Doctor Who Rewind - The Keys Of Marinus

At the beginning of this Six part Terry Nation story, the Doctor and his travellers find themselves transported into a plot the resembles a computer game straight out of the eighties. If you think of classic computer game Manic Miner, you've almost got the plot of this one.

Five keys must be collected from four very different geographical areas of planet Marinus, which, by the way, has an acid sea and a glass beach. Not then, the kind of place you would want to go for your summer holidays.

These micro keys need to be collected in order for the computer, which holds the conscience of Marinus,(a kind of justice system), to be powered up. Why I here you cry? Well it seems the nasty amphibian Voord creatures (who either have a fetish for rubber wet suits or are starting a new diving fashion craze) have adapted to the conscience of the computer over thousands of years and are now threatening to overthrow the the planet with their rubbery goings on.

These keys were hidden many years back by Arbitan (the keeper of the computer) as a precaution to stop the Voord from taking back their power. Now it seems, they needed to be found so the computer can be upgraded and therefore stop the wet suited mask wearing rubberised monsters from regaining their power.

At first Hartnell refuses to do do Arbitans bidding but then when a force-field is placed around TARDIS, forcing some pretty ropey mime acting from the regulars, the Doctor has no choice but to comply.

One thing I did notice through out this story is how relaxed and chatty the TARDIS crew seem to be with one another. Have they been smoking pot? It's like their out to have a lovely picnic in the Lake District or something, so eager are they to get out of the TARDIS and explore this new world, despite the consequences.

Nation decided to go with quite a disjointed way of telling the story,despite it having an overall objective, the episodes are pretty much self contained stories in there own right.

There's the Velvet Web in which the travellers are bestowed riches and luxury but which turns out to be a hypnotic trance induced nightmare.

And the Screaming Jungle with its booby traps and dangerous foliage. It seems famed director Sam Raimi may have been influenced by the scene where Barbara gets her leg grappled by a fairly limp tree branch, for his celebrated 1980's film The Evil Dead. He just took the idea to the next level.

Its clear in this episode that the budget was severely retrained when you see that they had to resort to using a real pair of hands in the scene where Barbara examines a statue that grabs her. In fact throughout the story it's clear the fantastical ideas just could not be realised by the set designers, despite having tried their best.

The Snows of Terror don't really look terrifyingly cold. In fact they look positively balmy. Just how much polystyrene packaging they had to save up for that episode baffles me. Then there's the overgrown ape like trapper who tries to have his way with poor old Barbara. And I'm sure the cling film lined ice caves in which the key seekers find the frozen ice soldiers looked great on 1960's tv's but not brilliant on my 40".

One thing I've really been enjoying since i started watching these early DW's is the episode titles , some have been quite poetic. So I decided to try a few of my own making...

The path of pandemonium
The garden of grief
The car park of chaos
The alleyway of awkwardness
The tea shop of terror
The motorway of madness
The dual carriageway of destiny.

For two episodes the Doctor is absent completely (as in real life he was off on his hols). Therefore the show is completely carried by the rest of the crew, it's an idea DW will return to later in its life.

When Hartnell does return he looks much better for the break. And is raring to get on with things. Things like defending Ian against a sentence of death. Yes, loveable Ian has got himself right in the brown stuff when he is framed for murder. Ah, but don't worry the Doctor races to his rescue by becoming his defence lawyer. It's like Murder She Wrote in space. "Trust me", the Doctor tells Ian. Yes this coming from a man who several weeks ago was ready to kill a caveman in cold blood. And, if that's not enough poor Ian has to wait for his death sentence to be carried out in a room which sports a timepiece that makes an annoying beeping sound every second. It never rains when it pours!

Overall it's a shame that so many ideas were crammed into this story. Because they just couldn't be realised on screen. With budget constraints and a disjointed format I think this story just doesn't deliver where say, Marco Polo and the Daleks does. Perhaps if it were to be re-made now it would do much better.

In the next Doctor Who Rewind Barbara gets mistaken for a god in 15th century Mexico. Quick scarper, its the bloody Aztecs.