fearing the consequences of his actions, the trapper flees, then comes charging back inside, screaming that the devils are on the march, and they're coming here!

The trapper gets his comeuppance at the end of a sword, and with no time to spare, it’s off to the next destination: the inside of a bank vault.

Well, that’s a bit dull.

What’s not dull, however, is what’s in it: the key!

Oh, and also a dead body.

Ian, having arrived alone (why? I’m not sure), notices the key, but as he investigates, someone clouts him over the back of the head, plants a club in his unconscious hand, and steals the key.

I didn’t enjoy this episode as much as the previous few.  It’s fine, but it’s nothing special. A lot of it felt a bit clunky, and in what is perhaps only an important metric for me, but something I weigh quite heavily in my ratings, it wasn’t as fun to write about.

3 out of 5

SENTENCE OF DEATH

Ian wakes up with a hell of a headache to find out that he's not alone. In the vault with him is a man, Tarron. However, this isn’t a friendly wake-up call. Tarron’s an investigator, and Ian’s under suspicion of murder.

Unable to convince Tarron that he didn’t commit the crime, Ian finds himself charged with murder. I was quick to yell at the television that the evidence was purely circumstantial, and do you know what, I think it must have worked, because a moment later Ian says so too.

However, we are on another planet. Here, Ian’s guilty until proven innocent.

Ian’s not totally out of luck. The others manage to find him, and what’s more, the Doctor has been brushing up on the local legal system and will serve as his representative.

Proceedings commence, and no matter where in the universe you go, the officials of the court will always wear very silly head coverings. Proceedings halt a minute later, when the Doctor submits a motion to examine the evidence before proceeding with the trial, which is granted.

I adore a good legal drama, but is the average young member of the audience going to be quite as enthusiastic?

It turns out that the murdered man was Altos' friend. He’d met up with the Doctor earlier. They'd met and arranged to get the key, but for some reason he went early. Someone else must have known about the plan and killed him before he could.

But what happened to the key? If it had been taken from the room, it would have been detected, wouldn’t it?

The Doctor has an idea about who did the killing. The solution lies in the escape plan. Rather, that there wasn’t one. The killer didn’t get away, but instead, pretended to be first on the scene. So, who did the deed? The relief guard, Ayden.

Now they've got to prove it.

Ayden’s wife Kala can’t give them any information, but when Ayden arrives home, he promptly puts his foot in his mouth by denying the amateur detectives’ assertion that they know where the key is hidden.

This is why you don’t talk to any sort of police without your solicitor with you. After Ayden’s dreadful impression of an innocent man and their ejection from the house, Susan and Barbara listen at the door, and hear Ayden strike his wife for having the gall to talk to them.

What a charmer.

The Doctor, relishing his role as lawyer, treats the court to a dramatic opening statement, then calls Sabetha to the stand. He asks if she knows where the key is, and in a clever bit of trickery, she produces one of the other keys from her pocket, bamboozling the audience.

Cue a stunned courtroom, and a flabbergasted Ayden, who Sabetha identifies as the man who gave it to her. He denies the accusation, insisting that she can’t have found the stolen key, before stopping himself with his foot already firmly lodged in his gob. He might as well run around screaming ‘I’m guilty!’

Caught up in his lie, Ayden attempts to flee the courtroom, but the guardians catch him, and as he is about to confess, there’s a bright flash, and Ayden drops down dead.

Have their hopes of finding the final key died with Ayden?

That’s something to worry about later. Let’s keep Ian’s head off the chopping block for now.

The prosecution submits that Ian made Ayden help in his scheme, and killed him to protect the secret. The judges concur, and it looks like Ian’s fate is sealed.

While this is going on, Barbara and Sabetha leave the chamber with a guardian, who delivers a message: there will be another death if they disclose where the key is truly hidden.

The phone rings, and it’s Susan on the other end. She’s in trouble!

This part of the serial had some nice twists and turns, but again I have to say I’m not sure how much a child would be likely to enjoy the courtroom scenes. Also, it rather disrupts the pacing of the story, as all the little adventures up to now have been wrapped up in a single episode, yet this story doesn’t seem to be anywhere near its conclusion.

All the same, I liked it a lot, and I’m the one with the power over the ratings, so I’ll give Sentence Of Death 4 out of 5.

THE KEYS OF MARINUS

With Susan’s life hanging in the balance, Barbara, Altos and Sabetha must find her, ideally before Ian is executed.

Ayden’s widow denies knowing anything and breaks down in tears in a touching display of grief, which ceases the moment they leave. She struts over to the closet, opening the door to reveal Susan tied to a chair. I wasn’t expecting Kala to be involved, to be honest, but that’s what makes it a good twist.

