Episode #98 : The Ribos Operation

"Ground rules. Rule one: Always do what I say. Rule two: Stay close to me, and rule three: Let me do all the talking. Do I make that perfectly clear?"

Episode 98:   The Ribos Operation.
Companions: 4th Doctor, K9 and Romana.
Air Date:       Four episodes. 2nd to 23rd September 1978.

The White Guardian gives the Doctor a quest to find the six disguised segments of the Key to Time which, when assembled, will be used to restore the balance of the cosmos. To aid him he is given a new companion, a female Time Lord called Romana, and a tracer device. He tracks the first segment to the city of Shur on the planet Ribos. There con men Garron and Unstoffe are engaged in a scam to sell the entire planet to the Graff Vynda-K, deposed ruler of Levithia. The Graff has been tricked into believing that Ribos is a rich source of jethrik, a rare mineral vital for achieving space warp drive.

The series returns with a new season long plot arc and a new companion, Romana. I never used to enjoy these stories but when you watch them as I have recently you realise that they are much better than first thought and gives the show a more traditional direction in having a story arc.

The storyline starts with The Ribos Operation. Coerced into this task by the White Guardian of Time, the Doctor is joined by a new companion Romana. Romana is easily a match for the Doctor in intellect and the sense of irritation that the two have with one another gives us a whole different layer to the character of the Doctor. As a companion I really like Romana and her appearance enhances the show for me.

I do have a question about this story, and it crops up again before and after. Why do so many worlds out there resemble Earth's medieval period. Ribos looks like it is in that transitory period between the middle ages and the renaissance. Even the soldiers of the Graff Vynda-K look like medieval knights, though not explained could have been a disguise knowing they were coming to a more primitive backward world.

The story flows at a nice pace and being just four 25 minute episodes works so well. It feels like two modern stories which I find just right. It is almost as if having the summer break has given the writers of these stories some much needed downtime to come up with a well written and presented adventure. This story is almost what I expect from Doctor Who now. Although the story itself isn't fantastic it does a grand job of setting up the Key to Time arc.