Inspirations - The Ribos Operation

Before we look at the Season 16 opener The Ribos Operation, it might be an idea to recap on events in the closing months of Season 14. You'll recall that the BBC had started to take Mrs Whitehouse's complaints about Doctor Who seriously, and it was decided that producer Philip Hinchcliffe should move on to other projects whilst his replacement reconfigured the series to cut down on the violence and overt horror, and inject more humour and fantasy. Graham Williams had been setting up a new crime drama called Target, which was to be the BBC's response to ITV's The Sweeney. He suddenly found himself being asked to leave this project and transfer over to Doctor Who - with Hinchcliffe being swapped onto Target. This was all pretty much a done deal, though Williams was asked to pitch some ideas as to the direction which he would take the show, before his appointment was finalised.
What he came up with was the idea of a series which would have an overarching plot. All six stories would fit together to form a longer narrative, rewarding the long term viewer, whilst still being accessible to the casual audience. Each story could be watched in isolation, as the story arc wouldn't necessarily dominate. For the last 8 years, the series had positioned the Time Lords as the universe's supreme beings - but what if there was someone, or something, even greater than they? This would be some cosmic elemental force representing Good and Evil, Light and Dark, Order and Chaos. There would be two beings, representing opposing forces, who between them kept the universe balanced. However, occasionally this equilibrium would start to unbalance, and would need to be restored.

Williams came up with the Guardians - one White, one Black - who represented these opposing forces. Universal harmony would be maintained by a key, which was split into several parts and scattered, disguised, throughout Time. When required, it would have to be gathered together and operated to restore things. Williams' series would see the Doctor being sent on a mission by the White Guardian to collect the key components, whilst keeping them from falling into the hands of agents of the Black Guardian - the villains who would populate the individual stories which made up the season.
Williams arrived on the programme as The Robots of Death was in rehearsal, and work was already far advanced on The Talons of Weng-Chiang. Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes had already commissioned some of the stories which would make up Season 15 - so there was no way that Williams could produce his story arc season straight away. He would have to wait until his first full season in sole charge.
To get things started, Holmes was asked to write the opening story. Holmes had a fascinating life. Thanks to lying about his age to enlist, he became the youngest serving British Army officer in WWII. After the war he became a police officer. He then decided that he preferred writing about crime to catching criminals and became a newspaper reporter, before finally writing for TV.
The series had always featured criminal elements - human or otherwise - but had never made an actual crime caper story. In the 1960's and '70's a number of confidence trickster scams made the newspaper headlines - often featuring plots which seemed so fantastical that it was hard to believe that anyone would be dumb enough to fall for them. Selling Sydney Harbour Bridge or the Eiffel Tower were just a couple of examples. (When comic actor Dick Emery made his 1972 big screen feature, Ooh... You Are Awful, rather than employ sketches as he had on his popular BBC TV series, he used a single plot about a con-man. This enabled him to still include his well-known TV show characters - now as disguises for the con-man).

The Ribos Operation features a pair of con-men - Garron and his sidekick Unstoffe. They are the latest of Holmes' trademark comedic double acts (following the likes of Vorg & Shirna, Kalik & Orum and Jago & Litefoot). At one point Garron mentions a con he worked on Earth - the sale of Sydney Harbour Bridge, just like the tabloid stories. The character was originally going to be Australian, and actor Ian Cuthbertson does seem to have an Aussie accent at some points. However, we then hear that he actually comes from Hackney Wick, which is a district of East London.
This being a science fiction series, it is not landmarks which Garron tries to sell to the gullible, but whole planets. he and Unstoffe have come to Ribos to try to sell it to the Graff Vynda-K, a warmongering noble who has been deposed by his own people. To make their scheme more attractive, they employ a piece of the mineral Jethrik - which is incredibly valuable. They make out that there is Jethrik to be found on the planets they are flogging. Of course, the lump of Jethrik turns out to be the first disguised component of the Key to Time which the Doctor is seeking.

To aid in his quest, the Doctor has been given a new assistant by the White Guardian - a member of his own race. She is Romanadvoratrelundar - or Romana for short. The Doctor gives her this shortened name - it is that or Fred, and she actually opts for the latter. Romana has just graduated from the Time Lord Academy on Gallifrey, and is academically smarter than the Doctor, but with little or no experience of the universe. The character was created to be the exact opposite to the untutored, instinctual Leela, once it became clear that Louise Jameson could not be persuaded to stay for another season. Williams had actually asked Lis Sladen to return first, but at the time she felt there wasn't anything new to add to the character of Sarah Jane Smith and it was too soon to think of going back. Mary Tamm got the role of Romana. She had just featured prominently in The Odessa File, and was reluctant to take on a TV job at first, but her agent thought that the exposure in a popular show would be no bad thing for her career. She was promised that the part would be different to previous companions, being of the Doctor's own people. Tamm was into all things mystical and often consulted an astrologer when making decisions. She was pleased when Romana got to wear a white costume in the first story, as this was a lucky colour according to the astrologer. (We'll come back to this astrologer when we get to The Androids of Tara).
Of course, the Doctor still has K9 to assist him as well - or at least the new K9 Mark II, still voiced by John Leeson. The new version had been built to be quieter and supposedly more manoeuvrable.

Ribos is a scientifically backward planet, whose inhabitants know nothing of life on other worlds and who believe their decades-long seasons result from a battle between the Sun and Ice Gods.
The whole look of this planet is based on Medieval Russia, and to the films of Sergei Eisenstein. The designers would surely have seen his Ivan the Terrible (released in two parts - Part I in 1944, and Part II: The Boyars' Plot in 1958. The reason for the lengthy gap between the two halves is that the second part was banned by Stalin, and it couldn't be released until after his death. There was to have been a Part III, but it was cancelled after the banning of Part II). The other great historical epic of Eisenstein's which might have inspired the look of The Ribos Operation is Alexander Nevsky, which was released in 1938. It tells of an invasion by Teutonic Knights of the city of Novgorod. The Graff Vynda-K's bodyguards have the look of Teutonic Knights. The various Ribosian officials are given the large fur trimmed skullcap hats similar to the famous Monomakh Cap worn by the early Tsars, and the treasure room of capital city Shurr is decorated with pictures which look very much like Russian Icons.

During the course of the story Unstoffe meets and befriends an old homeless man who sleeps in a tent in the city concourse. His name is Binro, and we hear that the officials call him Binro the Heretic. This is because he once advocated publicly that the lights in the sky were not ice crystals, but other suns, which might have other worlds around them. Most guide books on Doctor Who lazily
tend to get stuck on him being a reference to Galileo, whose heliocentric views of the cosmos led to him being prosecuted by the Roman Inquisition. The clue to the real inspiration for Binro is there if you look at his name. Giordano Bruno (born in Nola, Italy, in 1548) was a Dominican friar who proposed that the stars were other suns, which probably had other planets orbiting them where there might be life. He also claimed that as the universe was infinite, it could not have a centre, where the Catholic Church claimed Earth to be. Bruno entertained other theological beliefs which ran counter to Church dogma. He didn't believe in Hell, and doubted both the divinity of Christ and the virginity of Mary. After travelling widely through Europe publicising his philosophy, he returned to Italy in 1593 and was soon after arrested by the Inquisition and accused of heresy. In February 1600 he was burned at the stake in Rome's Campo de' Fiori. Now famous for its fruit & veg market, it has a statue of Bruno brooding over it, marking the spot where he died. Binro is clearly Bruno, rather than Galileo.
Next time: One down, five to go. A young man who has been trying to get a Doctor Who story commissioned for a while finally strikes lucky, just as he is about to find fame with a radio show about hitchhikers...