Like "The Android Invasion", "The Keys of Marinus" will always have a quasi-trivia position in the memories of fans, as a Terry Nation story which doesn't have Daleks in it. These tend to show up the writer's limitations, and there's always that nagging feeling of 'this might have been a little bit more interesting if the Daleks were in it instead of the Kraals/Voord'.

As if his debut serial hadn't already illustrated the point, "The Keys of Marinus" firmly shows Terry Nation up as a man of very simple ideas. In this case, we have a "quest" narrative, with the TARDIS crew tramping around the planet of Marinus looking for four microcircuit "keys" for a machine to control the evil Voord. The effect is to break the story up into several smaller chunks. This is potentially very interesting, and the idea of the keys being dispersed over Marinus is just about believable enough to make it a valid idea.

The problem is most of these narratives are as tacky as Hell. None of them really have the interest to take up the amount of screen-time they are allotted, and none of them are particularly interesting. The excuse for this globe-trotting extravaganza is that Arbitan has to recover the keys for the Conscience, a big computer that keeps the peace on Marinus, to stop the Voord from doing the same and subjugating the planet. The crew originally aren't up for this one bit, but sadly Arbitan has put a forcefield around the TARDIS, and they're blackmailed into going (something they take rather well, it has to be said, usually talking fondly of Arbitan).

The first is the journey to the city of Morphoton. This is a place where the inhabitants are brainwashed into believing they are being given everything they want, when they aren't. It's so predictable that alarm bells should be ringing the minute they see Barbara being waited on by a drugged-up pillock in a toga. It turns out the city's being controlled by a few brains with eyes in jars, and that's somehow meant to be some sort of explanation. How exactly did some optically-blessed brains get into jars and place conditioning discs on people's foreheads in the first place, then? Why is Barbara randomly immune to being conditioned (is it because of her awesome hair?)? These are questions Nation doesn't bother answering, most likely because he doesn't have a clue himself. About the only real fun to be had is poking fun at the budget - when we see Barbara drinking out of a glass, we see the illusions. However when The Doctor is taken to his state-of-the-art laboratory we just happen to see reality, meaning that rather than constructing a Cyclotron or anything the props boys can just chuck a dirty mug onto a pasting table. You can almost see Nation's annotations on the submitted script pointing this out…

In Morphoton the crew pick up generic stragglers Altos and Sabetha, both sent by Arbitan for the same reason. There's no depth to these characters whatsoever, and the actors certainly aren't going to extend themselves to provide it. They mainly serve to have a little local knowledge, and to replace whichever of the leads are on holiday. The sequence in Morphoton is capped by a blissfully awkward sequence where The Doctor decides to leap two destinations head alone, for no readily apparent reason. It's hilarious, because Nation or David Whittaker have Susan cross-section him about the logic of this plan, and there isn't any, Hartnell's just got a fortnight off.

The next location is a jungle area. Screaming jungle, to be precise. This is even more half-baked, starting off with a comedy trap (a statue with a stagehand's arms that gets to grope Jacqueline Hill), then a comedy lunatic in the shape of Darrius, who's accelerated plants so they kill people. Why? God only knows. Terry Nation certainly hasn't a clue.

Next up it's a snowscape, home of manipulative fur trader Vasor. It's as dull as ditch-water, mainly notable for Ian trading his travel dial, his only means of travel, for a small piece of fur that covers his shoulders. It's terribly uninteresting, with Vasor having no motive beyond being a bastard and taking up 20 minutes of the narrative.

Both of these sequences are relatively brief, though again they overstay their welcome (to be blunt, they do this by simply existing, that they take about an episode each is the equivalent of a someone turning up unannounced, eating all your food, stubbing out cigarettes on your cat and raping your firstborn). The final 'quest' segment sees Ian accused of murder and shop-lifting in the justice-driven city of Millenius. However, once we've had the 'twist' (in Millenius, you're guilty until proven innocent - it's insane), it quickly turns into an overwrought murder mystery, and a waste of time. It also has possibly the worst scene in Who history as Tarron delivers a hugely stilted variation on the "how are we going to fudge this paperwork?" skit to a cohort.

The wrap-up is similarly dreary, pitting our heroes against the massively unthreatening Voord, led by Yartek. The Voord are already semi-legendary, a bunch of poor sods thrown into wetsuits with Teletubby headpieces, and expected to seem threatening when waddling around.

The story is riddled with sub-movie serial ideas - brains in jars, acid seas, glass submarines, psychometric testing (which is proven to be totally useless…), frozen knights, rotating walls (something of a motif… why exactly does Arbitan surround the Conscience with these, beyond providing disappearing-people capers?), killer plants and meaningless formulae. Everyone's basically human. The whole thing is also dirt-cheap, even by 1960s Who standards, with the artic landscape consisting largely of stock footage, the Guardians dressed, basically, as policemen, the rebellion of the people of Morphotron happening off-screen and the Voord only appearing a couple at a time.

John Gorrie appears to have taken one look at the script, and decided that a minimum of finesse is what's called for. It takes ages for anyone to cotton on to anything - Vasor's obvious shiftiness, Kala's clumsy slip of the tongue, Yartek's hilariously off-key impersonation of Arbitan - it all just succeeds in making the crew look stupid. The regulars aren't brilliant, only William Russell really coming off well (with Ian now firmly ensconced as a science teacher-cum-one man army). William Hartnell is all over the place early on, seemingly stuffing up every other line and throwing everyone else off. He's better when back from holiday, giving a good performance in the courtroom scenes in Millenius, but it's difficult to accept him as such a passenger in the story (although much of the Season 1 material is more ensemble than any other Doctor Who, regardless of ill-based criticism of the 'Davison soap'). Jacqueline Hill is adequate, doing a respectable job of scant material (she's generally rescue-fodder for Ian, and Barbara suffers more than the rest from the script making her look stupid, as if paying her back for her immunity in Morphotron). And Carole Ann Ford? She just screams and squeals and grumbles.

Some elements of "The Keys of Marinus" have an aura of Plan 9 from Outer Space to them, but the whole thing's just far too dull to even be enjoyable on that level. There's a feeling to it that everyone concerned just wanted the story out of the way with a minimum of effort and care, and as such "The Keys of Marinus" is a test of endurance, rather than a source of enjoyment.

Review written: 26/11/06
"The Keys of Marinus" VHS @ Amazon.co.uk