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Extras

I’ve seen this episode twice now. It grows on me with repeat viewings.

“The End of the World” is a fabulous looking episode of the type we could only have imagined in Doctor Who prior to CGI. Just look back at “The Ark in Space” for an example of a space station orbiting the Earth in the old days. The opening shots of the ships docking at Platform One with the Earth in the background and the expanding sun beyond that are vistas that really make the imagination soar. I was never put off the old show because of sub-par special effects, but when they’re good I certainly appreciate them. So we have a convincing backdrop for the story.

Anyone get the feeling that Mr. Davies had “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe” in mind when he came up with the setting?

There are a lot of good ideas in this episode. The slow reveal of the Doctor’s history continues with the revelation that Gallifrey (never named as far as I can recall) burned like the Earth, “gone before its time”. I don’t like the loss of the Time Lords and Gallifrey, but so be it. Moving on, we also get the explanation about the TARDIS’s ability to get inside someone’s mind and translate, which Rose takes offense to because it was done without her permission. The visual demonstration of this is fun too: the little blue alien hands the Doctor a claim ticket written in some alien script, but when the Doctor looks at it, we can see just what it says. A nice touch. Rose having the sudden realization that she’s gone off with someone she knows nothing about and looking slightly panicked is a pretty good moment as well.

The aliens are suitably weird and varied, though mostly humanoid. I don’t quite buy the idea of sentient trees though. Not even in 5 billion years will trees have arms and legs and civilization. Cassandra is a suitably nasty villain, with a believable motivation when it comes to money. 

One plot concern: why would the reset switch for the shields be across a walkway that is blocked by the fans? I can accept that there’s probably another way to the switch, and that the Doctor simply had no time to go and find it, but that still doesn’t explain away the proximity of the fans to the walkway. They seem to exist simply to provide an obstacle for the Doctor at the climax of the action, and as such are not too credible.

The coda at the end where the Doctor and Rose stand on the streets of a planet they’ve just seen die, and ruminate about the fleeting nature of life is a good one, with music that is quite appropriate to the mood and setting. After the massive spectacle of the sun expanding and the earth dying, we come down to earth for some chips. The contrast between the fantastic and the mundane is a staple Doctor Who ingredient, and it’s presented quite well here.

All in all, a lightweight, fun little action episode, with an imaginative setting. 8 out of 10.

Any story to which the names of Philip Hinchcliffe or Robert Holmes are attached had better be good, or my word, they get torn apart. The Hand Of Fear is up against some seriously stiff competition and is easily the worst story of season fourteen, but it’s quite a sweet story in its own right. It feels like a real throwback to the Jon Pertwee era, and indeed it could have sat pretty as the best story of Pertwee’s final season – but it has to be said that coming immediately before The Deadly Assassin does no favours for what is a decent but decidedly average tale.

What’s immediately striking is the cheapness of the production, almost as if Barry Letts had returned as producer; this isn’t the sort of thing I dwell on normally but Hinchcliffe was usually such an effective and efficient producer that such bland, boring sets, harsh lighting and silly videotaped model shots seem very out of place. With Roy Skelton hamming it up off screen, Bob Baker and Dave Martin writing and Letts-stalwart Lennie Mayne directing, the overall anachronistic effect is really quite disturbing. But there is another, more relevant downside to this prologue, in that it provides the explanation for a mystery that has yet to be introduced. Just think how much more enigmatic the titular hand would be if this scene never existed, and we knew nothing about it at all.

16mm-recorded location shooting gives us a brief respite from the cheapness, and I actually like the scenes in the quarry – although it’s hard not to snarl at the constant “this time it’s really a quarry, tee hee” banality from some corners. Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen have a wonderfully comfortable, breezy relationship with each other (didn’t they always?), and Sarah being buried under the rubble caused by the superb explosion is much more affecting for the viewer than it would have been had it been the third Doctor and Jo Grant. The stone hand she finds is a wonderful prop and very spooky, just lying there, although to reiterate the scene would be vastly improved without that earlier prologue which is in effect an instant spoiler.

Baker and Martin, as writers, aren’t that good at structuring a story and providing a coherent plot and as such nothing they wrote for the show was particularly amazing (indeed the following season’s Underworld comes perilously close to being an all-time nadir). However, they do seem to have a talent for easy-going and naturalistic dialogue here and therefore The Hand Of Fear is peppered with likeable characters who feel more like real people than is customary for Doctor Who. Directors’ habits of reusing actors are always fairly obvious and it’s hard to watch Rex Robinson and not think of him as “the bloke from The Three Doctors and The Monster Of Peladon,” but he puts in a charming performance and manages to rekindle some of the dampened mystery by his conversation with the Doctor about the hand. With this, not to mention the possessed Sarah up and about stealing the hand, I have to say that part one is a lot of fun. There’s no depth or subtext of any kind for me to get my teeth into, but it pushes the right buttons. 

