Of course “Ribos” kicks off the Key to Time story arc, which will run throughout this season. It does so by introducing the concept of the White and Black Guardians, incredibly powerful beings who can manipulate time and space on a vast scale, but who are nevertheless limited by a physical object (the key) and who prefer to act through agents rather than directly intervene in events. The story never explains just exactly what the Guardians are, or why such seemingly powerful beings need the Key to Time. That can either be annoying to someone who likes every plot point explained, or it can be a nice touch that keeps the Guardians mysterious. I lean towards the second option, since any explanation for the Guardians would doubtless be disappointing.

The Doctor wants nothing to do with the assignment. He knows about the Guardians and respects their authority up to a point, but he chafes at being under their direction just as he does when the Time Lords give him an assignment. He accepts the mission to hunt down the various hidden Key to Time segments under threat of nothing at all ever happening to him again if he refuses. An offer he can’t refuse, if you will. He’s also given an assistant, which he’s emphatically not happy about.

Whenever I think of Romana, I almost always think of Lalla Ward’s version of the character. But Mary Tamm was the first, and she’s well-cast as an imperious, know-it-all Time Lady. She and the Doctor clash, which makes for some wonderfully entertaining scenes throughout the story. She taunts the Doctor about his age and the way in which he flies the TARDIS, and then psychoanalyzes him in the most patronizing way possible. The Doctor sulks and acts childish, and then takes great delight in showing how clever he is, which of course backfires on him as often as it works. It’s great, and proof positive that a new companion can often be very good for Doctor Who by shaking things up and highlighting different sides of the Doctor’s character. For the previous season and a half, the Doctor enjoyed his vastly superior knowledge compared to Leela. Now he’s paired with someone who knows quite a bit more than he does about some things, even if she lacks his practical, learned experience.

The search for the key takes the Doctor and Romana to Ribos, an icy cold planet with a sort of medieval society. What gives the plot its central conflict is the con game going on when the Doctor arrives. The con-men are Garron and Unstoffe, who are trying to swindle a good deal of money out of deposed tyrant Graff Vynda-K by selling him the planet itself. Vynda-K is assisted by his bloodthirsty adjutant Shellak. For those who love Robert Holmes’ penchant for pairing up characters as a “double-act”, if you count the Doctor and Romana we’ve essentially got three of them in this story, all working to cross-purposes both for and against each other. It’s a crime caper, wonderfully adapted to the sci-fi trappings of Doctor Who.

The production is very good as well. Robert Holmes always demonstrates great skill at world-building in his storylines, and the designers realize the snowbound city, along with the fur and cloak-wearing population very well. About the only real weak point is the Shrivenzale, the dangerous creatures who live in the tunnels under the city. The monster is less than convincing, but it doesn’t detract from the story all that much. We’re used to rubbery aliens in Doctor Who.

Overall: Robert Holmes’ storyline makes an excellent start to the season. It looks and sounds good, and the characters are well-drawn and played, with some great interaction that drives the plot. Graham Williams gets some grief for adding humor to Doctor Who and lightening up the show after Phillip Hinchcliffe left, but “The Ribos Operation” shows that his approach can still work well and produce highly entertaining Doctor Who.

As the extras on the recently-released DVD make clear, “The King’s Demons” was written around the introduction of a new robot companion named Kamelion. The robot had impressed producer John Nathan-Turner enough that he wanted to include it in the show. Thankfully, the limitations of the prop were apparent enough that the writer was directed to limit the robot’s appearances in case of trouble. I suspect this is what led to its shape-shifting abilities, and then to the plot about the Master forcing Kamelion to impersonate King John, all so an actor could play the robot in disguise. The idea of a shape-changing robotic companion for the Doctor certainly has dramatic possibilities, so the production crew can’t be faulted for that. It’s just a pity that their reach exceeded their grasp, and that the actual Kamelion robot didn’t work very well due to a number of circumstances. Meaning that it wouldn’t be seen again until “Planet of Fire”, where it was written out.

