"The Sea of Death" - Season 1, Episode 21

Written by John Lucarotti | Directed by John Gorrie | Produced by Verity Lambert | Original air date 04/11/64


The episode opens with a pretty cool model shot of an island in the middle of a vast sea. It looks pretty good - Doctor Who usually does fairly impressive work with model shots, at least in the black and white era (usually). The camera zooms in to the beach and the TARDIS materializes (sadly without the grinding sound, it just sort of appears). We cut inside the TARDIS, where everyone is looking at the monitor to see what's going on outside. Barbara says "Too bad you don't have color television," to which the Doctor replies that he does, but it's "hors de combat," a line I'm surprised both that the Doctor said and that Hartnell didn't screw up (sorry, Bill - you have a few whoppers in this episode).


They go outside, and as they do, we see these weird, fish-looking things land elsewhere on the beach. The ocean is completely still (convenient, since the model would be tough to make if there were waves. It looks good though!). Barbara asks the Doctor if it's frozen and we get the first fluff this episode: "No, impossible at this temperature. Besides, it's too warm!" I assume the line was supposed to be "No, impossible in this atmosphere," or "elevation," or something. I love Hartnell, I really do, but it's so strange to be watching television that had been broadcast with lines screwed up like this. I know the production realities at the time meant it was too expensive to stop and redo the scene, so messed up lines had to stay in, but... this is the first season, Bill! You can't already be messing up lines, can you (I hope not, as that means Hartnell would have been sick and suffering from day one of recording Doctor Who, which would make his era a little harder to watch)?


As the TARDIS crew go to check out the weird fish-ships, a guy in a rubber (seemingly almost a gimp) suit wearing flippers walks on screen - we can't see his head, yet, so don't know if he's a guy in a suit or if he's some kind of monster. He's got a dagger tied to his belt, though, so that's not good.


The group discovers the ocean is made of acid, when Susan knocks one of her shoes in. She was just about to wade in, too. After freaking out and calming down, she goes back to the TARDIS to get new shoes. Before she gets there, we see the guy in the rubber suit trying to pull the TARDIS lock out of the door (he doesn't succeed because Susan shows up and he has to hide, but it being possible to remove the TARDIS lock apparently by hand is crappy design, wow).


The other three inspect the glass torpedo fish-ships (a sentence that could only be written about Doctor Who, I swear), and discover an empty suit inside one. Apparently, the person inside died from acid getting in, since his ship was broken and he had a tear in his suit (a pretty gruesome way to go, as there is NOTHING left inside the suit). We see the head of the suit, finally, in the form of the man (creature?) stalking after Susan, and it looks like... well, a Teletubby. Like a Teletubby wearing a fetish suit. It might be a more unnerving "monster" post-Teletubbies, now that I think about it.


The Doctor, Ian, and Barbara go to inspect the large building they see in the distance. Susan has already beaten them there, and pushes against a wall, only to have it rotate and she falls in. The other three arrive and they split up to go around the building, reasoning Susan is probably there since she hadn't been at the TARDIS. While split up, the Doctor falls into a rotating wall (you can see a hand push it out, I doubt that's intentional), then Ian, then Barbara, all at different spots. Susan, in one corridor, is menaced by one of the rubber suited guys, but he is stabbed in the back and dies, and she takes off running after seeing some other dude in a white robe (I'm not sure who stabbed the bad guy - presumably Robe Guy, but the scene isn't very well shot, as it looks like someone from the left kills the bad guy, because Robe Guy too quickly appears in the rear of the set for him to have stabbed the bad guy). Ian later discovers the dead body, as we see the other three TARDIS members all imprisoned together, while the Doctor reasons that they won't be killed, since the rubber suited guys are being murdered, while they're being captured. Barbara says "Maybe we'll be killed, too," to which the Doctor replies, "Oh, I shouldn't think so. That young schoolmaster friend of yours is very resourceful," and that they're more likely to be rescued with him free. It's nice to see the Doctor has come to like Ian, or at the very least respect him.


A rubber suited man attacks the guy dressed up in a robe, but Ian saves him. The robed guy pulls a switch, and the guy in a rubber suit falls out of a trap door into the acid sea below. The guy in the robe reveals himself to be Arbitan, and the rubber suited men to be Voord, followers of someone named Yartek. He explains this building is under siege by the Voord and he's the only one there to defend it. Bafflingly, Ian says "I should've thought this place was impregnable!" Which is an absolutely baffling thought, since the four TARDIS travelers literally fell inside the place without even trying to. Trusting Ian since he saved his life (and keeping his opinion of Ian's intelligence to himself, presumably), Arbitan takes him to see and free the other TARDIS travelers, as we see a Voord following them.


Terry Nation infodump time! Arbitan explains they're on the planet Marinus, whose technology peaked 2000 years ago (he also explains the whole Voord/Yartek bit here), and the machine they're all looking at was once called the "Conscience of Marinus," which used to be an impartial judge and jury that was never wrong or unfair. It was upgraded, though, and can now influence the minds of everyone on Marinus. With Yartek and the Voord attacking, though, Arbitan removed the five Keys of Marinus so he can't gain control of the machine, and hid them around the planet. He asks the TARDIS travelers to go get them all since he can't leave and none of his followers have returned, but they don't agree and try to leave in their ship. Arbitan has put a force field around it, however, and blackmails them into getting the keys. The Doctor is not happy about the blackmail at all, and refuses to travel in one of the fish-ships, but Arbitan provides the four TARDIS members with teleportation bracelets. Before they leave, he tells them that if the building they're in now is taken by the Voord when they return, to destroy the keys. Barbara, curious to try out the bracelet, leaves before everyone else, and when they teleport to her, she's gone and they find her bloodied bracelet on the ground, and we cut to credits.


The Doctor having to go get the keys to let someone use a machine to control the minds of everyone on the planet is a strange decision, especially because Arbitan is straightforwardly the good guy. I wonder why they didn't try to overpower Arbitan to make him remove the forcefield... This isn't necessarily a bad episode, and is somewhat light and refreshing after the dense slog through Marco Polo, but it's still not great (which is as good as most Terry Nation scripts get, save one big exception in the mid-70s). Good model work, though I don't like the Voord costumes. They're a bit too cheesy, assuming you don't take them to be wearing fetish suits, in which case they are either horrifyingly bad or awesome.


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