Sladen puts in a terrific performance as a woman possessed, eschewing the standard zombie-like clichйs in favour of someone twitching and skittish, as if she’s being piloted by someone unused to the controls as it were, and her lilting, erratic speech is really quite creepy. The scenes in Nunton power plant (Baker and Martin reinforcing the Pertwee references by ripping of their own idea, Nunton being only one letter out from the plant from their earlier The Claws Of Axos) are terribly padded and rather dull after a while, but the cliffhanger to part one is an absolute killer as the hand starts to move.

Unfortunately the second episode begins by undoing much of that cliffhanger’s good work, with the emergency meltdown sequence removing the tension a bit more with every long-winded minute. The Doctor claiming he can survive temperatures of 200 degrees “if I’m quick” is silly and is an early example of the kind of superpowered Doctor who can spirit his way through spinning blades. It raises the question of how his clothes survive intact, but I suppose we must be thankful for these small mercies.

There’s still a lot of padding, with much running up and down stairs at the power station. I don’t know quite what the logic was behind the use of the fish-eye lens and its surrealism doesn’t quite come off, unless the idea was that the tension should increase in direct proportion to Tom Baker’s nose expanding to twice the size. Dr Carter’s death is a superb stunt and very well edited, although on a mildly amusing note his body ends up looking like it’s dancing to ‘Night Fever’.

Professor Watson phoning his family is a nice attempt at injecting some poignancy but it comes across as rather crude in a “kiss the children for me” way, although his inability to tell his wife that anything is wrong is a far more effective and telling moment.

The Doctor bursting through the vent (like he’s been posted, according to Baker on the DVD commentary) is one of my favourite moments in the story: Doctor Who was rightly never an action-adventure series but occasionally someone like Tom Baker with immense physical presence could successfully pull off those dynamic little scenes, although the fact that he doesn’t make a perfect landing adds to his credibility by not portraying him as an expert gymnast. Thus Sarah is rescued, and brought before Professor Watson: the line of “I think we’d all like an explanation” is about as crude as feed lines come, although it does remind us that there is a really brilliant, if not particularly original, idea at the heart of this story.

The CSO’d hand looks better than average, with less tell-tale fringing and an effort made to make it actually cast a shadow. Still though, despite many good moments, I can feel this story’s promise of a high rating slipping away. Like many average stories, The Hand Of Fear is in essence very good but it loses crucial points by being poorly paced and structured, denting its ability to tell a coherent story. Hence yet more superfluous scenes in the plant, and repetition abounds as the hand gets locked up, let out, captured, etc, etc…

Episode three at least gets off to a more dynamic start as Eldrad begins to regenerate in earnest, and the possessed Driscoll casually strolling into the core (“probably vaporised,” as the Doctor says) is really quite disturbing. The missile strike is exciting but improbable, but well presented with fairly unobtrusive stock footage. Eldrad’s final emergence is very well done, with a superb costume and an enigmatic performance from Judith Paris.

The scene where the Doctor and Sarah exchange “I worry about you” lines is genuinely sweet, and far more effective than the new series’s bludgeon. It’s followed by the great first exchange with Eldrad, and it’s also good to see a kind of mini-conclusion for Watson. Suddenly the episode is picking up again. It doesn’t last long though, as the sudden wave of technobabble in the TARDIS makes it feel a bit Trekky all of a sudden. The cheapo Kastrian set looks a bit better with the lights turned down, but even that doesn’t last long either. The cliffhanger though is genuinely shocking, a product of some excellent videotape editing.

Thankfully the lower levels of Kastria are slightly less bland than the surface, and the Doctor’s moody suggestion that Eldrad’s story is not adding up adds a small but welcome dose of extra mystery.

Eldrad’s apparent death is another effective moment as the viewer doesn’t realise just how sympathetic she is until this point. She’s replaced by Stephen Thorne, who resorts to his usual generic acting technique of SHOUTING VERY LOUD – it just about worked in The Daemons, but this is his second encore at this point (third if you count the handful of lines he had in Frontier In Space) and it’s beginning to wear a bit thin. How did he ever get the gig narrating The Fred Dibnah Story? His costume is quite good, a sort of small mountain, but unfortunately it’s all too obviously falling apart. At least he gets some motivation through, and it’s a nice twist to have him fooling the Doctor and Sarah all along – and it’s a bone-chilling thought, a race submitting to their own destruction willingly through fear of a tyrant. It’s a good job that Paris was doing this though, as Thorne doesn’t deal with that kind of subtlety. Unfortunately, his death is rushed and clumsy – watching him step over a scarf and get CSO’d down an abyss is just about the least inspiring thing I’ve seen for months.

