Time and the Rani

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

Watch this if you liked...

• Colony in Space

• Shada 

• State of Decay

• The Twin Dilemma

The Mark of the Rani

Two Episodes (45 mins each)
Aired between 2nd February 1985 and 9th February 1985

Written by Pip and Jane Baker
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Sarah Hellings

Synopsis

In a little village in the north of England called Killingworth, an old woman who runs a bathhouse
has a sinister practice of gassing miners and somehow turning them into violent vandals and thugs. 

They're seen as belonging to the Luddites, a group of people that are against the oncoming use of technology in the industrial revolution that is stealing away jobs from hard working men.

Perri and the Doctor arrive in Killingworth after noticing some form of time distortion. 

They investigate the town and he soon sniffs out the fact that the bathhouse is connected to the distortion. He also discovers that a series of top names in the scientific world are about to come and meet in the village at the invitation of notable scientist George Stephenson. He is however, unaware that he's being watched from afar by his old enemy the Master, who has somehow escaped the flames and is alive and well.

The Master goes into the bathhouse and finds that another renegade Time Lord known as The Rani is orchestrating things here.

The Rani was exiled from Gallifrey and set up her own empire on a planet known as Miasmia Goria. She is extracting chemicals from the miners that controls sleep (serotonin).

The Master works out that it's because she has been messing around with her citizens to create super species, but has made them all violent. She now needs the chemical to calm them down and stop the riots.  The Master takes her batch of the chemical, as well as some small maggots that have mind control powers when placed in people's mouths, and blackmails the Rani to help him kill the Doctor.

Although the Doctor disguises himself and infiltrates the bath house to find the Rani's operation and confronts her about the immorality of it, he is ultimately captured.

The Master enlists the help of the "Luddite" miners to attack the Doctor.

They throw the TARDIS down a mine shaft and strap him onto a mine cart and are planning to send him down after it.  Perri helps rescue the Doctor, but she accidentally sets the cart going towards the mine shaft.  Lucky for the Doctor, George Stephenson himself manages to stop the cart and rescue him. 

Together, they all go to see Lord Ravensworth, the owner of the pit to plan their next move.  The Doctor tries to convince Stephenson to call off his meeting with the other scientists, but the Master overhears and ends up using one of the Rani's maggots on Stephenson's aide - Luke Ward. 

He tells Ward to kill anyone who tries to stop the meeting.  The Master then returns to the Rani and suggests she helps him make sure the meeting happens, with the intent of speeding up humanities technological development and therefore transforming it into a power base for him to rule over. In return, the Rani can come and extract as much seratonin as she wants.  The Rani gathers some landmines and takes the Master with her to set a trap.

The Doctor decides it's time for action and goes off back to the bathhouse. He steals his way into her TARDIS and begins exploring, when it is summoned to some old mine workings by remote control, with him still inside. The Doctor hides as the Master and the Rani return and awaits his chance.

Meanwhile, Perri talks with Lord Ravensworth and says she is a botany student.  She goes with Luke Ward to Redfern Dell to look for certain herbs to use to create something to calm down the "Luddite" miners. Unfortunately, Luke Ward has been commanded by the Master to take her there, as that's where the trap is for the Doctor.  They walk around and unfortunately, it's Luke himself who steps on one of the Rani's landmines and gets turned into a tree.  It comes alive as Perri walks past it and grabs her. 

The Doctor has seen it all from afar and seizes his moment, capturing the Master's Tissue Compression Eliminator and using it to force them to help Perri escape.

The Doctor takes the Rani's chemical and goes to make everything right, but the Master and the Rani manage to escape, fleeing in her TARDIS.  Unfortunately for them, the Doctor sabotaged the navigation systems whilst he was in there and some of her specimens (one being a T-Rex) begin to grow and come to life due to the effect of time spillage. 

The Doctor and Perri return to Lord Ravensworth and George Stephenson, trading the serum for the Doctor's TARDIS that has been recovered from the bottom of the pit shaft.  They instruct Stephenson on how to give the chemical to the Luddites and then make their departure.

Trivia

• The Master turning back up was an instruction from JNT. There was no explanation as to how, and Eric Saward was not happy with the idea, but had no option but to let it in

• The name Rani means queen. Pip and Jane Baker based her character on their conversations with neuro biologists at dinner parties. They wanted her as an immoral biochemist rather than a typical hand-wringing villain

• The story might have had a load of studio work take place, but an extra film crew was offered by the BBC due to a mistake in another programme, so JNT took full advantage of them and sent them to Ironbridge museum to do location work instead 

• The scene where the Doctor marks his face with coal dust was made more funny by a dog taking a S**t in the pile. When Colin first did the action, he rubbed it all over his face and the crew stalled to clear it off so they could have a good laugh.

• They also left him hanging on a pole between two trees and even though some dog walkers stopped and talked to him, they never offered to untie him! 

• This was the first time Pip and Jane Baker worked on the show, but they soon became favourites of John Nathan-Turner's. He would use them throughout the seasons until the end of the series

• Colin Baker and Kate O'Mara had worked together before a couple of times and so knew each other quite well.  This was before she went on to appear in Dynasty though.

• The original music score was different as it was commissioned to a man called John Lewis, who unfortunately contracted a terminal illness and died before he got a chance to finish it.  Johnathan Gibbs was asked to do the score instead and he had a much more orchestral take on it.

The Review

The Mark of the Rani has a strange yin-yang of regard to it.  What do I mean by that?  I'll try to explain.  In fandom, it's generally regarded as a terrible story, with awful attempts at Geordie accents, stupid plots and ret-conning the Master's final death with no explanation whatsoever. BUT, this is juxtaposed by an almost cult following of the Rani (not quite to the level of Sil from the previous story, but still formidable). 

Equally, not since the shambles of Black Orchid has the Doctor Who production team even attempted to do a historical. This has all the bells and whistles of it, even including historical figures in the script, something which hasn't been seen since the sixties.  This SHOULD be a welcome return and the fact that they went to the effort to find an authentic location in a museum and get the costumes right, well, we should be applauding it. The problem is the execution is poor at best.

The character of the Rani is interesting enough, with her detached scientific approach to things making many of us intrigued. She demonstrates quite clearly, she is not cut from the Master's cloth. She has reasons and motivations and that is good. But what she's doing, the reasons why is pretty much stupid. Many of the scenes are supposed to be sinister (I think) but they come across as hokey. But as mentioned, the crux of her character is quite intriguing, which is why to this day, every new season of Doctor Who that comes out, the fans are looking with eager eyes as soon as there's a whiff of a female villain to see if the Rani is going to return (see the whole Missy debacle for more).

Sadly, the only other time she appears on screen is a laughable attempt to disguise herself as Bonnie Langford.

The Mark of the Rani should be good, on paper it probably is, on screen it most certainly is not.

Rating

4 out of 10

Re-Watchability Factor

4 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Time Meddler

• The Green Death

• The Time Warrior