Review of The Keys of Marinus by 6-and-7
15 November 2024
This review contains spoilers
This one had its ups and downs; sort of inevitable when the premise involves hopping from one dangerous environ to another every episode of course, so let's take them one by one.
The Island: An intriguing premise, a mysterious landscape, interestingly deadly. Unfortunately Arbitan left me pretty cold. This machine mind-controls the whole planet into behaving according to its morals, and I'm meant to feel good about it? And based on what's happening around the planet, I really don't think it's done a very good job! The Voord have a fun design, but I have no idea what their deal is other than wanting the mind-control machine.
Morphoton: A really interesting concept for a dystopia, portrayed remarkably well for the '60s. The mind control stuff and the brain jars were really creepy, and I do love a bit of badass Barbara.
Screaming Jungle: Atmospheric, but doesn't cohere very well. The traps are kind of fun, I suppose, but the whole thing feels like a poorly-considered escape room. The ending with the attacking vines was great, though.
Icy Wastes: #VasorIsCancelled. All my homies hate Vasor, 0/10, worst villain of all time. A creep and a coward. What was I saying. Oh right the icy wastes. This was pretty good, some genuine moments of tension. Susan actually got to be badass for a bit, crawling over that icicle bridge.
Millennius: Courtroom dramas aren't really my thing, but the legal system of Millennius made me SO MAD I wanted to gnaw off my own leg (/pos). Really tense stuff, Ian was absolutely going through it on this one.
Island pt. 2: Still don't get what Yartek's deal is. What's he trying to do once he has the world mind control machine. Idk, this was fine, good villain defeat at the end.
Overall, I enjoyed this, but I kept feeling like they were trying to set up a point about justice and free will that never quite got made, and the Voord were WAY underused given that they were an attempt to recreate Dalekmania.