The Ribos Operation

4 January 2015

One of my husband's birthday presents was a DVD boxset of The Key to Time.   I missed the first part of this season on first broadcast.  I'm not sure what was on ITV at the time, Buck Rogers maybe? but whatever it was, we preferred it in my house.  My Mum never really took to Tom Baker, as she didn't like his eyes.  (She didn't like Marty Feldman's eyes, either, which prevented me from ever being allowed to see Monty Python - the fact that he wasn't in it didn't matter).  I therefore came in part-way through The Stones of Blood, and have no memories of seeing  the first two stories on first broadcast. Until we eventually got hold of a VHS tape, my only knowledge of them was through my husband's Target novelisations.

Our VHS machine is no longer operational, so when we settled down last night to watch The Ribos Operation, I was in the situation of having seen it only once before, and that quite a long time ago. The first surprise on viewing was the discovery that it is actually pronounced 'REEbos' and not 'RIbos' as I had assumed all these years. The second surprise was just how annoying Romana (or 'Fred') was in her debut story. Though that is no excuse for dressing her up like a reject from Boney M. I kept expecting her to break into a chorus of 'Mary's Boy Child' any minute.

The story is entertaining in a very silly sort of way. The intergalactic con artist Garron, is rather similar to Glitz, who turned up in a couple of stories in the 1980s. He is attempting to sell the planet to the Graf Vynda-K, a rather unpleasant military type who is trying to win back his own planet, by conning him into believing that Ribos is a source of a valuable mineral. All this takes place surreptitiously, as the locals still believe that  the seasons are caused by warring gods and have no concept of interplanetary travel. The exception is Binro, who was ostracised as a heretic for his novel belief that the planet is a sphere that rotates around the sun, and that the lights in the sky are other worlds. It is a touching moment when Garron's accomplice Unstoffe tells Binro that he was right all along.

Ribos being such a primitive planet, when the local authorities need to search for criminals they employ a Seer to track them down. The Seer, whose predictions prove strikingly accurate, is a delightfully over the top role, though towards the end of the story she gives up on the blood-curdling shriek at the end of a prophecy.  Sadly, she, the Graf Vynda-K and his men and poor old Binro all end up being killed in the catacombs under the city. Garron and Unstoffe survive, but may be forced to go straight, as the mineral they were using as part of their con turns out to be a segment of the Key to Time and Garron is adroitly relieved of it by the Doctor's sleight of hand.

All in all a good opener to the season.