"The Screaming Jungle" - Season 1, Episode 23

Written by Terry Nation | Directed by John Morrie | Produced by Verity Lambert | Original air date 04/25/64


The screaming stops once everyone else shows up, and it appears only Susan had heard it. She's still freaked out, but doesn't explain why beyond saying she heard screaming. When Barbara asks her why she took off before everyone else, she says she didn't want to stay too long, because "I don't like to say goodbye." It would seem that runs in your family, Susan...


Ian wants to explore the area a little, but Barbara decides to stay behind with Susan to try to cheer her up. Before they leave, Ian instructs them not to do anything until they get back, prompting Barbara to remark, "I do wish Ian wouldn't treat us like Dresden china," meaning she can take care of herself just fine, thank you very much. Looking around, Barbara remarks that the place seems to be falling apart, and that they could just push the wall over eventually, had they had time to wait around. A plant snakes a branch around Susan's leg and she screams, "It's alive!" Barbara rips the plant off Susan, calming her down. She pushes through some foliage to see an idol at the end of a short tunnel, which she goes to inspect. Susan doesn't follow, instead watching from the entry. Barbara notices the micro-key around the idols neck, and goes up to grab it, but as she does, the statue grabs her and rotates, taking her inside the walls. The hands of the statue are clearly just human hands - why they couldn't put some Styrofoam or water wings or something around the hands to make them look less human is beyond me.


Ian and the others return and Susan explains what happened. Sabetha thinks that since Barbara has her travel dial, that she probably just teleported away if she had been in danger. Ian agrees that's possible, and at the suggestion some of them teleport ahead while Ian stays behind, and we get some trademark Terry Nation dialogue: "We must cover all possibilities to the best of our abilities," to which Altos replies, "That is wise! I think that's the wisest course." I can't believe this guy's career spanned decades.


Altos and Susan teleport ahead, while Sabetha stays behind a moment and tells Ian that the micro-key Barbara found is fake, since it's a little shorter. Ian resolves he has to find the real key as Sabetha leaves. He rides the statue that Barbara did, and triggers a trap on the other side by stepping on a tile that makes a suit of armor swing a poleaxe at him. Barbara pops her head round a tree and warns him in time for him to avoid the attack. She says the place is full of booby traps. They arrive at a locked door, and Ian goes off to search for an iron bar Barbara had seen earlier. While she waits, some old dude (who we later find out is named Darrius) opens the door for her, and she wanders inside. All of a sudden, she is captured in a net and a ceiling with spikes on it begin to descend. Ian, taking way too long to inspect the iron bar Barbara sent him for (he's seriously kneeling there, pondering it, for no apparent reason, rather than just grabbing the thing and heading back), is trapped as a cage suddenly drops down on top of him. As Barbara screams for his help, he tries to bend the bars to escape. Just before the spikes reach Barbara, Darrius stops the trap and asks who she is, and wonders why she doesn't look like a Voord. Barbara tells him Arbitan sent them, and presents her travel bracelet as proof. Darrius says he'll inspect it to make sure it was programmed by Arbitan, as only he knew where all the keys were (although to be able to check it, wouldn't Darrius need to know that, too? Oh wait Terry Nation wrote this, nevermind). He leaves Barbara stuck in a net as Ian comes and finds her, having broken out of his cage, but in the other room, Darrius is being choked by a plant that has burst through the wall. Ian and Barbara rush in and save him, which apparently proves to him that they're not Voord.


Darrius, lying in bed and apparently dying, says Arbitan was supposed to warn them about his booby traps so his agents could avoid them. Apparently, he hadn't done that - not only did the TARDIS crew not know about the booby traps, Altos and Sabetha (his own freaking daughter!) didn't even seem to know where they were, much less how to specifically avoid the booby traps Darrius set. Apparently, Arbitan is an incompetent fool.


Phil Sandifer asserts that the Keys of Marinus invented the video game plot before video games themselves did, and this episode is probably the best example of it. Darrius tells them "DE3O2" is where they'll find the key, then after a few more lines of dialogue that doesn't really help them find it, he dies, just like in a videogame cutscene (in a series of episodes where each episode seems to be a different "level," like Sandifer asserts. Once he points that out, you can't unsee it). Why Darrius doesn't just tell them that he stuck the key in the jar labeled "DE3O2," I have no idea, other than "video game logic," I suppose. Anyway, in a riveting minute and a half (riveting, here, meaning boring as hell), Ian tries to unlock the safe in the next room twice while Barbara watches on, but the code doesn't work, so he can't open it. They search the room. Ian reads a diary where Darrius details his biological experiments, including a "growth accelerator," while Barbara all but tells him she could not care less about whatever is in the book. As they continue to look for clues, they hear the "whispers," which are the same thing Susan heard at the beginning of the episode - why they don't think of them as screams, I have no idea, as that's what Susan thought they were and that's what they sound like to me. Plants start bursting in through the walls as they realize the "growth accelerator" that Darrius made has affected the plants outside the house, and when one knocks over a jar with a chemical formula in it, Ian realizes that "DE3O2" is just that, and they begin frantically opening jars to find the key. Once they do, they teleport away, and land in what looks like a snowy forest, and the episode cuts to credits as they say they need to find shelter or they'll freeze to death.


I shouldn't enjoy these episodes. They're by the numbers adventure serial, and half of them don't have the Doctor in them, but I just like them. This is probably the first guilty pleasure series of episodes for me, because I realize they have plenty of issues (pacing, plot is nonsense, Marinus has the weirdest ecology ever, Darrius and Arbitan are idiots, etc etc etc), but I just enjoy seeing a completely new situation every episode. Nation burns through several ideas that would otherwise be used for whole serials here, and while it doesn't completely work, it is interesting. This episode is probably the weakest of the lot, and I was still able to enjoy it.


"Doctor Who" puns so far: 2 | Tomorrow: "The Snows of Terror"