PS Creativity > Reviews > The Classic Series > The Ribos Operation

The word 'classic' has always been bandied about when discussing Doctor Who stories, but usually it's with an uncaring disregard for what it actually means. Is a 'classic' a faultless (or near enough faultless) Doctor Who story? This definition fails because then we have to define what a Doctor Who story is, and as we all know, that definition changed many times over the years.

In 1978 Doctor Who was a skillfully scripted, cheaply made kids show. For all the shouts of 'pantomime' aimed at Season 17, "The Ribos Operation" may be the story that most resembles one, with indoor snow, a clacking big dragon and even big painted scenary. The sets are constructed so much in this fashion that you half expect them to dissapear upwards at the close of every scene.

This impression is further compounded by Tom Baker, who had by this point almost left behind the seriousness he exhibited during the Philip Hinchcliffe seasons and is filling in the gaps in what he evidently considered uninteresting scripts with his own comedy routines. It's clear that the Universe is now his Doctors playground, rather than (as the Second Doctor once remarked) a place full of "evil that must be fought", and he's not afraid of any of it. As he tells Romana, "when you've been threatened with death as often as I have, you'll find this is much more fun". To be fair, the whimsical atmosphere is not all down to Baker, Robert Holmes script playing up the arrival of Romana (the Doctors near intellectual rival) to maximum effect. Can you imagine the Doctor of Seasons 12 to 14 getting caught in a big animal trap and having to sheepishly look to his assistant for help?

Mary Tamm's performance as Romana would quickly become tiring as the season wore on, and even here it rapidly becomes apparent that her classical good looks have won her the part over any of her other talents. It's all too apparent that she delivers all her wordy lines from a cue card, and her cleverly written ripostes with the Doctor appear badly staged.

More successful is the introduction of the White Guardian and his plastic garden furniture. While this works fine, the Key to Time concept is a wholly unneccesary season-binding device; most of the subsequent stories would relegate it to a hastily bolted-on afterthought, and in retrospect its most redeeming legacy is to overshadow the larger than usual number of crowd displeasing stories this year. The story arc of collecting a key segment at the end of each adventure actually does a marvellous job of hiding the cost-cutting measures in evidence throughout them all; the big CSO nightmare that was "Kroll" aside, there are only fleeting appearances by any monsters in Season 16, and the Shrivenzale in "Ribos" is its most obvious drag factor.

Thank goodness, then, that the script is such a good one. All peripheral comparisons with pantomimes aside, what Doctor Who at its best gave us (more as professional goodwill than as an obligation) was characterisation and intelligent humour. Tom Baker's continual mugging to camera aside, all the main players deliver performances they are obviously relishing playing, and while the ham is plentiful it remains just the right side of effective. Garron's over the top portrayal ("Wilco, Graham Out!") works because he is joyously dedicated to his pursuit of selling the planet Ribos to the Graff Vynda K, who likewise is driven by his passion for revenge on the empire that expelled him. The Universe that Robert Holmes creates is cosy and finely detailed, from Jethrik powered space warp to conmen selling Sydney Harbour. Better still is Binro the Heretic, a crippled old man who worked out the science of Ribos' orbital movement but was publically silenced because it contradicted popular myth. The scene where Unstoffe is able to tell him it was all true is the best one of the story.

Unfortunately the adventure drifts into tunnel-wandering towards the end, but it has enough of everything to warm even the coldest heart; intentional (and genuinely funny) humour is in abundance, as is the uninentional laughs gained from Ann Tirard's extraordinary Seeker character, and there is also pathos, anger and sadness as well. Perhaps the only thing missing is good old behind-the-sofa fear, but somehow it wouldn't sit comfortably with what else is here. You can't be everything at once, and who gets really scared at a pantomime anyway?

Doctor Who at the start of season 16 was for the first time having to use invention to paper over the cracks left by a rapidly departing budget. Thankfully, Doctor Who's most famous writer recognised that turning in a decent script was the best solution of all.

Originally posted by Si Hunt on April 7th 2003 at 4:23pm.

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