Escape To Danger No.46

Two weeks into a new year, and I'm still languishing in extended festive mode. No, not in any kind of seasonal jolliness, please don't think that for a minute.

No, more the extended lethargy and total lack of momentum that arises from a Christmas and New Year that has been lengthened by even more bank holidays in lieu.

In other words, I've done bugger all for weeks, and I'm now starting to feel rather restless and guilty about my own idleness.

I did, however, spend over two hours one night titting around on the Internet doing nothing but looking at photos of the late Mary Tamm and her amazing eyebrows.

Not that I considered it a wasted evening at all...

Now, I could probably wax lyrical for some time about Ms Tamm, but I doubt that anybody really wants to see a Monoid in early middle age getting his hormones all of a-lather. (It's not in the remit of this thread, anyway. So there).

No, let's instead have a look at Season Sixteen's opening salvo, "The Ribos Operation".

And it's all rather good, really.

Mention Season Sixteen to virtually any reasonably well-informed Proper Who afficionado, and The Key To Time is probably going to be the first thing to come out of the hat.

I'll probably discuss that MacGuffin when I get around to looking at "The Armageddon Factor" (which isn't exactly a rich seam of anything in particular, unless you're a big fan of Terry Scott impersonations), so I'll leave that pleasure for later, if at all.

For now though, let us just remind ourselves that without any prior warning, a plot idea that John Wiles had for Season Three suddenly decides to rear its head. Namely, that the Doctor and the TARDIS get hijacked by God.

Fortunately, God turns out to be none other than Cyril Luckham calling himself the White Guardian. Luckham had previously starred in the chronically under-rated (and totally unrelated) 1971 LWT series "The Guardians", where he spectacularly failed to redress the cosmic balance by getting himself killed at the hands of Derek "Largo" Smith in the final episode.

(Cyril Luckham however will always be best remembered by myself for his appearance on Jackanory reading "The Church Mouse" by Graham Oakley - my first exposure to the book - and I am proud to maintain a genuine love of Oakley's warm, sarcastic and lovingly illustrated Church Mice series to this day).

So, God (sorry, The White Guardian) gives the normally peripatetic Doctor a Season-long quest and what we call these days a story arc (fifteen years before it got to be really fashionable). He also gives him a new companion, which at least stopped Tom Baker going on about talking cabbages for a while.

Although the character obviously had its roots in the previous serial "The Invasion of Time", Romana's introduction was at this stage of the series' development something of a masterstroke. After a Season and a half of patronising Louise Jameson's Leela, the Doctor-Companion dynamic was suddenly turned on its head by giving the previously wandering Time Lord a member of his own race to talk to.

Mary Tamm does a wonderful job of developing the aloof, naïve, pain-in-the-ass character that is initially required, into an intellectual and spiritual equal to the unstoppable juggernaut that Tom Baker's Doctor had by this point become. Having a "reserve Doctor" on hand, giving Baker the chance to go and arse around until he got bored, was probably what saved Graham Williams and Baker from the dole queue.

And as much as Lalla Ward will always be "my" Romana, I do wish Tamm had hung around for a little longer...

But what of the rest of the story?

Well, it's only Robert Holmes at the peak of his powers, but on a wonderfully small scale that cranks the believability up to eleven. (Dullards may mock the Shrivenzale as a Token Monster in the same allegedly badly-realised league as the Sand Beast and the Magma Creature, but not me. That photo and the descriptions in the Ian Marter Target novelisation gave me the willies for years).

Whether by accident or design, Holmes goes deliberately small and reaps the rewards. The set-up is a con operation (hence the title) albeit on a planetary scale, and Iain Cuthbertson is on fine fruity form as the swindler attempting to deprive a marvellously twitchy Paul Seed in his role as a displaced space-baron with a grudge.

Add to this the atmosphere of a planet unaware of alien civilisations that just so happens to reek of faux-medieval Russia, lots of furry hats, Prentis Hancock thinking he's in pantomime, and a Dudley Simpson score that is for once uncharacteristically evocative and subtle.

And in the only other female role, you have Anne Tirard as The Seeker. Who is probably the best incidental character in any Doctor Who story.

Ever.

It's also just about the only story that actually qualifies for the fanboy cliché "Holmesian Double-Acts", especially when Timothy Bateson turns up and does a turn that is both genuinely funny and rather moving at the same time.

So sod all that Key To Time bollocks. If this isn't a chunk of gorgeously rendered late 1970s Who, then next Sun-Time I'm going a-looking for that old Scringe-Stone mine myself...