"Doctor Who" fans tuning in for the start of season 16 in September 1978 were in for a surprise: The inaugural four-part serial "The Ribos Operation," while a self-contained story, was just the first of six segments in a season-long story arc dubbed "The Key to Time," itself comprising six segments scattered across the universe, with the Time Lord the Doctor and his new companion Romana, herself a Time Lord, dispatched by the White Guardian (Cyril Luckham) to retrieve them in order to reassemble them and recalibrate the universe--without allowing the Black Guardian to retrieve them and plunge the universe into oblivion.
The brainchild for "The Key to Time" was producer Graham Williams, whose arrival on "Doctor Who" came at a contentious time. Following the mid-1970s departure of "Doctor Who" producer Philip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes, a glory period that saw this family-oriented science-fiction series both praised for its edgy, adult-oriented gothic-horror stories and vilified in the next breath by cultural conservatives such as Mary Whitehouse--not to mention the BBC itself--Williams stepped in as producer for season 15 in 1977 with orders to tone down the horror angle, of which Williams himself had been critical even as it helped current Doctor Tom Baker become a series icon. Baker would become even more iconic with Williams's season 16.
Ironically, Williams turned to Holmes to kick off the story arc with "The Ribos Operation," arguably the best script from a writer lauded for landmark stories including "Terror of the Autons," "The Time Warrior," "The Talons of Weng-Chiang," and "The Caves of Androzani." Central to Holmes's well-conceived tale is his favorite theme of clashing civilizations. Using the segment locator given to them by the White Guardian, the Doctor and Romana arrive on the planet Ribos, currently in "ice-time" and inhabited by medieval, superstitious folk unaware that other worlds even exist.
Also on Ribos is veteran huckster Garron (Iain Cuthbertson) and his protégé Unstoffe (Nigel Plaskitt), lying in wait for the Graff Vynda-K (Paul Seed), a brutal tyrant exiled from the technologically-superior Levithian Empire and looking for an advantage to enable him to regain his lost reign--and guess who has what he's looking for planted as bait to lure him into a planet-sized con?
Playing the first companion who is equal--if not in some ways superior--to the Doctor, Mary Tamm holds her own against, by this time, an intimidating Baker. Her Romana, younger, glamorous, academically accomplished, exudes cool imperiousness that contrasts with the scruffy Time Lord flashing his street smarts and grizzled experience ("Lady and the Tramp," anyone?); in a neat inversion of the companion's typical "what's that, Doctor?" expository purpose, Romana has to explain the functions of the segment locator to him.
Filmed entirely on the sound stage, the first part of "The Ribos Operation" has all the earmarks of a classic wobbly-walls, men-in-rubber-suit monsters (I'm looking at you, shrivenzale) "Doctor Who" serial. It also has, thanks to Holmes's crackling script, the makings of a juicy saga.
The brainchild for "The Key to Time" was producer Graham Williams, whose arrival on "Doctor Who" came at a contentious time. Following the mid-1970s departure of "Doctor Who" producer Philip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes, a glory period that saw this family-oriented science-fiction series both praised for its edgy, adult-oriented gothic-horror stories and vilified in the next breath by cultural conservatives such as Mary Whitehouse--not to mention the BBC itself--Williams stepped in as producer for season 15 in 1977 with orders to tone down the horror angle, of which Williams himself had been critical even as it helped current Doctor Tom Baker become a series icon. Baker would become even more iconic with Williams's season 16.
Ironically, Williams turned to Holmes to kick off the story arc with "The Ribos Operation," arguably the best script from a writer lauded for landmark stories including "Terror of the Autons," "The Time Warrior," "The Talons of Weng-Chiang," and "The Caves of Androzani." Central to Holmes's well-conceived tale is his favorite theme of clashing civilizations. Using the segment locator given to them by the White Guardian, the Doctor and Romana arrive on the planet Ribos, currently in "ice-time" and inhabited by medieval, superstitious folk unaware that other worlds even exist.
Also on Ribos is veteran huckster Garron (Iain Cuthbertson) and his protégé Unstoffe (Nigel Plaskitt), lying in wait for the Graff Vynda-K (Paul Seed), a brutal tyrant exiled from the technologically-superior Levithian Empire and looking for an advantage to enable him to regain his lost reign--and guess who has what he's looking for planted as bait to lure him into a planet-sized con?
Playing the first companion who is equal--if not in some ways superior--to the Doctor, Mary Tamm holds her own against, by this time, an intimidating Baker. Her Romana, younger, glamorous, academically accomplished, exudes cool imperiousness that contrasts with the scruffy Time Lord flashing his street smarts and grizzled experience ("Lady and the Tramp," anyone?); in a neat inversion of the companion's typical "what's that, Doctor?" expository purpose, Romana has to explain the functions of the segment locator to him.
Filmed entirely on the sound stage, the first part of "The Ribos Operation" has all the earmarks of a classic wobbly-walls, men-in-rubber-suit monsters (I'm looking at you, shrivenzale) "Doctor Who" serial. It also has, thanks to Holmes's crackling script, the makings of a juicy saga.