“BINRO WAS RIGHT!”

“Have you ever looked up at the sky at night and seen those little lights? They are not ice crystals! I believe they are suns just like our own sun, and perhaps each sun has other worlds of its own, just as Ribos is a world... I have made measurements of those little lights, and of our own sun, and I can prove that Ribos moves; it circles the sun, travelling far away and returning...”

Most of you probably won’t ever have seen this, or if you did, it was probably so long ago that you’re unlikely to ever have remembered it, or given it any special importance, but it’s a rather special moment from a daft old bit of British telly that I quite enjoyed when I was very young, and which has always stayed with me.

This is an extract from an old Doctor Who script from way back in 1978 (I told you yesterday that I was a bit of a fan...) which I always remember when I’m in need of cheering up, because it says, in kind of an offhand manner, that science will eventually replace superstition, and, when it comes to the discovery of new knowledge, that it doesn’t really matter what everyone else is telling you. It’s saying, in its own simple way, that when you’re right, you’re right, and when you have something that you really believe to be true, based upon your own knowledge and understanding, it really doesn’t matter that the rest of the world is trying to tell you how wrong you are.

It’s a sweet and poignant little scene that probably does little to enhance the plot of the adventures going on all around it, and which is just the sort of beautiful “character moment” that no longer seems important to the fast-paced style of modern telly, but I still rather like it. It is from episode three of a story called “The Ribos Operation” which was written by scriptwriter Robert Holmes as the opening story of the possibly epic “Key to Time” season, which was an early(ish) experiment in having an ongoing story arc across a full 26 episode series of a television drama programme.

The search for each of the six segments which made up the various parts of the Key to Time is the starting point for each of the six stories which would have made up the usual standard production year back in those days, and helps give that particular year’s stories a unity that some of the other ones could lack, and adds a slightly epic air to the whole thing, for a while at least.

We know, of course, that this scene is really all about the real-life story of Copernicus and/or Galileo, albeit all dressed up in some less than fancy sci-fi trappings, but it’s a very “warm” moment, which is, of course, somewhat ironic because it’s set on the planet of Ribos as it is enduring its “Ice Time...”

Binro, like all tragic figures in this type of thing, dies horribly shortly afterwards, but at least he got to experience this precious moment where he finally got to be told that “Binro was right...”

Timothy Bateson as Binro and Nigel Plaskitt as Unstoffe

Scene 12: INT. CONCOURSE - BINRO'S HOVEL

(Unstoffe sips a hot drink from a cup supplied to him by Binro.)

UNSTOFFE:

Thank you. Thank you for helping me escape.

(He sounds very different from the idiotic, cowardly conman we've previously known. He sounds calm, mature - almost like he's an entirely different man. Binro takes the cup back.)

BINRO:

Oh, it was nothing.

UNSTOFFE:

Why'd you do it?

BINRO:

Well... I know what it's like when every hand is against you.


UNSTOFFE:

(He nods, pointing outside)

"Binro the Heretic..."

BINRO:

You heard that name...?

Well, it wasn't much of a heresy, my friend.

Just a little thing.

UNSTOFFE:

What?

BINRO:

Oh, many years ago now.

(He looks upward)

Have you ever looked up at the sky at night, and seen those little lights?

UNSTOFFE:

(He nods)

Mm-hmm.

BINRO:
They are NOT ice crystals.

(He waits, as if expecting a violent response.

Unstoffe merely nods.)

UNSTOFFE:

Go on...

BINRO:

Well...

I believe they are suns...!

Just like our own sun.

And, perhaps, each sun has other worlds of its own, just as Ribos is a world. What do you say to that?

(Unstoffe seems willing to listen to the ideas, at least.)

UNSTOFFE:

It's an interesting theory.

BINRO:

(A bit surprised)

Wha...?

(Laughs heartily)

A broad-minded man!

Perhaps in the North, they are a different people after all!

You see, my friend, I have taken measurements of those little lights and of our sun, and I can PROVE that Ribos moves!

Yes!

It circles our sun, travelling far away and then returning.

It's the reason we have our two seasons, Sun Time and Ice Time.

UNSTOFFE:

Nobody believed you.

BINRO:

Ah, those blockheads...!

They prefer to believe that Ribos is some sort of battleground over which the Sun Gods and the Ice Gods battle for supremacy...

They said that if I did not publicly recant my beliefs...

The gods would destroy our world.

UNSTOFFE:

And did you?

BINRO:

Mm-hmm, in the end.

Huh... These hands...

(He holds up two gnarled, crippled hands, and he chuckles.)

BINRO:

Useless for work now...!

That's why I live here.

UNSTOFFE:

Binro... Supposing I were to tell you that everything you've just said... is absolutely true?

There ARE other worlds, other suns...

BINRO:

(Wide-eyed)

Heh.... Y-you believe it too...?

UNSTOFFE:

I know it for a fact!

You see... I come from one of those other worlds.

BINRO:

(Excited)

Y-you...

UNSTOFFE:

I... I thought I should tell you...

Because, one day - even here - in the future men will turn to each other and say:

"Binro was right!"

(The old man is almost crying with joy.

He hugs Unstoffe's hand tightly.)

Thanks to a website called dwtpscripts for doing most of the basic groundwork here, by the way...