Saturday 16th May 1964 - Doctor Who - 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."
Huh?
Barbara is saved. Ian is saved. Altos is saved. Sabetha is saved. Unfortunately, Arbitan, the keeper of the Conscience of Marinus has been killed since we lat saw him in The Sea of Death and the Voord have taken occupied his island. The Yartek and the Voord are all destroyed.
The whole adventure has been a mess and straight after the prolonged Marco Polo, it's been a bit of a chore watching. I understand that this adventure was a last-minute replacement for scripts that could be made at this point. Terry Nation, the writer, appears to have turned in a pile of plot ideas and that the producers just went with them all and compressed them into five episodes. That's the feeling I've got from this anyhow. At any point over this adventure you could stop and consider how interesting and engaging what's happening could POTENTIALLY be (acid seas, bizarre alien creatures in rubber suits, mind-controlling super-computers, illusory cities, accelerated plant growth, frozen knights... and so on). And, for some reason, they don't even bother to re-hire the actor who played Arbitan at the beginning to make an appearance so there's no proper closure. Everything just blows up.
If I had watched this back in 1964, I would be starting to think that I could find better things to do with my time. Let's hope the next adventure, The Aztecs, is better.
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