The Screaming Jungle (The Keys of Marinus Episode 3)

The one with the screaming jungle that whispers...

Susan was the most unlikely adventurer, wasn't she? I know she was only a teenager, but she was a teenager with quite a lot of intergalactic adventure under her belt, but still she goes to pieces at the slightest hint of danger. Experience has not jaded her, or even toughened her up. She's the biggest wimp the Doctor ever travelled with.

She can't even calm down enough from her hysterical fit to explain to Ian and Barbara what's bugging her. "It was... it was... it was horrible!" is the best she can muster. She needs one of those slaps that burly heroes give to hysterical maidens in all those old films when they can't calm them down, except slapping people across the face isn't really what Doctor Who does. Not until Russell T Davies gets hold of it anyway...

Susan is a liability all round. She spreads herself awkwardly on the jungle floor just so that a sentient creeper can grab her by the ankle, and off we go again with the histrionics. You can almost see Jacqueline Hill thinking: "Bloody hell, Carole, bring it down a notch will you?". There is a lovely little moment here, though, where Barbara says: "I do wish Ian wouldn't treat us like Dresden china", adding that every now and then she likes to rebel against his protective demeanour.

Writer Terry Nation employs an idea he used last week (a statue that moves) and the week before (rotating doors) to trap Barbara. Same but different, I suppose. Then Ian returns with Altos and Sabetha, and I find myself asking: What are they for? Why has Terry Nation lumbered Ian, Barbara and Susan with these wet two-dimensional characters who serve no other purpose but to say lines that don't need saying? They don't do anything in this episode, and Sabetha's observation that Barbara may have escaped by using her travel dial could've been said by Ian or Susan. It's not as if the production team thought they'd keep them on because they were such successful characters. Robin Phillips doesn't make a bad fist of things (and his legs prove a pleasant distraction, if nothing else), but Katharine Schofield is generally pretty awful. There's more energy in a flat battery!

Altos, Sabetha and Susan pop off to episode 4 while Ian stays back to rescue Barbara, which he does without really trying. He hammers on a door he claims is "pretty solid" as it wobbles for England, and while he's off fondling some iron bars in an alcove, the door opens to let Barbara in (and it must be the creakiest door ever!). Babs is then caught in a net, and a ceiling full of very unconvincing spikes begins to descend on her. Meanwhile, Ian is trapped behind bars, unable to get to his screaming friend. We're only 14 minutes into the episode but already it feels like the perfect double jeopardy cliffhanger! Having said that, Barbara could quite easily escape if she just stopped writhing around pathetically and simply crawled out from under the spikes, while poor William Russell really has to sell his prising apart of a bar that looks as solid as fluff.

Barbara's eventual rescuer is an old man who asks if she's a Voord. "You do not resemble their race," he admits. He's not daft, is he? I mean, obviously Voords don't have enormous bouffant hairstyles and roll-neck jumpers under those wetsuits of theirs. And talking of Barbara's hair, just look at it! What a state it's in!

Old man Darrius is played by Edmund Warwick, who delivers his lines painfully slowly and with about as much animation as a dead sloth. Warwick also played the magnificently unconvincing robot Doctor Who in 1965's The Chase, and apparently complained that he wasn't cast as the First Doctor when they made The Five Doctors, as he'd doubled for Hartnell in the 1960s! All I can say is, thank God they cast Richard Hurndall!

"It's coming again!" warns Darrius ominously. "The jungle is coming! When the whispering starts, it's death, I tell you. Death!" He then proceeds to tell Ian where the hidden micro-key is, but despite having just seconds to live, he doesn't think to simply say: "It's in a jar next door", but instead leaves Ian with a cryptic clue straight out of The Adventure Game. DE3O2. "What do you mean, I don't understand!" says an understandably irate Ian as Darrius breathes his last. Yes, thanks for that, old man, you were a great help.

As darkness falls and the jungle comes alive, Ian and Barbara come to realise that the "tempo of destruction" has been altered by Darrius's biological experiments, and the vegetation's growth has been accelerated (why only at night, I don't know). Surely The Tempo of Destruction would have been a much better title for the episode? As it is, The Screaming Jungle isn't exactly correct, because it's actually whispering, isn't it? I don't suppose The Whispering Jungle sounds as threatening though.

After Barbara very purposely moves to one corner of the room in order to have a creeper wrap itself around her ankle (giving a barnstorming repeat of her classic cliffhanging scream from The Dead Planet), she finally finds the key in a jar marked DE3 O2. What is DE3 O2? There isn't time to find out because the jungle is coming! Ian and Barbara spin their travel dials and pop - they're suddenly engulfed by a snowstorm and losing heat fast in some freezing corner of Marinus. Barbara says she's too cold to move, despite having arrived literally seconds ago. Ian says: "If we don't find shelter we don't stand a chance!" and they huddle together as the credits roll. Come on, you two, pull yourselves together! Oh, you are...

First broadcast: April 25th, 1964

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: It's nice to see Ian and Barbara leading the story, what with William Hartnell on holiday and Susan, Altos and Sabetha written out because they're a bit rubbish.
The Bad: Edmund Warwick is really poor as Darrius, and Katharine Schofield isn't much better as Sabetha.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

NEXT TIME: The Snows of Terror...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: The Sea of Death (episode 1); The Velvet Web (episode 2); The Snows of Terror (episode 4); Sentence of Death (episode 5); The Keys of Marinus (episode 6)

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-keys-of-marinus.html

The Keys of Marinus is available on DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Keys-Marinus-DVD/dp/B002ATVDHI