Old Who Reviews - Serial 005: "The Keys of Marinus"

"I don't believe that man was made to be controlled by machines. Machines can make laws, but they cannot preserve justice. Only human beings can do that."
~The First Doctor

As I'm sure anyone knows, the first thing related to Doctor Who that captured the attention of audiences was the advent of the Daleks. Terry Nation's creations were an unexpected hit, and so it's no surprise that when the series was given more episodes beyond its initial 13 that they would bring Nation back to write another serial with a NEW alien race that they hoped would be the next Daleks. I'm told that they try to do this a lot and it almost never works. In this failed attempt, they give us the Voord.

Let me just say that I rather like the work I've seen of Terry Nation. He has a tendency to speak on the nature of morality, social justice, the mind, and humanity in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. While I wouldn't say he's a genius or anything, I'd certainly say that his serials are the most competent of the ones I've seen, and so far, "The Keys of Marinus" is my favorite.

The Doctor and his companions wind up on an island on an alien planet completely surrounded by acid with a single building designed to repel intruders. They find that the building houses a man known as the Arbiter, who safeguards a device known as the Conscience of Marinus (Marinus being the name of the planet they're on). Basically, the device manipulated the minds of the planet's inhabitants by giving them an objective sense of morality as defined by this machine, which supposedly was always fair and never wrong. Essentially, the people of the planet no longer decided for themselves what was right and wrong, instead letting the machine decide for them.

However, there were a people known as the Voord who were able to resist the Conscience's sway and attempted to take it for themselves in order to dominate the planet. In an effort to prevent this, the Arbiter took out four of the five all-important keys from the machine and scattered them across the planet until he could fix the machine so that the Voord could no longer resist it. Once he finished repairing the machine, he sent his daughter and other associates to find the keys again, but none of them returned. Once he meets the Doctor and his companions, he ropes them into finding the keys for him and gives them devices to transport them to the locations of the keys.

This serial is basically a season of Dragonball.

Each episode in the serial (with the exception of the fifth and the beginning of the sixth) all take place on a different region of the planet with it's own self-contained plot. As such, I'll be breaking this review down into smaller chunks, reviewing each episode on its own.

The fetch quest begins after the jump!

Old Who Reviews - Serial 002: "The Daleks"

"I believe the Daleks have discovered a way to exploit... static electricity! Very ingenious..."
~The First Doctor

Alright, here's something a little more substantial. The first ever appearance of the popular Daleks.

"The Daleks", originally known as "The Mutants" or "The Dead Planet", is 7 episodes long and is the second serial in "Doctor Who" history. If I were to be completely honest, I don't think this series would have been as successful as it ended up being if it hadn't been for this serial. Not only did it introduce an alien race that eventually took the nation by storm, but it established the potential for the series.

Terry Nation, who is primarily known as the father of the Daleks and also the creator of the lesser known show "Blake's 7", used the concept of a world broken by nuclear devastation to examine themes of war, peace, and racism.

Whereas "An Unearthly Child" only showed us a very boring glimpse at prehistoric earth, "The Daleks" takes us into a much more imaginative landscape beyond our own galaxy.

That's not to say this serial is perfect. It's not. But it does at the very least show a glimpse at the endless possibilities that the concept turned out to be capable of. And it's also very much entertaining if you don't mind a slower-paced story.