Series 1 Episode 21: The Sea of Death

Serial: The Keys of Marinus
Episode: 1 (The Sea of Death)
Doctor: William Hartnell
Companions: Barbara, Ian, and Susan

Writer: Terry Nation
Director: John Gorrie
Producer: Verity Lambert
Original Air Date: 11/04/1964

A SHOE HOPE (and other stories)

THE PICTURES ARE MOVING AGAIN! REJOICE! And oh, hello again, Terry Nation. Must be an Extra-Terrestrial week.

So there’s this island with a big art deco masonic pyramid thing on it and what is clearly a teeny model of the Tardis materialising on its shores. I want it so I can play with it.

So. Precious.

Inside the Tardis, Susan and Babs have changed their outfits, which in Barbara’s case rather begs the question of when she got her Marco Polo boatneck jumper back. Maybe there’s a stash of them in the Tardis wardrobe? Maybe she’s been carrying it around with her in a secret hair compartment? Who knows. Ian, meanwhile, is still in his Chinese jacket, because he looks boss in it and all his teacher cardigans are probably ruined.

Ian asks the Doctor about the radiation levels, and has clearly learned nothing from his experiences on Skaro because he doesn’t ask the Doctor to double-check his Geiger counter when he says it’s all gravy. Babs says it’s a pity they don’t have colour TV aboard the Tardis; the Doctor says they do but it’s currently hors de combat, which is French for ‘fucked’. I’m assuming this is Terry Nation’s way of saying ‘this serial would look great in colour hint hint’. At any rate, Babs is amused.

Stockholm Syndrome BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP

Susan wants to go and frolic on the beach; the Doctor agrees, with much fluffing of lines. Ian thinks he might have seen something moving out there on the scanner but dismisses it as probably just a shadow, which is Whovianese for KILLER ALIENS. Like the ones that are presumably inside those submarine dildos that have just been pulled ashore.

Susan is digging the beach; Ian is waxing lyrical about the stillness of the water; Babs wonders whether it’s frozen; Billy fluffs his lines; everyone deals with it gorgeously.

The Doctor reckons they ought to be cautious about swimming because you never know what creatures are a-lurking. Maybe you should ask that sinister-looking scuba diver who’s following you through the rocks? They’ll know for sure. Unless they’re KILLER SCUBA-DIVING ALIENS.

Ian is perturbed by the lack of birds. The Doctor barges in on his moment with Babs by shoving a lump of glass into his hand with hilarious lack of concern for his sliceable human hands. He wonders whether the sand turned to glass or whether the glass was put there deliberately; either way, it’s intriguing, and he’s into it.

Meanwhile, Susan has found a rockpool and is taking off her shoes and socks. Babs is having a clumsy moment and has tripped and knocked one of Susan’s shoes into the rockpool. She is also, emphatically, not going paddling, but is happy to help Susan clamber over the rocks for a splash. Enter Ian, whose cautious parenting and/or school trip instincts have kicked in because he’s spotted danger and is keen to point it out – OH DEAR LORD IT’S…A SHOE!?

A melting shoe, to be precise. Babs asks Ian ‘what is it’, because it takes a scientist to work out that the pool is full of acid. It could also be alkaline. Just sayin’. (I have no idea whether or not this is true, actually, but I just assume a strong alkali would also corrode the bejaysus out of your footwear.) Susan has, apparently, assumed the worst, because she is already burying her face in Barbara’s jumper. Melty shoes are just that terrifying. Though NEW HEADCANON ALERT: the reason Susan’s reaction to having lost her shoe at the end of The Dalek Invasion of Earth is so ridiculous is either a) that she associates shoe loss with that time she was on Marinus and had just had to say goodbye to her GF/BFF or b) that there is a third shoe loss/painful goodbye incident in Susan’s past that triggers these reactions. Is shoe loss to Susan as Velcro is to Kimmy Schmidt? Did she leave her shoe behind on Gallifrey? DID THE TIME LORDS TAKE SUSAN’S SHOE? I must know.

DON'T LIE TO ME, ANSWERS.COM!!!

Ahem. Sorry, I’m just a little giddy at having moving pictures to work with. I’ll be good.

Anyway, Babs tells Susan to calm the fuck down and go get another pair of shoes from the Tardis; Ian lends Susan his boots, and the general ad lib Space Parenting is generally adorable. Once alone with Ian, Babs points out that the Shoe-Melting Puddle of Trauma is in fact a tidal pool; the sea must be ‘a sea of acid’. Trippy.

