Sci-Fi Review: Doctor Who and The Keys of Marinus by Philip Hinchcliffe (1980, Target Books)

Note: All images appearing in this article are scanned from my own sources unless otherwise noted.

It's been five months since I reviewed the novelization of Doctor Who and An Unearthly Child, the first Doctor Who story broadcast, and the sixty-eighth one to get a proper manuscript treatment. I covered the unbelievably bizarre natures of Target's publishing and numbering schemes in that review as well, so if you're wondering why the novelization of the fifth broadcast story is actually the 38th book in Target's series, and arrived on store shelves well in advance of the one based on the series premiere, fix your jaw securely in place and go read that entry. It's a story almost as confusing as the program's history itself.

In addition to An Unearthly Child, I've also reviewed the following for Zorker's Great Doctor Who Chronological Read:

• Doctor Who and The Daleks (Serial 2)
• Doctor Who and The Edge of Destruction (Serial 3)
• Doctor Who - Marco Polo (Serial 4)

If you've been following me all this time, waiting for my next read and review, thanks for your patience! If you're new here, go catch up on previous entries then join us for Serial 5, The Keys of Marinus!

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Following their adventures with intrepid world traveler Marco Polo in the last book, the Doctor and his companions (Susan, Barbara, and Ian) find themselves materializing on a mysterious planet where the beaches are made of glass, and the seas composed of pure acid. Setting out to investigate, the four find themselves drawn to a towering structure. Inside, they are met by an older man by the name of Arbitan. After ascertaining that they mean him no harm, Arbitan explains they have landed on the planet Marinus, where he serves as the last surviving guardian of The Conscience: a powerful and infinitely complex super-computer designed to regulate everyone on the planet by giving them a framework upon which to base a just society.

With The Conscience in operation, problems such as murder, theft, and violence are completely unknown, since those living on the planet cannot conceive of wronging one another. Unfortunately for Arbitan, a race of reptilians known as the Voord have sought to harness the power of The Conscience ever since it was activated. Possessing devices which render them immune to The Conscience's proscriptions for peace and harmony, they have staged ever more devastating attacks on Marinus. In desperation, the six Keys necessary to operate The Conscience were dispersed across Marinus. Arbitan holds one; he tasks the four travelers with recovering the other five to keep them out of the Voord's hands, a job to which the Doctor readily agrees.

Once out of the enormous structure, the Doctor changes his tune, deciding this planet's problems are no concern of his, and that a nip back to the TARDIS for a change of scenery is a much better idea. Arbitan, however, has erected a force barrier around the TARDIS to prevent them from leaving. Now the four have to decide: either help Arbitan recover the keys, or remain stranded on the planet forever. Not much of a choice, but helping seems better than starving, so the four set off on a cross-planetary journey to collect the MacGuffins so they can leave Marinus. That's when their troubles really begin.

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After Marco Polo, it's hard to imagine any immediately subsequent story which could come close to the greatness achieved by John Lucarotti's historical adventure, which hit all the right notes in terms of characterization, danger, excitement, and fun. Philip Hinchcliffe's novelization of Terry Nation's screenplay certainly tries its best, but with only 128 pages to fill with six episodes' worth of content, that was a tall order. Perhaps a bit too tall.

First let's talk about the plot, which has the Doctor and his companions teleporting all over Marinus to locate and return all the keys required to operate The Conscience. First, let's ignore the fact this sounds like every fetch quest in every RPG ever, and focus the Doctor himself. He'd already proven himself more selfish and self-absorbed than later incarnations would turn out to be in previous stories, so this is no surprise. What does surprise is his response when he and his companions are presented with a fantastical piece of technology in The Conscience. Instead of showing the slightest interest in how it achieves its objectives, or debating the morality of a machine which eliminates the free will of sentient beings in order to bring about positive results, his initial recourse is to shrug his shoulders and leave.

Contrast this with his interest in the wristbands Arbitan provides each of them which allow them to de-materialize and re-materialize on other parts of the planet simply by plugging in a certain setting and twisting a dial. The Doctor is downright fascinated at the prospect of using these devices to get around--this curiosity is in character for the Time Lord, but he already owns a ship which can do the same thing and travel through time as well. This is like a high-performance engine enthusiast getting hyped over a four-cylinder compact car from 1981, while ignoring the brand new prototype racer parked in the corner. Hinchcliffe is given an opportunity to examine a moral conundrum but chooses instead to abdicate the way the Doctor does. This is especially stark given that a mere four years after this episode aired, Star Trek tackled a similar theme in the second season episode The Apple, where a sentient machine enforced morality upon an entire culture by depriving them of their free will. I know Hinchcliffe is "only doing what he's told" and sticking as close to Nation's script as he can, it's just sad to see such an obvious missed opportunity.

Then there's the whole 'quest' aspect, with Arbitan using them to hunt down the various keys which control The Conscience. It's unclear why Arbitan would want this to happen: the Voord can't take control of the machine without them, and despite the troubles the Doctor and company face while key hunting, there's nothing at all to indicate the Voord are doing anything to find the keys themselves. If anything, Arbitan shouldn't want anyone to gather all six of the keys in one place, since doing so would make the Voord's objective easier to accomplish. Sure, Arbitan knows roughly where the keys were dispatched to, and he knows that if the Keys are all used then The Conscience can over-ride the Voords' defenses against the mental directives, but the Voord murder him mere minutes after the Doctor and his group depart. Having killed him, the Voord would have no way of knowing about the wristbands Arbitan programmed for the group, nor discovering any information that would lead them to where the various keys were hidden, leaving them in possession of a powerful but ultimately useless tool they couldn't do anything with.