Clever Barbara realises that Kala somehow knew that she’d spoken to Susan on the telephone. But how could she? Barbara never mentioned the call to her, and Kala wasn’t with Barbara when she received the call, therefore she must have been with Susan. Barbara goes dashing back, arriving just in time to stop Kala putting an end to Susan’s short life. 

Things aren’t looking so good for Ian, however. The Doctor is all out of options. While speaking with the prosecutor, complimenting one another on their legal skill, one of the court officials enters the room, bringing the evidence for storage. There's a lingering shot of the murder weapon, the club.

Is it bad that it took up to this point for me to twig where the key is hidden?

Barbara contacts the authorities, and Kala is arrested. However, in her statement she states that Ian was her accomplice.

It’s not over yet. Susan has an ace up her sleeve: she overheard a telephone conversation between Kala and her true accomplice while in captivity. The accomplice is coming to the court to collect the key. There's an opportunity to catch him red-handed!

The Doctor watches, hidden, as an unknown figure comes into the courthouse, unlocks the evidence cabinet, and retrieves the murder weapon, inside of which is the key. I am very pleased that I managed to solve a mystery aimed at children after being all but told the answer. I am very clever.

And who is the mystery figure? None other than the prosecutor himself.

Ian’s free to go, the court allows the group to take the key, and now it’s back to Arbitan, but I don’t think they’re going to like what they’ll find.

Sabetha and Altos arrive ahead of the rest of the group, and are quickly apprehended and interrogated by the Voords. They do what they can to resist, but when Sabetha’s life is threatened, Altos cracks and admits that the Doctor has the final key.

The leader of the Voords, Yartek, begins inserting the keys into the Mind of Marinus, while another Voord heads out to find the Doctor. He’s no match for them, and the Doctor and company realise that something has gone terribly wrong. The Doctor entrusts Ian with the key, and the group splits.

Ian and Susan head to the main chamber, where they meet Yartek, who has disguised himself as Arbitan. Poorly.

To my great frustration, Ian hands him the key. I spent a good while shouting things at the television, things which I had better avoid repeating here.

So, I felt quite the fool when Ian reveals a few minutes later that he knew full well that he wasn’t speaking to Arbitan and gave the imposter the fake key he found back in The Screaming Jungle.

Inserting the key into the machine causes things to a tad wrong, by which I mean it goes boom.

With the threat dealt with, it’s time for the (frankly boring) goodbye scene. The Doctor imparts a few words of encouragement to Sabetha, who doesn’t seem as upset as you’d expect about the death of her father, and the inherent terror of the Mind of Marinus is left unexamined. The closest we get is the Doctor saying that machines shouldn’t rule over men, but that’s it.

I find that disappointing. Perhaps if the murder mystery had been confined to a single episode, there could have been a chance this episode to see the Mind of Marinus in action, and have an exploration of its virtues and drawbacks.

So, this was not the most satisfying conclusion to the story. It did the job, but that’s all.

3 out of 5 for the episode The Keys Of Marinus.

Final Thoughts

Here we are at the end of another adventure. So, what do I have to say about The Keys Of Marinus?

We’ll start with the good. I did genuinely enjoy this serial. It was a fun story, with lots of twists and turns, and for the most part very well paced, with some interesting and creative concepts on display.

However, it lacks the depth of Nation’s previous work in The Daleks. I think that this may be due to the fact that the Daleks had a Big Moral Question: is pacifism always the right choice? However, it only sustains this question because we have the same enemy and the same setting throughout, keeping the question always relevant to whatever situation the characters found themselves in.

With the exception of the first and last episodes, The Keys Of Marinus has little to do with the machine at the heart of everything, other than the keys to make it work being ‘plot tokens’. It feels like a tease to make the machine so interesting and leave it by the wayside. There aren’t even any thematic ties between the episodes that I could see, which could have served to add some depth to the story.

Is it fair to compare the two? I don’t really know. Part of me says no, that this story is meant to be more like an old adventure serial, but then another part of me asks why these thrilling adventures can’t also have depth or make us think.

I also found the first half of the serial more engaging than the second half, and I must add that I found the characters of Altos and Sabetha quite boring. They certainly participate in the plot a fair amount, but I couldn’t tell you anything about them.

Still, I did like the serial despite the issues I had with it, which are quite minor in the grand scheme of things (it’s certainly no The Edge Of Destruction), and I don’t think they’d make a lick of difference to the younger members of the audience.

Time to tally up the scores, leaving us with 3.75 for The Keys of Marinus as a whole.

Until the next adventure then, and looking forward to more stories from Terry Nation, ta-ta for now.

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1964, dr. who, the keys of marinus, jessica holmes, science fiction, television, united kingdom, terry nation