The Keys of Marinus

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005 - The Keys of Marinus
Doctor	William Hartnell (First Doctor)
Writer	Terry Nation
Director	John Gorrie
Script editor	David Whitaker
Producer	Verity Lambert Mervyn Pinfield (associate producer)
Executive producer(s)	None
Production code	E
Length	6 episodes, 25 mins each
Transmission date	April 11–May 16, 1964
Preceded by	Marco Polo
Followed by	The Aztecs
IMDb profile

The Keys of Marinus is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in 6 weekly parts from April 11 to May 16, 1964.

1 Synopsis
2 Plot
3 Cast
- 3.1 Cast notes
4 Production
5 In print
6 Broadcast and VHS release
7 External links
- 7.1 Reviews
- 7.2 Target novelisation

[edit] Synopsis

The planet Marinus is under threat from the evil Voord. The only hope of stopping them is to recover the keys to a machine known as the Conscience of Marinus, which have been hidden around the planet. The First Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara are forced to search for the keys in a variety of dangerous locations in order to restore order to Marinus.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The Morpho Brain Creatures - one of the challenges in collecting the Keys of Marinus

On a small island with a glass beach surrounded by an acid sea on the planet Marinus, stands a tower with many secret entrances. Within is Arbitan, Keeper of the Conscience of Marinus, a vast computer developed two millennia earlier as a vast justice machine which kept law and order across the entire planet. For seven hundred years it was absolute, radiating its power across the planet and eliminating all thought of evil, but then a Voord named Yartek worked out how to resist its impulses. When the First Doctor and his companions Barbara Wright, Ian Chesterton and Susan Foreman arrive of the island they are brought into the tower to an audience with Arbitan, who explains that the society of Marinus is in danger. Several submersibles have washed up on the beach outside containing Voord, humanoid creatures protected by black rubber wet suits, which seem amphibian. Inspired by Yartek the Voord are seeking to enter the tower and take control of the Conscience. Arbitan explains that the Conscience has now been upgraded sufficiently to control the Voord again and needs to be activated, but years earlier he prevented it falling into Voord control by separating the five keys needed to regulate it. The five keys are in different locations - one is in his possession but the other four are scattered over Marinus – and can only be found by following directions pre-set into travel dials which he hands out. The dials have the power to transport the time travelers across the planet to the correct locations, and he asks that the Doctor and his friends help him by gathering the keys together. Other have tried to accomplish this, even Arbitan's own daughter, but none have returned. The Doctor refuses the request but is then denied access to the TARDIS and so forced to set off on the quest. As the four companions' teleport away using the dials, Arbitan is overcome by a Voord that has gained access to the tower and stabbed to death.

The first location visited by the travelers is the City of Morphoton. Seemingly advanced and pacifist inhabitants impress the travelers with the luxuries, advances and aesthetics of the city, but all is not as it seems. Barbara is the first to see the truth when she resists a powerful hypnotic pulse and is able to see that the City is really a place of dirt and squalor. It is governed by four brain creatures in large bell jars, with hideous eyes on stalks, and communicates through their life-support machines. The Brains of Morphoton use hypnosis to control the entire city, having outgrown their bodies, and the entire human population of the city is now subjugated to their will. Barbara is imprisoned but there makes contact with a slave girl called Sabetha, whom she deduces is Arbitan’s missing daughter, and who wears one of the Keys about her neck. Barbara helps break her conditioning and together they escape and destroy the jars and equipment protecting the brains. With the life-support ruined, they die, and all the human subjects of the city are freed. Another slave called Altos remembers he too was sent to the city by Arbitan, and he and Sabetha decide to join the Doctor and his friends on their quest. The six now split up, with the Doctor going ahead to find the final key in the city of Millennius, while the others venture to find the second key in the next destination.

The next location for the five searchers is a dangerous screaming jungle, which has a particularly debilitating effect on the telepathic Susan. In the jungle is an ancient temple overgrown with plants. Much of the flora is hostile and the travellers are relieved to find the next Key so easily, propped on the top of a statue in the temple. However, this is a fake and, when touched, activates ancient machinery that causes the statues to move. Indeed, the whole temple is a place of danger and traps. When Barbara is caught in the mechanism and disappears Ian decides she may have gone on to the next location and so sends Altos, Sabetha and Susan after her while he remains to search for the Key. No sooner that they are gone than Ian finds Barbara again. Hidden in the temple is an aged and dying scientist, Darrius, whom Ian saves from an attack by a creeper. Very weak, the old man explains the traps of the temple are to fool the Voord, and that he too is a friend of Arbitan. Before dying he tells Ian and Barbara the Key is hidden in "D-E-3-O-2". With the plants becoming more aggressive as the moments pass, mutated by a growth accelerator built by Darrius, the two friends only just manage to retrieve the Key from an experiment jar before the vegetation over-runs the room.