But Kamelion is put to good use here, whatever the limitations of the robot prop. He is disguised as King John and under the control of the Master, who plans to disrupt the signing of the Magna Carta and thus alter the history of the Earth for the worse. As the Doctor recognizes, it’s “small time villainy, by his standards”. Still, this small-time villainy makes for a fun romp through English history with castles and knights and jousting. Not to mention the historical inaccuracy of iron maidens and the Doctor’s opinion of King John.

However, there is a rather glaring plot hole in the story. The Master spends the first episode disguised as the king’s champion, a French knight. Whatever you think of the accent and disguise, they fooled me as a kid watching the show. These days it’s rather evident that Sir Gilles is Anthony Ainley. Regardless, during the swordfight with the Doctor at the end of part one, the Master disposes of his disguise, revealing his true face. And no one seems to notice or comment on this. Later on the Master returns, having changed his clothes, and everyone just accepts him as a friend of King John, despite the fact that they all saw him alter his appearance in front of the whole room and get stuffed into the vanishing iron maiden. Perhaps he was never in disguise, and just had some mass hypnotic effect on everyone? I know if I vanished into thin air and then later turned up in a change of clothes claiming to be someone else, it’s not likely that I’d be believed or trusted.

Thankfully there’s not too much time to think about this as the story just brushes past it and goes on with the plot. For once, the Master is not exposed as the villain that he is. The Doctor takes Kamelion and escapes, stopping the Master’s plan to scuttle the Magna Carta, but to the end the people in the castle believe that the Doctor is their enemy and the Master is on their side. It’s a messy victory, and one that will lead into the events of “Planet of Fire” when the Master later tries to reclaim Kamelion.

So, the final verdict: “The King’s Demons” is short and sweet and doesn’t outstay its welcome. The Master’s removal of his disguise in full view of the dinner crowd should mean that everyone will recognize and distrust him in episode two, but they don’t, which is just bizarre and unexplained. And oddly enough, this never occurred to me on first viewing. The performances and atmosphere are good, and the Doctor/Master rivalry is always fun. I’d say the story is flawed, but worth watching.

The aliens behind this cunning little invasion plan, the Kraals, look pretty good. However I think this is a case where in order to make the story work as it’s presented, you have to accept that Styggron just isn’t a very competent would-be world conqueror. That would explain the level of mistakes that he makes, as well as his exaggerated claims about how indestructible his androids are. He desperately wants to conquer the Earth, but he hasn’t really thought his whole plan through

There’s the germ of a good story idea here, but the script needed a bit more work I’d say. At first the deserted village and deathly silent pub patrons are nicely creepy, and the mystery is an interesting one. There’s a very retro feel to this story, possibly due to the presence of UNIT and the direction by Barry Letts. It’s just not quite as edgy as the standard Hinchcliffe/Holmes storyline. And it’s hurt by the absence of Lethbridge-Stewart, though the Brigadier is name-dropped at least. Colonel Faraday is a joke. He’s a blustering dim bulb of a military commander, and can’t be taken seriously.

Mr. Benton gets less to do than I’d like, though his appearance in the story is welcome. The most memorable scene for the character is the moment where his android double shoots the android Doctor, a rather casual bit of violence that stands out in this lighter storyline. And then there’s the scene where Benton discusses with some chagrin taking his kid sister out for dinner, which brought a smile to my face. Harry Sullivan makes his return in a small role, and his brief scene with Sarah at the end of the story brings back fond memories of the previous season. Both Harry and Benton casually appear without any fanfare, and then end their status as regular characters without even get a proper goodbye scene with the Doctor and Sarah. And we never see them again. For someone as likeable as Harry, that’s a shame. For a long-running character like Benton who’s been around since the Troughton era, it’s even more of a pity.

Overall, “The Android Invasion” is decent. It contains a reasonable story idea hampered by a weak plot. But throw in a nicely designed monster and the return of Harry and Benton, and the story remains enjoyable despite the problems.

