Where and when:
The TARDIS materialises on a small island, which is dominated by a huge pyramid structure. Exploring, the travellers discover that the sea surrounding the island is highly acidic. They are not the only visitors, as they come upon a number of one-man submersibles capable of moving through acid.
They later meet Arbitan, who resides alone in the pyramid, and from him learn that this is the planet Marinus.
He is the Keeper of the Conscience machine, which generates a pacifying influence over this world. A figure named Yartek, leader of the Voords, has found a way to protect himself and his followers from the machine, and they now pose a danger to the entire planet. It is they who have come to the island in the submersibles.
Arbitan is now ready to upgrade the Conscience so that it will once again be universal, but to do this he requires all five microcircuit keys which operate it.
He has retained one, but the other four are scattered across Marinus. He then deploys a forcefield around the TARDIS to coerce the Doctor and his companions into fetching these for him. They will journey using special wrist-mounted travel dials, pre-programmed for each of their destinations.
From a map we can see that Marinus seems to comprise one huge elongated continent, with Arbitan's island off its southern coast.
Judging by the defences which the Keeper employs, the acid surrounding this is probably artificially generated and extends only for a certain distance around the island.
The key locations are as follows:
The city of Morphoton. Here everyone seems content, provided with whatever they wish for. The reality is that they are all mentally enslaved by the Morpho - disembodied brains with eyestalks, which require a special environment in which to live within glass containers. Barbara destroys these, killing the creatures and thus freeing the populace. The travellers collect two new temporary companions here - Sabetha, daughter of Arbitan, and her boyfriend Altos.
The second key is guarded by an elderly botanist named Darrius in a compound built at the heart of a densely forested region. His experiments with growth accelerator have resulted in the local vegetation growing rampantly and aggressively, and Darrius himself falls victim to it.
The third location is a mountainous area, the key being guarded by Ice Soldiers within a block of ice in a cavern. The Doctor has jumped from Morphoton to the final destination, so it is left to his companions and their new friends to cope with the ruthless fur trapper Vasor, as well as the reanimated Soldiers, to retrieve the key. There are also wolves in this region, which resemble those of Earth. Vasor speaks of a village a few miles from his cabin.
Other than the Morpho, everyone on Marinus appears to be humanoid. We don't know if the Morpho are alien interlopers, or if they evolved naturally here. The origin of the Voords is also unclear. They may simply be men in suits, though Yartek at one point describes them as his "creatures". There is no indication that they are alien to Marinus.
Everyone is reunited at the final key location - the city of Millennius. This is a well ordered society, though one with an unusual legal system. Those accused of crimes are automatically deemed guilty and must prove conclusively their innocence - as Ian discovers when he is accused of murder and the theft of the key from the city museum.
He is defended by the Doctor, and the real criminal is exposed.
The travellers return with the keys to the island - only to find Yartek and the Voord have seized control of the Conscience machine after killing Arbitan. However, Ian gives Yartek a fake key prepared as a decoy by Darrius, and the invaders are destroyed when the machine explodes. Sabetha and Altos elect to settle in Millennius.
It is clear that that no-one in Millennius seems to be aware that another city has been taken over by monsters, or that there is a rapidly growing threat to the continent from Darrius' experiments. These are obviously very insular societies. There does not appear to be any form of conventional transport. (Had there been, the need to protect the travel dials wouldn't have mattered quite so much).
As for when this takes place, the travel dials take people to different locations within the same time period, as everyone is aware of Arbitan.
With humanoid inhabitants and wolves resembling those of Earth, there is a possibility that this might be an Earth colony. If it is, the fact that the Conscience machine was built a thousand years ago would suggest that this is the far distant future. (There was an unwritten convention in the early days of the series that stories set on alien planets were also set in the future).
Unseen journeys:
The Doctor advises Guardian Tarron to study Pyrrho, which he claims would be of benefit to an investigator like him. Pyrrho founded the philosophical school of Scepticism, in which people were encouraged not to simply accept what they saw or were told, but to challenge and question deeper. He lived in Greece and died c.270 BC, and was a contemporary of Alexander the Great. When told it was lucky he had studied his works, the Doctor retorts that he actually met him. This is another contender for the occasion when the TARDIS took on the form of an ionic column.
As Ian is still wearing his Chinese silk outfit, it appears that the TARDIS has come straight from 13th Century Peking, with no intermediate landings.
The TARDIS:
The console appears to be very close to the external doors. Everyone stands with their backs to these, looking up at the scanner opposite.
We learn that the scanner doesn't show colour images. The Doctor describes this as "temporarily hors de combat" - roughly translating as "out of action". (In a deleted portion of script, the Doctor claimed that this was one of the things he was looking into whilst based in London, 1963 - visiting the BBC where he couldn't get their colour signals to mix).
The radiation meter seems to have been fixed as Ian asks about the reading, and the Doctor replies that it is hardly registering anything. The meter must now be facing the doors, whereas before it was to the right of the console as you came into the ship. This suggests that the console can rotate.
The Doctor makes reference to the "time mechanism" being faulty, and it would take days to repair. He thinks the fully equipped laboratory promised by Altos may help. This may mean that the failure to get Ian and Barbara home might be more to do with the ship itself, and less to do with the Doctor's grasp of the controls.
Arbitan is later able to place an impenetrable forcefield around the ship (which he must take down the instant the travellers depart on their quest - as he is murdered only moments later).
The TARDIS is seen to materialise for the first time, having only been seen to depart up until now.
Sabetha makes a gift of the surviving microcircuit key to the Doctor as a souvenir.
Behind the Scenes:
A single wall - the one with the double doors - and the console were all that were required in studio on 20th March 1964 for The Sea of Death. This was the TARDIS interior's only appearance in the story.
For the materialisation of the TARDIS on the island, a model of the Police Box was used for the first time.
Famously, designer Ray Cusick hated this story as he was called upon to come up with completely different sets each week due to its quest scenario. He simply didn't have the time or budget to do what he wanted to do, and found the director, John Gorrie, somewhat disinterested in his work.
The Velvet Web featured two different versions of the reception area of Morphoton - one looking luxurious and the other decrepit. Cusick was reprimanded by his superiors for using expensive materials for the former. He had wanted to use dead rats for the run-down version.
During rehearsals for The Snows of Terror, the ice-bridge collapsed with Carole Ann Ford on it.
This is a classic example of the "Terry Nation Naming Convention" phenomenon.
Marinus is so called because it has a distinctive ocean.
It doesn't just apply to planets. Arbitan is an arbiter - a judge who, through the Conscience machine, determines right from wrong on this planet.
Morphoton and the Morpho get their name from Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams (son of Hypnos, the god of sleep, and Pasithea, goddess of the night). It is whilst asleep that newcomers to the city are mentally processed and enslaved.
Nation has a thing about the name Darren, hence Darrius. In The Dalek Book the home continent of the Thals on Skaro is Darren.
As for Tarron, Nation will come up with all manner of permutations of names based on "Terry N" in both Doctor Who and Blake's 7.
Millennius derived its name from the idea that the next millennium, only a few decades away in 1964, might prove to be one of technological advances and fewer social ills.
For his next Doctor Who script, Nation was actually working on a historical adventure set around the Indian Mutiny, provisionally titled "The Red Fort". With issues continuing with Malcolm Hulke's "The Hidden Planet", he was instead asked to write another sci-fi story and came up with this series of mini-adventures after discussions with David Whitaker.
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