Four episodes
Aired between 7th September 1987 and 28th September 1987
Written by Pip and Jane Baker
Produced by John Nathan Turner
Directed by Andrew Morgan
Synopsis
The TARDIS is flying near the planet Lakertya when it's assaulted by energy beams that cause it to crash on the planet.
The assault is so violent that the Doctor hits his head and suffers a wound so great, he's forced to regenerate.
The Rani, female renegade Time Lord enters the ship along with a pet beast.
She instructs it to take away the Doctor and leave the unconscious Mel. Once back in her lair, the Rani reveals that she has been kidnapping the great thinkers from earth, including Einstein, Pasteur and Hypatia. Now she needs the Doctor for some reason. To help her in this task, she's dominated a race of vampiric bat creatures known as Tetraps to subjugate the natives of Lakertya to doing her bidding.
The Rani knows she cannot force the Doctor to help her, so she dresses up as Mel to trick the delirious Doctor into helping her.
She uses an amnesia drug to assist with this. The Doctor agrees to help, but in a haze, goes to the TARDIS and changes clothes, finding his new outfit first.
Meanwhile, Mel is recovered by a Lakertyan called Ikona. He believes she is the Rani, and it takes a while of traipsing through the wasteland, avoiding exotic landmines before she wins his trust. One of the Tetraps begins tracking them and Mel steps on a landmine, getting trapped in an explosive bubble. Lucky for her, it lands on a lake and doesn't burst, giving Ikona time to free her from it.
Back at the Rani's lair, the Doctor is convinced to work on a piece of machinery that is apparently broken and the Rani (Mel) doesn't know why. In his conversations with her, he begins to suspect she's not being truthful and that something is wrong. She goes to get a component from the Lakertyans and the Doctor comes to his senses in the meantime. The real Mel finds the Doctor, but he believes her to be the Rani, convinced only when he finds out she doesn't have a double pulse of a Time Lord, and vice versa.
The Doctor and Mel decide to find out what the device is that the Rani is making the Doctor work on, and two Lakertyan's - Beyus and Faroon show them a secret room where a big brain is installed. The brain is there to channel all the genius' intellect into a single gestalt. Mel is taken to safety whilst the Doctor thinks about how he can stop the Rani.
The Rani returns, and the Doctor has escaped, he is chased but ends up in the Tetrap pit, surrounded by the bat-like creatures. Beyus frees him from the pit and takes him back to the control room, forced to obey the Rani. She is out looking for the Doctor, so he is able to remove a piece of the machine and escape once again, despite alarms being raised.
Mel in the meantime isn't safe enough and Urak - the Rani's Tetrap servant captures Mel and stings her with a paralysing venom, taking her back to the lair.
Once free, the Doctor meets up with Ikona, who takes him to the Lakertyan's Centre of Leisure, a facility made by the Rani to keep the locals subjugated by basically getting high and forgetting about everything. The centre of the room has a giant metal ball that releases killer alien bees when the Rani triggers it as punishment for helping the Doctor.
After a lot of people have died from this, Faroon says she was given a message from the Rani that they have Mel and she wants to trade with the Doctor for the piece of machinery that he took.
The Doctor and Ikona go and make the trade with Urak, but it turns out that the Mel they thought they were getting was really a hologram. The Doctor is captured shortly afterwards and taken back to the lair.
The Rani is revealed to be using the intellect to find an answer to the problem of how to destroy an asteroid made up of strange matter which is pretty much invincible. The Doctor is placed into the machine with the other Genius' and it starts working overtime.
It comes up with a substance called Loyhargil that can be used. If it is fired at the asteroid, it will form a shell of Chronons around the planet, effectively converting it into a Time Manipulator, something which the Rani very much wants as she can control evolution.
The Rani leaves Urak to guard the Doctor, but makes it clear that they will all be left to die on the planet whilst she leaves. Urak bolts, leaving the Doctor to go to. Beyus stays and sacrifices himself, damaging the brain and delaying it long enough for the rocket that it ultimately launches with the Loyhargil to miss the asteroid.
The Rani gets away in her TARDIS, but finds Urak and a load of Tetraps in it, bullying her to go to their homeworld and share her technology with them.
The Doctor and Mel say their goodbye's to Ikona and the other Lakertyan's and the Doctor gives Ikona an antidote for the alien killer bees, but he pours it away, saying that the Lakertyan's must now solve their own problems if they are to survive. Together, Mel and the Doctor wave goodbye and leave in the TARDIS.
Trivia
- This was the start of a new era. Following the final chance that the BBC gave the show, there was an almost entirely new crew that was set up. John Nathan-Turner was told to return, even though he'd been prepared to go, rumours say that was because they could not find anyone else willing to take up the poison challice that the show had become.
- With the show coming back, the high ups in the BBC instructed John Nathan-Turner (their scapegoat) to fire Colin Baker. More excruciatingly, they offered him the chance for one final adventure in the TARDIS to usher in the new Doctor. Baker understandably said he would actually do the regeneration, provided they gave him the whole series to go out on. They never called him back, and that's why the beginning regeneration sequence took place, with Sylvester having to wear a blonde curly wig!
- With the new era of the show, a new title sequence was designed, surprisingly, this is the first time computer generated imagery was used on the show and was groundbreaking in terms of what can be done.
- This story was written before anyone knew what was going to happen with the new Doctor. New script editor, Andrew Cartmel didn't think this script was the best, but, relatively young and inexperienced, he relied on Pip and Jane Baker to help him work it into his new envisaged narrative.
- Loyhargil is an anagram of the Holy Grail
- As with Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy protested the costume, especially the question mark jumper. It wasn't until the TV Movie that he would be able to get rid of it.
- The planet of Lakertya was meant to be a forest planet, but the Director didn't like that, so they shot it in a quarry instead
The Review
Time and the Rani is a rehash of old ideas. Taking the unpublished story of Shada, it cannibalises elements of it and puts it together on an alien planet with a new Doctor. In every way, this story feels like a Frankenstein's monster - every element could work, but bolted together as it is, they all miss their mark and just seem lost.
The puzzled, post-regeneration Doctor has been done before and arguably better. Sylvester McCoy is likeable and as much of a clown as Patrick Troughton ever was, but the laugh a minute style goes over the top, with the expectation that he would fall for Kate O'mara's rubbish costume just destroys all sense of belief.
The aliens are bright yellow against the wasteland - as it happens not the writers fault, but still it beggers belief how they ever managed to survive on this mudball of a planet.
The only good things to come out of it was the bubble mines, which although they make no logical sense in prolonging the death of someone and prone to not exploding...they just look cool. The other is the Tetraps, who showed some potential, but whilst ever under the Rani's boot are never going to be anything truly terrifying.
The plot itself is not only improbable, it's also painfully tedious to watch. As with Trial of a Timelord, if this is the best that the show can come up with in the "new era", then it would probably have been best to cancel it then and there. Thankfully, Andrew Cartmel had a vision and goals, and was allowed some breathing space to usher in the stories he wanted to tell.
Rating
3 out of 10
Re-Watchability Factor
3 out of 10
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