Now we come to the story’s acknowledged highlight: Sarah’s departure. It’s certainly the best departure of any companion, with some real though added, unlike many. Which is better: Rose’s “I wub oo Docta, sniff, snivel” at the end of Doomsday, or the Doctor’s quite understated “until we meet again, Sarah” from this? I know which one I’ll pick. It ends well, with Sarah’s happiness at being home about to tip into rampant hysteria, and with that magic glimpse at the sky.

The Hand Of Fear is a pleasant and enjoyable story that could, and should, have been far more. It doesn’t let down the quality of the season in general, grants Sarah a good leaving scene and has some great ideas of its own…but it’s just not quite Hinchcliffe.

No one can argue with the sheer brilliance of the Daleks. Considering their immense success, one can’t blame their creator Terry Nation for reusing them time and again – often, as Terrance Dicks famously pointed out, in exactly the same type of story. “The Keys of Marinus”, however, is a very rare example of a Dalek-free Nation serial. Whilst I’m a huge fan of the pepper pots from Skaro, I have to say that at present I actually rate this story higher than the original Dalek serial. Admittedly, I’ve seen “The Daleks” far too many times to be able to enjoy it very much anymore, but even so “The Keys of Marinus” is a much faster and more varied serial than Nation’s first.

While “The Daleks” played a couple of tried and tested sci-fi / fantasy gimmicks superbly (the post-apocalyptic society, the bug-eyed monster etc.), “The Keys of Marinus” takes on another time-honoured format – the quest. A machine called the Conscience rules Marinus. In essence, it gets inside people’s heads and stops them committing crime. Artiban, the Keeper of the Conscience, manipulates the TARDIS crew into helping him collect the keys that make the Conscience function. Using watch-shaped dials to travel about the planet, the six episodes of this serial see our travellers voyage to every corner of the planet Marinus in a Lord of the Rings style fantasy adventure. As I mentioned, this makes for a wonderfully fast-paced, imaginative and enthralling adventure, but on the other hand it must have broken the bank to produce! As all six episodes have a different alien setting, new sets will have had to have been designed and produced weekly. This takes its toll at times, for example, when we have some very poorly realised ‘giant brains’ ruling the city of Morphoton, but generally speaking the production team managed to pull off another minor miracle producing this rather lavish six-parter with the time and money that they had. In the third episode, Darius’s jungle is very well realised – particularly the idol. The fourth episode’s ice-bound wilderness is far less visually impressive, and even in terms of the story its probably the worst episode of the six - a fact highlighted by the absence of the show’s leading man for the second week in a row! William Hartnell’s return in the fifth episode, “Sentence of Death,” is well worth the wait though as he takes the task upon himself of defending Ian against a murder charge. The Doctor makes one hell of a advocate!

I think the thing I found most refreshing about “The Keys of Marinus” though is its sheer ambition. Marinus is presented as a planet like Earth, inhabited not just by one culture or even two but by a massive melting pot of humanoids, giant brains, frozen Knights, killer jungles and bureaucrats! Seas of acid, sands of glass… sheer poetry! The story’s scope certainly has to be respected. Moreover, it is one of a handful of Hartnell serials that truly deserves the individual episode titles as each episode is literally its own self-contained little story, and can be either enjoyed as such or as part of the larger ‘quest’ story arc. We even have two makeshift companions along for the journey, Altos (Robin Phillips) and the lovely Sabetha (Katharine Schofield) who inject just that extra little bit of something we need now that after four stories we are getting quite comfortable with the regulars, who incidentally are all in fine form. I have to give Nation credit for the story’s quite shocking climax too – especially with older serials I can normally tell exactly what is going to happen next but “The Keys of Marinus” really surprised me. It’s also a very satisfying ending – after watching the first episode I did think that ‘mind control’ wouldn’t be the Doctor’s ideal solution to crime…

"The Keys of Marinus" presents us with a classic story that almost matches the new series format all by itself. By which I mean that you have a number of individually titled, self-contained episodes that are part of a larger story, and the episodes barely have time to scratch the surface of the characters and background presented to us before they are over and rush us along to the next situation. 

Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit admittedly, but it is true that what we are presented with on Marinus is a series of brief vignettes of life on this planet which we never get to see in great detail. A number of reviewers have remarked on the fact that it's rare to get a sci-fi planet that isn't one monolithic culture, and that it's refreshing to see a departure from that with Marinus which features different climates and different cultures. I agree, it is a nice change, though nothing we see on Marinus seems terribly alien, apart from some weirdness with the plants, and of course the brain creatures. Almost any of the locales could be on Earth rather than an alien planet, with the exception of the acid sea, but the variety is still appreciated. 

If I were putting the eight stories that make up Doctor Who's first season in order of first to last place, "The Keys of Marinus" would be second from last, just ahead of "The Sensorites" and just barely behind "The Edge of Destruction". I say that because the other stories are quite good rather than because Marinus is deficient. True, it has some cliches and plot issues, but on the whole it's a good solid, entertaining story of the quest variety. Every one of the regulars gets something to do, though Ian and Barbara are most prominently featured of course. 

The framing sequence that sets up the quest and introduces us to the conscience machine that pacifies the population ought to be more interesting than it ultimately is. The idea of thought control and loss of free will versus peace and a lack of violence should raise questions about trading freedom for safety, but the idea is never really explored. Arbitan, who is willing to curtail free will in order to pacify Marinus, is perfectly in character to deny the Doctor and companions the choice to exercise their free will in refusing to help him recover the keys. He comes across as desperate and rather sympathetic though, despite his actions. Incidentally, the scene where the Doctor is angry about being blackmailed into searching for the keys, then suddenly cheers up and becomes complimentary when he examines the travel dial is pretty amusing, and indicative of what make the Doctor happy - cool high tech toys! So off they go to retrieve said keys, while Arbitan is murdered by one of the Voord. 

The Voord are people in wetsuits, with weird headpieces. At least the fact that they look like wetsuits is because they actually are, though it seems as though the Voord would abandon them once they reached dry land. The one man submarine looks good, and the idea of acid seeping in and dissolving the one Voord who is killed crossing the sea is pretty horrible if you think about it. Most acid just burns, which would be bad enough. This stuff destroys Susan's shoe and dissolves people to nothing... nasty. 

The various locales are all nicely presented, and we don't stay long enough for them to become boring, with the possible exception of the trial in Millenius. The brain creatures are creepy things, being brains with eye stalks and weird voices. Barbara's point of view where she can see the true state of the city is a nice idea, though as always it's easy to tell when one of the regulars is thought-controlled, because they just don't respond as they normally would. 

Altos and Sabitha are picked up at this point in the story. It's enjoyable that once again the TARDIS crew make friends and allies on their trip across Marinus, so they're not so alone in their quest. Altos is pretty creepy while under mind-control, but becomes quite dependable company when freed. The same is true of Sabitha, whom Susan befriends. 

The jungle setting reminds me in retrospect of the Krynoid and its control of plant life, although there is of course an entirely different explanation for the hostile plants. The spikes that descend on Barbara wobble alarmingly, but grin and suspend your disbelief and just enjoy it. The snowy plains are genuinely chilling in their sense of isolation and danger. That episode is well portrayed by all involved, and it's only let down by the narrow (and probably very shallow) crevasse in the ice caves. A good jump would clear it! Vasor's unstated intentions towards Barbara are certainly disturbing. I did get a laugh out of the title "The Snows of Terror". : Ooooh, scary snow! 

Up to this point the story has moved along at a brisk pace, but things slow down with the murder mystery in the city of Millenius, where the Doctor finally comes back into the picture. It's a compliment to the other regulars that the Doctor isn't missed much during the middle episodes of the story, so good are Ian, Barbara and Susan. But the Doctor's return is welcome, as is his relatively new sense of loyalty to his companions, and his attempts to defend Ian. The trial scenes are typical courtroom drama, but the nodding judges who never speak are pretty funny. The situation is solved with an old cliche (the murderer is tricked into a slip of the tongue) which is a shame, but we move on from here back to the pyramid and the confrontation with the Voord. 

One thing that "The Keys of Marinus" does well is convey a sense of a time and distance having been covered. Like Marco Polo, you get the feeling that the characters have spent days or weeks in their journey all over Marinus, though in story terms it's probably less than a week. In the end, though I've enjoyed the story I'm ready for it to end and ready to move on to the next adventure. The story contains some unexplored ideas and cliches, but is saved in many ways by the ever-likeable regular cast, and is carried along by the sense of adventure. 7 out of 10.