The Ribos Operation
098 – The Ribos Operation | |||
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Doctor Who serial | |||
Cast | |||
Companions
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Others
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Production | |||
Directed by | Season 16 | ||
Running time | 4 episodes, 25 minutes each | ||
First broadcast | 2 – 23 September 1978 | ||
Chronology | |||
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The Ribos Operation is the first serial of the
The serial is set on the primitive and superstitious planet Ribos. In the serial, the exiled Emperor of Levithia, Graff Vynda-K (Paul Seed), seeks a piece of the rare element jethrik on the planet. At the same time, the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) and his travelling companion Romana (Mary Tamm) look for the first segment of the powerful Key to Time, disguised as the same jethrik piece.
Plot
The
Ribos is an icy planet with late-
The Graff Vynda-K provides a large sum of money as a deposit for the planet 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 imprisons Garron with his "accomplices", the Doctor and Romana, and 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, and that there are other stars in the universe, which Unstoffe confirms to be true (because he was from Earth). 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, where the natives bury their dead.
The Graff and his men enter the Catacombs without the guards, who fear the place, and the Seeker warns that if they enter, "All but one are doomed to die." K9 helps the Doctor, Romana, and Garron escape and go to the Catacombs. The guards destroy the entrance to the Catacombs causing the ceiling to collapse on the Graff's men. Having recovered the money and the 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 as the sounds of one of his previous battles resound around him, before exploding.
After leaving the Catacombs, the Doctor, Romana, and K9 dematerialise in the TARDIS. Garron and Unstoffe claim the Graff's deserted ship, full of years of plunder, while the Doctor and Romana transform the jethrik into the first piece of the Key to Time.
Production
Working titles for this story include Operation and The Ribos File. The opening scene, with the White Guardian, was actually written by Anthony Read and Graham Williams, and not Robert Holmes. The society depicted in The Ribos Operation was closely based upon medieval Russia, and the name Ribos was an anagram of the common Russian first name Boris.[1] Popular British stereotypes of Imperial Russia were of a backward, primitive nation whose people were mired in superstition and ignorance, precisely the same qualities that the characters not from Ribos attribute to Ribos and its people. The currency of Ribos, the opek, was a near anagram of kopek, the Russian equivalent of a cent.[2]
Operation is a British slang term for a swindle.[3] The title of The Ribos Operation means something like the Ribos scam or the Ribos swindle. The critic Christopher Bahn noted that Holmes had a fondness for conmen as characters as several of his Dr. Who stories feature likeably sleazy conmen as major characters, and that the characters of Garron and Unstoffe were much the sort of characters whom Holmes liked to create.[4] Bahn noted that Holmes subverted traditional ideas of morality by presenting the mark (the victim of the scam), the Graff Vynda-K, as a thoroughly unlikeable and unsympathetic character while presenting the scammers Garron and Unstoffe as "loveable rogues" whom the audience was to sympathise with.[4] Bahn wrote of the Graff Vynda-K that he was "a perfect mark for a con-job story—dour and humorless and eager to use violence where it’s probably not even necessary, it’s easy to feel like he deserves to be rooked".[4] The character of Garron was intended to be Australian-hence the references to Australia such as the statement that he swindled investors by fraudulently selling the Sydney Opera House-but was changed to being English when Iain Cuthbertson won the part in an audition.[5] The end of the Graff Vynda-K, wandering about the catacombs of Shur (the capital of Ribos), delusional and insane while ranting about his past glories and future dreams of conquest was based upon the end of the villainous protagonist of the 1972 West German film Aguirre, the Wrath of God.[4]
The serial was filmed entirely in studio in April 1978.[6] From this story until The Horns of Nimon (1979–80), Baker wears an extra-long scarf, which is the original scarf and the stunt scarf sewn together.[7][8]
Cast notes
Elisabeth Sladen, who as Sarah Jane Smith was last seen in The Hand of Fear (1976), was approached to return to the series as a replacement for Leela (who had left in The Invasion of Time). When Sladen declined the offer, Romana was created.
Prentis Hancock had appeared in Spearhead from Space (1970), Planet of the Daleks (1973), and Planet of Evil (1975).
Broadcast and reception
Episode | Title | Run time | Original air date | UK viewers (millions) [9] |
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1 | "Part One" | 25:02 | 2 September 1978 | 8.3 |
2 | "Part Two" | 24:46 | 9 September 1978 | 8.1 |
3 | "Part Three" | 24:42 | 16 September 1978 | 7.9 |
4 | "Part Four" | 24:50 | 23 September 1978 | 8.2 |
Commercial releases
In print
ISBN 0-426-20092-6 | |
Ian Marter's novelisation was published by Target Books in December 1979. Curiously, it features the Doctor opening the TARDIS doors by means of an old brass knob.
In audio
It was released on
Home media
It was released on
References
- ^ Sullivan, Shannon. "The Ribos Operation". ShannoSullivan.com. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
- ^ Sullivan, Shannon. "The Ribos Operation". ShannoSullivan.com. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
- ^ Sullivan, Shannon. "The Ribos Operation". ShannoSullivan.com. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
- ^ a b c d e Bahn, Christopher (24 June 2012). "The Ribos Operation". The A.V. Club. Retrieved 20 March 2013.
- ^ Sullivan, Shannon. "The Ribos Operation". ShannoSullivan.com. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
- ^ a b Mulkern, Patrick (14 December 2010). "Doctor Who: The Ribos Operation". Radio Times. Retrieved 20 March 2013.
- ^ "Doctor Who Scarf". Doctor Who Scarf. Retrieved 9 October 2013.
- ^ "The History of Tom Baker's Scarves". 28 October 2009. Archived from the original on 28 October 2009. Retrieved 9 October 2013.
- ^ "Ratings Guide". Doctor Who News. Retrieved 28 May 2017.
- ISBN 0-426-20442-5.
- ISBN 978-0-563-40588-7.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - ^ Felix, Justin (21 March 2009). "Doctor Who: The Ribos Operation". DVD Talk. Retrieved 20 March 2013.
- ^ "Doctor Who and the Ribos Operation @ The TARDIS Library (Doctor Who books, DVDs, videos & audios)". timelash.com.
- ^ "DVD News". BBC. 18 May 2007. Archived from the original on 6 June 2009.
External links
Target novelisation
- Doctor Who and the Ribos Operation title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database