The Ribos Operation Part Two

The one where the Graff agrees to buy Ribos...

This episode is very much Iain Cuthbertson's, and he's so good in it, thriving on Robert Holmes's juicy dialogue and revelling in the limelight by turning in a memorably vivid performance. Holmes loved his chancers, charmers and wheeler-dealers (see also: Milo Clancy, Sabalom Glitz, Stotz, Henry Gordon Jago), and Garron is indeed a garrulous rogue who runs rings round his unsuspecting adversaries. His plan - the Ribos Operation of the title - is a risky but ingenious ruse to cheat the Graff Vynda-K out of millions of gold opeks, and then do a runner. It just so happens the Doctor and Romana are circling this grand scheme, almost incidentally.

Our heroes take a back seat to Holmes's fascination with his own creations, Garron and the Graff, and it means the Doctor and Romana remain pretty passive throughout the episode, listening, learning, but little else. Garron and Unstoffe are the stars of this show, and the Graff is second attraction.

Having said that, there's some nice business between the Doctor and Romana that shows that the working relationship between Tom Baker and Mary Tamm got off to a pretty solid start. I adore the bit where they hide behind pillars from the approaching Shrieves, then panic when they see they've left the tracer on the ground and stumble over which one of them should grab it! It's pure slapstick, brief but done well.

But then there's a moment where I thought the script was being filtered through Moffat era Who, when Romana says she's "almost 140 years old", and the Doctor mutters to himself: "Really? You're in wonderful condition." Yuk. I mean, he's not wrong, but it's a bit too close to the "dirty old man" moment where the Doctor drools over Clara in Nightmare in Silver. I'm guessing it was a Tom ad-lib, but whoever was responsible: less of it, please.

There's a nice little parallel between the Doctor and Romana, and Garron and Unstoffe. Both the Doctor and Garron are acting as mentor to the naive but keen apprentices Romana and Unstoffe, and it's great to see Romana's occasional pomposity punctured by examples of her naivety, such as when she believes Unstoffe's elaborate yarn about the scringestone. I do like Romana's intellectual line in put-downs though, like when she tells the Doctor they have a "negative empathy", or "I realise that your behaviour simply derives from a sub-transitory experiential hypertoid induced condition, aggravated, I expect, by multi-encephalogical tensions."

As well as the juicy performances there's Dudley Simpson's wonderful music, an ecclesiastic score which swings from funereal to the pomp of ceremony with such ease.

Simpson was so prolific on Doctor Who in this period that there were only three stories not scored by him in the entire Tom Baker era, but I must say that it's been a while since I've "noticed" his work. Season 15 was a bit of a black hole of creativity all round, but I can't really remember a score of Dudley's since The Talons of Weng-Chiang, so it's nice to have him "back in earshot" with something worthwhile here.

Garron's ingenious scheme is well thought through. I actually quite admire it! He manages to pull the wool over the Graff's and the Shrieve Captain's eyes (although the latter isn't too difficult), as well as wangle it so he gets away with the Graff's opeks and the jethrik before anybody can rumble him. Well, he almost gets away with it, because the Graff is too wily to fall for it completely, and waits with his men to intercept Garron and his accomplices, including the Doctor and Romana. Rather wonderfully, the Graff turns to camera and sneers: "No one makes a fool of the Graff Vynda-K and lives. Sholakh: execute them!"

It's a rubbish cliffhanger - one of those pointless endings that means nothing because you know the Doctor isn't really going to die - but it's worth it for Paul Seed's villainous moment. Seed really does do "bad guy" so well! This Graff's no softie...

First broadcast: September 9th, 1978

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Iain Cuthbertson oozes charm and smarm, and steals the show completely.
The Bad: There's too much emphasis on guest characters, and not enough effort in getting the Doctor and Romana bedded into the story. Our heroes feel almost incidental.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 17

NEXT TIME: Part Three...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Three; Part Four

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: https://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-ribos-operation.html

The Ribos Operation is available on BBC DVD as part of the Key to Time box set. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Key-Time-Re-issue/dp/B002TOKFNM