As a matter of fact, one particular key would be lost forever had Ian and Barbara not recovered it and teleported out mere seconds before the whole place was destroyed. Another was hidden in a frozen wasteland, watched over by effective and brutal guardians which, while outwitted by the group, are nevertheless now free to roam about the countryside unchecked to cause all manner of potential mischief and ruin--something which was unlikely to happen without the interference of the Doctor's companions.

Into the middle of all this, we are hit with the biggest downside to the story: the lack of the Doctor's presence for a good third of the novel. The reason for this goes back to the original script, where William Hartnell was absent for two of the six episodes of the serial due to being on vacation. This leaves the primary character of the series AFK while the rest of the characters do the heavy lifting for several dozen pages until they meet up with him again. While one part of me enjoyed seeing the resourcefulness of Ian, Barbara, and Susan when they're forced to overcome obstacles without the Doctor's help, another part of me can't help but feel it's a bad idea so early in your series to have the titular lead out for a significant portion of the story. Doctor Who stories minus the Doctor can work (and if you don't believe me, a quick viewing of Blink from the New Who era will set you straight), but it's probably not the brightest idea in the world to ditch your lead character for a couple episodes when you're only five stories into the first season.

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Ultimately my problem with The Keys of Marinus is the same people I have with Raiders of the Lost Ark. Both are fine stories, with Raiders especially being a classic of 80's cinema, but it's impossible to overlook the fact that everything Indiana Jones does during the movie makes things worse for all involved. Without Indy actually finding the Ark of the Covenant, the Nazis would have never gotten their hands on it--what's more, given the movie's climax, Indy should be only too happy to hand it over. Likewise, the titular Keys: without the TARDIS crew scrambling all over the planet to collect them, there's no chance at all the Voord accomplish their mission.

Speaking of the Voord, they're easily the least-developed antagonists we've seen thusfar. Yes, Hinchcliffe explains the basics of what they're trying to accomplish, but that's the problem: it's just the basics. Fully-developed bad guys have reasons beyond "it will give me more power". I have to share blame between Hinchcliffe and Nation for this though, because it's not Hinchcliffe's fault the screenwriter posited them as generic stand-ins for the bad guys. Even their leader, Yartek, isn't really introduced until the very last part of the story--yes, he kills Arbitan early on, but until the end when he reveals himself to the TARDIS crew, there's nothing to differentiate him from any of the other Voord skulking around, and he's quickly taken care of once the Doctor and his companions know what's going on. Again, much like Raiders, some quick thinking on the part of a protagonist puts a stop to the enemy's plans while leaving the good guys shaken but otherwise unhurt, and wow, that whole quest was ultimately meaningless, wasn't it?

I really wanted to like The Keys of Marinus. I honestly like the idea of the story, which is basically, "The characters have a series of mini-adventures in order to accomplish different parts of a larger goal." It's an idea the BBC would revisit in the Fourth Doctor era for the epic Key to Time arc. Unfortunately Nation's story was just weak, likely because it was a last-minute replacement for a different story penned by Malcolm Hulke which was suffering from its own production problems. Having to write Hartnell out of it for a third of the story didn't help matters either.

The individual parts of Keys are enjoyable--there are some great physical fight scenes where Ian proves his abilities, a startling amount of violence for such an early-era episode, the "courtroom drama" bit where the Doctor has to argue on behalf of Ian's innocence, and an exceptionally chilling scene towards the end where one character appears to be putting one over on the main villain, only for the villain to turn the tables and show he'd been playing her all along. Even the ending is suitably spectacular as the baddies bring about their own satisfying destruction. But while each of these bits is enjoyable in their own right, they're somehow weakened when thrown together. Moments clearly "manufactured for television drama" frequently spoil the mood as they're rendered moot a few paragraphs later (all that's missing are the script directions to FADE OUT and FADE IN), and it's obvious this was a strictly paint-by-numbers translation from script to novel. Hinchcliffe, while experienced with the program itself as producer for much of Tom Baker's early tenure as the Fourth Doctor, was clearly the wrong choice to adapt a First Doctor adventure.

My final complaint is the book's length: 128 pages is simply not enough to fully capture the essence of what was a six-part television serial. Scenes which should be drawn out for dramatic effect are sacrificed on the alter of 'Adherence to Page Counts' which Target was notoriously strict about enforcing. I'm not saying more pages would have automatically made Keys a better book, per se, but an average of only 21 pages per episode doesn't leave much room for character development outside of what was already present in the original script--that's literally less than one page per minute of screen time. This isn't the last time you'll hear me complain about Target and their stingy page counts, but I'm bringing it up here anyway.

Two Keys out of Five.

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Next time, we'll pick up with another John Lucarotti historical as the Doctor and his companions pay a visit to Central America, impersonate deities, and bear witness to human sacrifice in Doctor Who and The Aztecs. Be there or be decapitated after your still-beating heart is torn from your chest and offered as tribute to the gods!