Meanwhile, back at the Tardis, the Sinister Scuba Diver is furtling about with the lock…unsuccessfully. They scarper before Susan arrives.

Back at the beach, the Doctor is contemplating the sea of acid, whilst Babs informs him of Susan’s phobia of losing her shoes. Then this happens:

DOCTOR: (To IAN.) Yes, and if you'd had your shoes on, my boy, you could have lent her hers. You mustn't get sloppy in your habits, you know.

Billy Hartnell, never change. Fortunately, Messrs. Hill and Russell don’t have to keep a straight face at this point.

'Dear LORD you've lost the plot P.S. WE LOVE YOU'

But OOH LOOK the Doctor has spotted the giant glass dildos! Babs wanders off while he and Ian investigate, and OH this is interesting, because I think this might be the first time Babs has called for the Doctor rather than Ian (and very calmly, too, I might add) upon finding something unusual. Apparently she’s spotted another of the submarines, and there’s something inside this one…cripes.

Back at the Tardis, Susan has found some extra shoes…and some flipper-shaped footprints! She yells for her grandfather, then decides to follow them; either she’s really shit at tracking or there’s more than one scuba-diver, because one of them appears from behind the rock she’s just passed. Its head looks the rubber lovechild of a Cyberman and a Teletubby; it’s rather alarming.

Back at the plastic glass submarine, they’ve found an empty wetsuit minus its humanoid; Ian wonders how it got out; Babs reckons the tear in the suit means it’s been melted with acid; Ian, despite being a Science teacher who would presumably know that this would most likely result in a suit full of biological sludge rather than a vanishing act, actually accepts this theory.

We melted her!

The Doctor reckons they ought to go and find Susan; Ian is more interested in the awesome trapezium pyramid thing jutting up through the glass beach, which is indeed magnificent. The Doctor looks so proud and delighted and reckons they should pay it a visit…but after they find Susan. Because actual priorities. Well done.

Having said this, it's rather lovely that Ian (and Barbara, as we shall see when they get up to the pyramid) are beginning to be more willing adventurers. A few episodes ago it was all about the Doctor wanting to explore and the two humans giving zero fucks about anything other than getting home, but it seems they're now relaxed enough about their new lifestyle to get curious about things. And at last some character development for Ian! Rejoice!

Meanwhile, at the impressive prism thingummy, Susan is taking in the gorgeous, Skaro-esque German Expressionism of it all. And the corridors are again excellent. But OH CRUMBS one of the scuba-divers is waiting around the corner…WITH A KNIFE!

Back at the Tardis, Babs informs the Doctor that Susan isn’t anywhere in the Tardis. Well, anywhere Barbara knows about, anyway, seeing as the Tardis is mahoosive. The Doctor wonders where the ‘wretched child’ has got to. Nice. Babs spots Ian’s boots and Susan’s footprints in the sand; the Doctor is beginning to suspect the sea of acid is indeed a defence mechanism; they all think they’d better go and find Susan, who has probably gone to look at the cool building because she’s a big nerd.

At the building, Susan is still moving towards her would-be murderer…WHO SUDDENLY FALLS THROUGH THE WALLS AS THEY TURN AROUND LIKE MR, SWEENEY'S TRICK FENCE IN ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE. Oh wow that’s hysterical.

Elsewhere, the rest of Team Tardis arrives at the building, and Barbara and Ian immediately start geeking out about the architecture:

BARBARA: Look at the joins in the blocks, Ian.
IAN: Yes, no mortar! Must have been built with tremendous accuracy.
BARBARA: Yes, the Egyptians did the same thing. So did the Indians of Central and Southern America.
IAN: A precise distribution of certain weights. That's the key, isn't it?
BARBARA: Yes. It’s marvellous, isn't it?
IAN: Marvellous.
DOCTOR: Yes well, before you two get carried away, I think we'd better go and find Susan. Mmm?

Oh LORD somebody give me a ‘Barbara and Ian do the Inca Trail’ fic. In which there are no references to ‘Indians’.

Carried away indeed...

Anyway, the Doctor essentially tells them to get a grip on their strange impulse to indulge in educational asides and go find his granddaughter already. They do so.

Elsewhere, Susan is still wandering around when she leans down to fiddle with her shoe…AND ALSO GOES THROUGH THE TRICK WALL! Seriously, this girl already has issues with shoes, let’s not give her any more. Anyway, she screams, and is heard by Barbara and Ian.

Meanwhile, the Doctor is wandering about and casually goes through the trick wall too in a manner so understatedly comedic that it can only by conveyed through the medium of the gif.