The plot wraps up fairly quickly once the Doctor deduces just what’s going on with Bennet, though he just about gets himself killed. The Doctor’s reckless streak and penchant for acting alone certainly go way back. In the end, Vicki is invited aboard the TARDIS of course, and the surviving natives take out their frustration on the wrecked ship.

The brevity of the plot and running time remind me of the new series episodes. The story is fairly lightweight, but that’s hardly a flaw. “The Rescue” is first and foremost a vehicle for replacing Susan with Vicki, but in addition to the new character it offers some good characterization for the Doctor, Ian and Barbara, as well as a reasonable story. And since it’s a short story, I’ll conclude my short review on that note.

As an aside, have we gotten so PC that a fictional race of prehistoric lizard men can’t be referred to as Silurians? Please. It’s a cool name, even if it is inaccurate. Keep it. Lose the “homo reptilis” nonsense.

The plot itself is reminiscent of the original Silurian storyline in several ways. A scientific project to drill beneath the surface of the Earth disturbs a Silurian colony, awakening some of the hibernating Silurians and prompting retaliation. This particular colony of Silurians has not encountered humans before, and so they steal bodies from graves and then living humans in an attempt to study how the ‘apes’ had evolved during the time they’ve been sleeping. The human scientific project disturbing a Silurian colony borrows from the original story, the attempt to drill deep beneath the earth borrows from “Inferno”, the force dome over the project borrows from “The Daemons”, and people being dragged beneath the ground hearkens back to “Frontios”, even if the culprit is not the Tractators. For those of you wondering if this story cancels out “Inferno”, don’t worry. The drill in this story has only gone 13 miles deep, while Stahlman’s project had gone 20 miles beneath the surface. So the lack of Primords isn’t a problem. Heh.

So the story re-uses a number of elements from various Doctor Who stories as well as the basic plot from “The Silurians”. I complained about Doctor Who ripping off its own past when I reviewed “Rise of the Cybermen” and “The Age of Steel”, and some of the same complaints apply here. Though in the case of the basic plot (humans disturb Silurian colony, Silurians fight back), the retread elements are somewhat excusable, since any encounter with a new colony of hibernating Silurians is likely to follow a similar sequence of events. What this story does that “The Silurians” and “Warriors of the Deep” generally failed to do is to make the Silurians sympathetic. The argument that they were here first and thus have a legitimate claim to the planet has always been a brilliant concept that raises their stories above the standard alien invasion plots. But with the exception of the old Silurian from the original Pertwee story, all others have been so hostile and murderous that the Doctor looked like a chump for trying to be even-handed with them. “Cold Blood” remedies this by giving us two reasonable characters in the form of scientist Malohkeh and government official Eldane. They’re contrasted with the bloodthirsty military commander Restak and soldier Alaya, who hearken back to the majority of earlier Silurian characters.

The story also ends on a more optimistic note than “The Silurians” and “Warriors”. Two humans remain behind as the Silurians go into hibernation with the hope that in 1000 years humanity will be more willing to accept sharing the Earth with the Silurian race. Eldane’s narration gives the impression that the attempt will ultimately be successful, and I for one would love to see that story on Doctor Who. The year 2120, and Silurians emerge from their caves to open diplomatic relations with human governments around the world. With the right writer, that could be a darn good episode.

The ‘cracks in time’ storyline gets some major advancement. Not only because Rory is killed by Restak and then erased from existence by the crack, but because the Doctor retrieves a piece of shrapnel and discovers that it’s part of the TARDIS door. So it now seems as though the destruction of the TARDIS is what caused the explosion in time that is causing the cracks in the universe! This is cool time travel storytelling. I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

Overall: too much re-use of elements from old Doctor Who stories is disappointing and possibly even lazy writing. And the Silurian re-designs are weaker than the original look, even if the makeup and general production values are stronger. But the story offers a few new ideas and a hope for future human-Silurian relations that hasn’t been seen before, while introducing the Silurians to the modern audience. Not the best of the season, but still a reasonably good set of episodes.