Ian and Barbara now teleport to an icy wasteland where they meet the duplicitous trapper Vasor, who steals their Keys and sends Ian back into the wastelands where he hopes he will be eaten by packs of wolves. In the wastes Ian finds Altos, bound and abandoned, and works out Vasor is to blame. Ian and Altos return to the trapper’s hut and confront him, forcing the wicked man to reveal the stolen Keys in his possession and to take them to the ice caves where he had earlier abandoned Sabetha and Susan. The two girls have meanwhile searched the icy caves themselves and uncovered mechanized Ice Soldiers. The travelers are soon reunited and find the next Key frozen in a block of ice. Their act in removing it revives the Ice Soldiers, who begin a vicious rampage. They flee back to the trappers' cottage and retrieve their stolen dials, getting ready to escape. Vassor takes Susan hostage and demands that they stay. An Ice Soldier stabs him down from behind and they escape.

When the travelers reach the next location Ian finds himself accused of the murder of Eprin, a friend of Altos, who had discovered the key shortly before his death. The Key has now disappeared and Ian is accused of theft and Eprin’s murder. The punishment will be death if he found guilty before the court of Millennius. The other travelers are reunited in advance of Ian’s trial, at which the Doctor takes on the role of defense counsel. He succeeds in postponing the trial for two days while he gathers evidence and uses this time to work out what really happened to Eprin. He works out that the relief guard, Aydan, is implicated in the murder, but Aydan too is murdered during the course of the trial before he can reveal the truth of the plot. Things take a turn for the worse when Susan is kidnapped and used as a hostage to try and persuade the Doctor not to investigate the crimes any further. The kidnapper is Kala, Aydan’s widow, who is in league with Eyesen, the Court Prosecutor, who has succeeded in persuading the Three Judges of Millennium to find Ian guilty of Eprin’s murder. Luckily, the others find Susan before Kala can kill her, like she did to her own husband, and the plot is uncovered. Tarron, the Chief Investigator of the City, is now also persuaded of Kala’s guilt but they must still uncover her accomplice to prove Ian did not kill Eprin. The Doctor helps unmask Eyesen and uncover the last Key, which had been hidden in the murder weapon, and Ian is freed.

The travelers now return to Arbitan’s island using their travel dials. Altos and Sabetha have traveled ahead with all but the last Key in their possession. They do not know the old Keeper is dead and that Yartek is now in charge, clothed in Arbitan’s robes to maintain the ruse. Yartek has seized the first four Keys and holds Altos and Sabetha prisoner while he awaits the fifth and final one. When the Doctor and his three friends arrive they soon realize that the Voord has taken over control of the tower and the Conscience. The false Arbitan seems to be in control, but the Doctor is cleverer. He frees Sabetha and Altos and then unmasks the Voord. Ian too has played his part, and given Yartek the false key from the Screaming Jungle. When Yartek places the false Key in the Conscience, the machine explodes and he is killed along with the occupying Voord. The Doctor and his friends flee the tower with Altos and Sabetha before the growing blaze overtakes the ancient structure.

[edit] Cast

Dr. Who — William Hartnell
Ian Chesterton — William Russell
Barbara Wright — Jacqueline Hill
Susan Foreman — Carole Ann Ford
Arbitan — George Coulouris
Voord / Warrior / Ice Soldier / Aydan — Martin Cort
Voord / Ice Soldier / Second Judge — Peter Stenson
Voord — Gordon Wales
Altos — Robin Phillips
Sabetha — Katharine Schofield
Voice of Morpho — Heron Carvic
Darrius — Edmund Warwick
Vasor — Francis de Wolff
Ice Soldier / Larn — Michael Allaby
Ice Soldier / First Judge / Guard — Alan James
Ice Soldier — Anthony Verner
Tarron — Henley Thomas
Senior Judge — Raf de la Torre
Kala — Fiona Walker
Eyesen — Donald Pickering
Yartek, Leader of the alien Voord — Stephen Dartnell
Eprin — Dougie Dean

[edit] Cast notes

The Doctor himself does not appear in episodes three and four of this story, due to William Hartnell having been on holiday.
Stephen Dartnell was cast as Yartek, the Voord leader. A few weeks later, he appeared in The Sensorites as the troubled astronaut John.

[edit] Production

The six episodes of this serial had individual titles. They were, respectively, "The Sea of Death", "The Velvet Web", "The Screaming Jungle", "The Snows of Terror", "Sentence of Death" and "The Keys of Marinus".

[edit] In print

Doctor Who and the Keys of Marinus
Doctor Who book

Series	Target novelisations
Release number	38
Writer	Philip Hinchcliffe
Cover artist	David McAllister
ISBN	0 426 20125 6
Release date	21 August 1980
Preceded by	Doctor Who and the Armageddon Factor
Followed by	Doctor Who and the Nightmare of Eden

A novelisation of this serial, written by Philip Hinchcliffe, was published by Target Books in 1980. According to the title page of this book, the original title of the serial was Doctor Who and the Sea of Death.