He does not scream. By the time Barbara and Ian get there, the outdoor corridor is empty and they’re horribly confused.

Inside the building, Susan is wandering the corridors alone, and once again there’s a wetsuited menace lurking. Then there’s a monk; Susan backs away…and into the wetsuited menace! It grabs her…AND LETS HER GO, having been mysteriously stabbed in the back by assailant or booby-trap unseen.

Outside, Babs reckons they should try another circuit of the walls or go back to the Tardis, as Susan is probably waiting for them there. Ian stops answering. A concerned Babs starts calling for him, leans against the trick wall, and is also swizzled inside the pyramid! Even more disconcertingly, as the wall turns, we see the monk waiting for her. That’s all of them got!

Inside, Ian has found the dead scuba-diver. He seems to be the only lone wanderer, though, because the Doctor, Susan, and Barbara are all in a cell together swapping stories of having been swallowed by the walls. The Doctor reckons the monk lives in the pyramid while the wetsuit guys ae intruders like them, though with one ‘puzzling but relieving’ difference: ‘They died, and we’re only prisoners.’ Then this happens:

OH DOCTOR LOOK AT YOU LEARNING TO RELY ON YOUR HUMAN FRIENDS BUT MOSTLY LOOK AT YOUR EXCELLENT FACE.

In the corridors, Ian stops the monk getting murdered by a wetsuit guy, who then falls through a trap wall into an acid bath. Ow. The special effects are also pretty special at this point. Ian asks the monk wtf is going on, and it transpires the wetsuit guys are called the Voord and the monk is the only guy defending the pyramid against them; the monk had to treat Team Tardis as potential enemies until proven otherwise, but now he’s going to release the others and Explain. Marv.

There are no words.

Although OH NO it seems the Voord have indeed penetrated the walls, as one of them is staring in admiration at the sliding triangular door through which Ian and the monk have just disappeared. A suggestion, Mister Monk Person: maybe don’t have revolving walls and your enemies won’t be able to get through them?

And now, in a room whose main feature is a big pentagonal machine, it’s Exposition Time on Marinus (the name of the planet) and Bullet Point Time on the blog:

• The monk guy is called Arbitan
• The big machine was called the Conscience of Marinus
• The Conscience started out as an infallible judge and jury then became a mind control radio thing that decided right and wrong for the people and eliminated evil from their minds
• Eventually a guy named Yartek found a way of overcoming the machine’s power, presumably because the whole thing was Orwellian as fuck and also because his followers, the Voords, were now able to screw over the population of a planet for whom violence was now alien
• Instead of destroying the machine, Arbitan’s guys removed five key micro-circuits from the machine so the Voords couldn’t use it while they tried to make it irresistible again
• One of the keys is with Arbitan, while the rest have been hidden all over Marinus
• Now he needs the keys back because he’s worked out how to make the machine irresistible again, only there’s nobody to go and get them any more
• Arbitan sent his daughter off to find them but she never came back and now he wants Team Tardis to go and do his dirty work for him because, much like Obi-Wan Kenobi, they're now his only hope
• Team Tardis gives the best collective Drop Dead Look that has ever been seen on telly

There is now, I kid you not, a missing scene in which Team Tardis presumably tells him FUCK NO, WE WANT NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR DYSTOPIAN BULLSHIT because the next minute we’re back at the glass beach en route to the Tardis. Hilariously, they’re all ‘I wish there was something we could’ve done for him and I feel really bad but equally no way were we getting his keys back for him’.

'ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME'

But OH WHAT FUCKERY IS THIS!? When they get back to the Tardis, there’s a forcefield around it and everyone is doing truly awful forcefield acting – seriously, Susan and Ian keep walking inside it after the barrier has been established with other actors’ mime hands. Anyway, it’s Arbitan’s doing, because his voice comes booming out of the ether:

ARBITAN: If you help me find the keys of Marinus I will let you have free access to your machine... when you have delivered all the keys to me. If not, you will stay on the island without food or water. The choice is yours.
IAN: (Shouting.) Choice? What choice?

Ian, I appreciate your sass.

Back in the Conscience Room, Arbitan is showing them the map. The Doctor and Babs are particularly excellent at conveying the extent to which they are unimpressed with the shit Arbitan just pulled. Arbitan gives them natty little travel dials to get from A to B which work by twisting it once. Babs is magnificently no-nonsense and apparently keen to get on with it sans faff: ‘Like this?’ she asks, turning the dial; she promptly vanishes.

