I watched the majority of Season 15 of Doctor Who for the first time with its new blu-ray Collection set. I still have several ‘gaps’ of 20th century stories I haven’t seen, almost entirely from the second half of Tom Baker’s era. Having highly enjoyed most of Season 15, I’ve been keen to carry on with more ‘new-to-me’ stories.
I started watching Season 16 in my teens while unwell and drifting in and out of consciousness, so my memories are limited. In fact, they’re so slim, I’m increasingly doubtful that I actually ever watched all of my Key To Time boxset. Of all the Season 16 stories, The Ribos Operation is the one I remembered best.
My main memories of the story are really just blokes standing around in fur coats on snowy rocks. This, in fairness, is not an entirely inaccurate description of The Ribos Operation. In the present day, you would obviously do it all on location and have loads of supporting artists as the planet’s primitives. It would have a huge sense of scale and look wonderful, and I’d still probably pick this version. I like its intimacy and the sense of isolation for Ribos that’s achieved with a small cast on studio sets.
A production today would probably also have us meet a local primitive or two who would stick with the Doctor and Fred, helping us see them with more humanity. As it is, Ribos is a bit colonial in that all the primitives are at a distance (bar one cave dweller and a few guards). It means the Doctor and Romana have to investigate more but as the audience we get to see what else is going on. I like that we follow much of the story with the con artists, Garron (Iain Cuthbertson) and Unstoffe (Nigel Plaskitt).
It’s Unstoffe who gets paired off with Binro the Heretic, the outcast cave dweller. Maybe if this wasn’t Romana’s debut story then she might have escaped and joined them both, yet I think it works nicely just the two of them. Unstoffe gets to show us that he’s a more decent person than how we’ve seen him alongside the unscrupulous Garron up to that point. Unstoffe and Binro’s relationship is rather lovely and gives us enough to feel something when Binro is killed. But Binro isn’t a regular local primitive – he’s a Galileo figure, an outcast because he believes their world is a planet that revolves around a star. We aren’t asked to feel sympathy for the ordinary people of Ribos: we’re sympathising with a seemingly more intelligent outsider, who has a greater similarity to ourselves.
Iain Cuthbertson
I’ve enjoyed Iain Cuthbertson in anything I’ve seen him in. I’ve started watching Sutherland’s Law (1973-76), which producer Graham Williams had script edited initially (and was highlighted in the biographical Darkness & Light documentary on the Season 15 blu-ray set). That Scottish legal drama and The Ribos Operation prompted me to return to Budgie, where Iain Cuthbertson and Adam Faith both play villains, but its Cuthbertson’s Charlie Endell that kept me coming back and his character is infinitely more likeable.
As Garron, I like how he switches accents depending on who he’s with, easily turning the charm on and off like a tap. It’s a nice way of emphasising his duplicity, and shows how he gets away with things so well. He isn’t at all brash either, which could have felt too much in the same story as the Graff Vynda-K, and enables him to have more serious moments. Garron is built from the same cloth as Sabalom Glitz a decade later – another character I enjoy, yet who’s never quite as charming as Cuthbertson makes Garron.
I’m pleased that he and Unstoffe are allowed to head off to continue their work elsewhere in the galaxy. It’s clear they haven’t really seen the error of their ways and we get to imagine what else they will be getting up to. Nowadays they would probably get a Big Finish range and personally I’d lap it up!
Alright, call me Fred
The scene with the Doctor deciding to call Romana ‘Fred’ was among the clips on the BBC Cult website, which is undoubtedly why it is lodged more firmly in my brain – as a young fan-in-development, I spent a lot of time with some of those clips. It’s a little odd having a companion simply thrust upon us, but in this case we’ve a companion who doesn’t need things explaining as much, so we can move on swiftly with the story.
Sometimes, I find the Fourth Doctor a little arrogant. For some reason this niggles me; it shouldn’t really because it’s a trait shown in other Doctors too, but I find it less irritating from them. However, this means it’s nice to see the Fourth Doctor humbled by both the White Guardian and Romana.
I do like my heroes to be somewhat fallible and having someone as the Doctor’s intellectual equal changes the dynamic. It feels an extreme jump after Leela, and I’m wondering how well it will really work (my Doctor Who gaps essentially cover all of Romana’s era ). It seems like we’re past the days of companions simply “holding test tubes for the Doctor and telling him how brilliant he was”, but there is always the issue that the Doctor needs to explain things to a companion so that we, the audience, can understand. Will Romana’s ‘equal’ status simply have to diminish to fit the plots?
Guardians
On original viewing this was my second encounter with the White Guardian. Joining Doctor Who in 2005 and seeing the 20th century stories in a variety of orders, there would be references to events, aliens or people from adventures I hadn’t experienced. Sometimes I couldn’t be sure if it was something that was supposed to have involved that particular Doctor, an earlier version, or simply as part of an off-screen adventure. I was usually content to accept this – it was worldbuilding and these things just made the universe seem more fleshed out.
I’d seen all of the Fifth Doctor’s stories first, so had met both the White and Black Guardians during Season 20. I’d enjoyed a lot of that, especially the Black Guardian’s appearances. There, it was clear that the Doctor was familiar with them, so I was pleased when watching The Ribos Operation to discover that the Guardians had been established onscreen before.
I like the grand figure of the White Guardian and his dramatic introduction (although the seconds where the screen went black did make me think there was something wrong with my set – the thunder was then reassuring). The Doctor is clearly slightly scared by the White Guardian and takes his threats seriously.
The Doctor: You want me to volunteer, is that it? And if I don’t?
White Guardian: Nothing.
The Doctor: You mean nothing’ll happen to me?
White Guardian: Nothing. Ever.
“Nothing. Ever” is an amazing, simple description, which has stayed with me. What would “Nothing. Ever” really be like? Try to picture an eternity of nothing, forever. It’s hard and when you do it seems horrific.
The Black Guardian is only referenced here as the Doctor is warned that he will also want to get hold of the Key to Time. I cannot remember seeing him in this season, but it feels like an appearance is being set up.
I had mixed feelings about Season 15’s studio-bound stories, but I think Season 16 hits the ground running with this one. It’s pacy, it introduces a new companion and builds a world well – even while working within its budget constraints. I’m just about willing to accept that there is a population out there somewhere, and I definitely accept that there are other planets filled with people for Garron and Unstoffe to fleece. I don’t care about those unseen elements that much though because I so enjoy spending time with these characters.
I’ve been doing my Very Slow Doctor Who Marathon for well over a decade. One thing that pushed me back towards it in recent years has been the release of The Collection blu-ray sets. I’ve written about some stories, starting in the Pertwee era, and decided to finally start sharing a few of these thoughts.
