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First Transmitted
Cast
The White Guardian recruits the Doctor to collect the six hidden and disguised segments of the powerful Key to Time. He assigns him an assistant Time Lady named Romanadvoratrelundar, whom the Doctor calls Romana (despite Romana's preference for "Fred" when given a choice by the Doctor). He warns him that the Black Guardian also seeks these segments, but for an evil purpose. The White Guardian provides them with a wand-like device which can locate the pieces and remove their disguise. When inserted into the TARDIS console, the locator reveals a segment to be on Cyrrenhis Minima, but then the signal moves to Ribos. Ribos is an icy planet with late-medieval-type inhibitants who are unaware of alien cultures. A human from Earth named Garron tries to sell Ribos to an exiled tyrant called the Graff Vynda-K. The Graff is impressed by the planet's supposed quantity of jethrik, the rarest and most valued mineral in the galaxy. He believes the opportunity confirmed when he sees a piece of jethrik with Ribos crown jewels. This is all part of a ruse orchestrated by Garron; the jethrik was planted by Garron's assistant Unstoffe. The locator points the Doctor and Romana to the same jethrik, which must be the disguised segment of the Key to Time. The Graff Vynda-K provides a large sum of money for the planet upfront that is to be kept safely in the room with the crown jewels, watched by Ribos guards by day and a shrivenzale beast by night. Later, Unstoffe distracts the shrivenzale, recovers their piece of jethrik, and takes the money from the safe. The Graff learns of Garron's deception when he discovers a covert listening device in his room. He takes Garron hostage with his "accomplices" the Doctor and Romana, and he starts the search for Unstoffe, who still has the money and the jethrik. Unstoffe hides with Binro, a homeless outcast who believes that Ribos is a planet orbiting a star, which Unstoffe confirms to be true. The Ribos guards summon a Seeker who locates Unstoffe's hideout. Using the listening device in the Graff's room, Garron warns Unstoffe about the Graff. Binro, thankful for Unstoffe's encouragement, leads him to the labyrinthine Catacombs under the city. The Graff and his men enter the Catacombs without the Ribos guards, who fear the place. K-9 helps the Doctor, Romana, and Garron to escape from the Graff's quarters and go to the Catacombs. The Ribos guards destroy the entrance to the Catacombs causing the ceiling to collapse on the Graff's men. With the money and the piece of jethrik, the Graff gives his last surviving guard an explosive to kill himself with. The guard, actually the Doctor in disguise, swaps the explosive for the jethrik. The Graff walks off into the maze yelling like a madman before exploding. After leaving the Catacombs, the Doctor, Romana, and K-9 dematerialize in the TARDIS. Garron and Unstoffe are free to leave the planet on the Graff's deserted ship and the Doctor and Romana reveal the first piece of the Key to Time.
Strangely, those critics who pointed out the shortcomings of episodes like The Deadly Assassin, LIKED this story. I wondered if they were watching the same episode, because frankly I didn’t think much of it at all. Two things had to be got out of the way first. The White Guardian setting The Doctor on his mission first. In itself, the idea of linking each of the episodes of the season with a common ‘quest’ wasn’t a bad idea as such, though Doctor Who had managed for over a decade without such gimmicks. The quest was not the problem. The problem was the Man from Del Monte lookalike White Guardian. And as if that wasn’t bad enough he drops in a bunch of lines straight from Wizard of Oz about a terrible Black Guardian who must not, under any circumstances, ever be allowed to get hold of the key! The whole thing was just a bit too black and white, excusing the pun. Then there was Romana, fellow Time Lord, and fashion plate. Now, the idea of a Time Lord joining The Doctor in the TARDIS, to say nothing of female Time Lord, is also not a bad idea. But there was something about Mary Tamm’s Romana that never quite sat well. In this episode especially she is too busy trying to outdo The Doctor by being more sophisticated, better dressed and smarter than him. And so to Ribos, and a rather odd little story involving two intergalactic conmen, Garron and Unstoffe, who sell planets without the occupants of them being aware they were for sale. Their client, The Graff is a bit of an unsympathetic character at best. He is a deposed tyrant who wants the planet as a springboard to retaking the world he was exiled from. It is almost possible to sympathise with Garron and Unstoffe, especially the latter, who is at best an apprentice conman, when The Graffe comes gunning for them. All well and good and a diversion for three of the four episodes. What bothers me, and I think many fans, is the cold way in which The Doctor resolved the situation by planting an explosive device on The Graffe and letting him blow himself up. I could understand his use of the Demat gun to dispose of Stor and the Sontarans who were threatening the very existence of his own people, but The Graffe’s doings were completely incidental to him and I don’t completely buy the idea of him killing him that way. Redeeming features of this story? The fact that it didn’t rely on monsters, the plot surrounding humanoids was one point in its favour. There WAS a monster, the Shrivenzale, but it was far from central to the plot. Binro the proto-scientist who had started to work out that Ribos wasn’t the centre of the universe in the way of Renaissance Earth scientists was n interesting and underused character. More should have been made of him. A more central plot surrounding him might have been interesting. As it was, he was thrown in almost, it seemed, to make up numbers in the cast. But filling the screen with colourful characters, throwing in a bit of glamour in the form of Romana, and a bit of cute behaviour from K9 for the kiddies isn’t a formula for quality television. Ribos Operation, on the whole, wasn’t BAD, but neither was it outstanding for anything other than the arrival of Romana on the scene. And for me the only significance that had was that I named a gerbil after her.
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