Ian, predictably, freaks out, and the rest of Team Tardis follows on with all due haste. Arbitan tells the empty room he hopes for the sake of his people they’ll succeed. Then a Voord stabs him in the back.

Elsewhere on Marinus, Ian, the Doctor, and Susan have arrived and are exhilarated by the journey. But where’s Barbara? Nowhere to be seen. But OH LOOK, there’s her travel dial…AND THERE’S BLOOD ON IT!

GORE BLIMEY WHAT’S HAPPENED TO BARBARA!? WILL IAN BE ABLE TO PULL HIMSELF TOGETHER LONG ENOUGH TO CONDUCT A SENSIBLE SEARCH OR WILL HE SIMPLY HULK OUT UNTIL BABS RE-EMERGES? WILL HIS FANCY JACKET MAKE IT THROUGH THE NEXT EPISODE UNSCATHED? WHY DOES SUSAN FEAR THE LOSS OF HER SHOES? HOW WILL TEAM TARDIS GET OFF MARINUS NOW THAT ARBITAN IS BROWN BREAD? WHY HAS NOBODY FROM TEAM TARDIS EXPRESSED ANY THOUGHTS ON HOW FUCKING ABYSMAL THE SUPER-DYSTOPIAN CONSCIENCE MACHINE SOUNDS? WHO WILL WRITE ME THE MISSING SCENE IN WHICH TEAM TARDIS TELLS ARBITAN THANKS BUT NO THANKS?

Summary (as applicable to this episode)

Does it pass the Bechdel test? Er...Susan and Barbara talk about shoes?

Is the gaze problematic? No.

Is/are the woman companion(s) dressed 'for the Dads'? No.

Does a woman fall over/twist her ankle (whilst running from peril)? No.

Does a woman wander off alone for the sole dramatic purpose of getting into trouble so she can be rescued later? A bit.

Is/are the woman companion(s) captured? Everyone is captured. Those walls...

Does the Doctor/a man companion/any other man have to rescue the woman companion(s) from peril? Everyone goes off to find Susan.

Is/are the woman companion's/s' first/only reaction(s) to peril gratuitous screaming? Susan does scream when the wall swallows her up, but the Doctor and Ian go through silently.

Does a woman companion go into hysterics over something reasonably minor? Nope.

Is a woman 'spared' the ordeal of having to do/witness something unpleasant by a man who makes a decision on her behalf/keeps her deliberately ignorant? No.

Does a man automatically disbelieve or belittle something a woman (companion) says happened to her? Nope.

Does a man talk over a woman or talk about a woman as though she isn't there? No.

Does the woman companion have to be calmed/comforted by the Doctor/a man companion/a man? It's Barbara on Susan-calming duty this week.

Is a woman the first/only person to be (most gratuitously) menaced by the episode's antagonist(s)? Yes. Susan.

Is a man shamed into doing/not doing something because the alternative is a woman doing/not doing something? No.

Does the woman companion come up with a plan? Nope.

Does the woman companion do something stupid/banal/weird which inspires a man to be a Man with a Plan? Nope.

Does a woman come up with a theory and is it ridiculed by the Doctor/a man? Yes and no. Barbara's tidal pool theory is correct, as is her melted Voord theory, though I personally question such gore-free evidence of someone having been melted in acid. 

Does a woman call the Doctor out on his bullshit? Not particularly necessary this week.

Does a woman get to be a badass? No.

Is the young, strong, straight, white male lead the person most often in control of the situation? Yes. Ian.

Is there past/future/alien sexism? No.

Does a 'present'-day character call anybody out on past/future/alien sexism? N/A.

Did a woman write/direct/produce this episode? No/No/Yes.

Verdict

Poor, poor, poor, POOR Susan. No sooner has she left Ping-Cho behind than she's been reduced to having panic attacks about shoes and being menaced by stabby scuba-divers. There are some nice comic moments in this episode, and some nice Team Tardis moments too as they all show how newly comfortable they are around one another. It's lovely to see. Also Barbara and Ian getting excited about alien architecture is gorgeous even if it contains non-PC 1960s terminology relating to the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The Conscience machine sounds morally appalling and I hope we get to have a bit of debate around the Biblical Orwellian nightmare that is a device that withholds knowledge of good and evil from the people. Ian finally gets some character development and the Doctor is clearly warming to his new companions. Barbara's no-nonsense approach to alien space-travel is brilliant. I hope we get to hear from the Voords, though if memory serves they remain mostly-mute rubber baddies, which is a shame, as from where I'm standing this has the potential to be a kid-friendly Clockwork Orange. ON WITH THE QUEST!