The Mark of the Rani

Chapter The 179th, where someone single-minded and sociopathic inspires riots. Any similarity to peoples alive and impeached is purely coincidental.

Plot:

The Master visits Killingworth in the North East of England sometime early in the 1800s, as he's presumably tracked the Rani there rather than it just being a big coincidence. The Rani is another exiled Time Lord and old acquaintance of the Doctor and the Master, an amoral scientist. As part of an experiment, she is extracting a chemical from the brains of the miners that work in the town leaving them very aggressive. She has been popping back to various violent periods in Earth's history as a cover to harvest this chemical, and this time she's chosen the Luddite riots (though she's overshot by a few years). The Master hijacks the Doctor's TARDIS to bring him and Peri to the same place and time, then disguises himself as a scarecrow in a nearby field to await their arrival, as you do. Once they arrive, the Master swipes the Rani's vial of brain chemical to ensure her cooperation with his schemes, and stirs up some of the locals with Rani-impacted brain chemistry to kill the Doctor, making them think that the Doctor is trying to rob them of their jobs by mechanising the mine. The Master has a shrinking gun and could just shoot the Doctor, but he does not do this.

Their attempt is foiled by George Stephenson, who is working on his locomotive engines in Killingworth. The Master takes hypnotic control of Stephenson's assistant, Luke Ward, and finds out that a meeting is planned with many of the geniuses of the time (Telford, Davy, Faraday and Marc Isambard Brunel amongst them). He decides (on the fly?) it will be good to use the power of these geniuses to take over the planet; this is presumably a big coincidence, but maybe it was what he planned all along - it's not clear. He persuades the Rani that she can help him rule the planet, and they decide to kill the Doctor by laying mines in a nearby dell. Again, the idea of just shooting the Doctor with the powerful shrinking gun doesn't occur to the Master or the Rani. They tempt the Doctor and George Stephenson down to the dell, but it is Luke who steps on a mine and gets turned into a tree. Did I mention that the mines turn the person who steps on them into a tree? Well, they do. The Master and Rani flee in the latter's TARDIS, but the Doctor has sabotaged it so it keeps accelerating, and this starts to wake up the onboard dinosaurs - the Rani keeps lots of Tyrannosaurus Rex embryos in her TARDIS, as you do. The Doctor gives the mine owner the brain fluid vial, having pickpocketed it from the Master earlier, so everyone can be turned back to normal.

Context:

Watched the two episodes separated one a week (the rate at which they originally went out) on two Sundays in January 2021, from the DVD. I was accompanied by all three children (boys of 14 and 11, girl of 8) for the first episode, but they weren't very impressed, I have to tell you, and I watched the second episode on my own a week later. The middle child groaned audibly when Colin Baker's face appeared in the episode one credits. I didn't expect such a reaction, and he's certainly not copying it from me. While I feel there are undoubtedly lots of questionable choices made in his era, I've nonetheless always enjoyed watching Colin's stories, so I don't know from where this antipathy comes and have to assume it's the boy's genuine feeling. It's disappointing, as the middle child is normally very positive about Doctor Who; it also has echoes of certain jaded online fans of a particular vintage who never give Colin the time of day. But who am I to judge? There were definitely 11 year olds losing patience with the show in 1985 too. It's a shame he and his siblings bailed before the second episode as maybe people turning into trees and baby dinosaurs - for all that they made me scratch my head in confusion - might have appealed to them.

First time round:

I watched the first episode on its initial BBC1 broadcast on Saturday 2nd February 1985. I was in the middle of my second term at high school at that point, and I had made a new friend. It was a friendship that didn't endure, and sadly I can't remember my friend's name all these years later; it might have been David or maybe Adam; Paul, possibly. I can picture him, though. I often wish I'd been disciplined enough to keep a diary to help with such things all these years later. Anyway, his family had two season tickets for Brighton and Hove Albion at the historic Goldstone ground, the club's home for almost all of the twentieth century (it's a retail park now; there's a Nando's). Occasionally, this friend would get to take another friend to the football instead of going with his Dad, and sometimes he asked me. It was because I was on my way home from watching Brighton win one-nil against Cardiff City on the 9th February that I missed the second - and very different - episode of the story.

Just over ten years later, on 3rd July 1995, The Mark of the Rani came out on VHS, and I had again made a new friend: the Better Half. We were in the first few months of our relationship, but I had already 'come out' as a Doctor Who fan by then, and shown her some of my burgeoning video collection. Probably not all of it, though, as I didn't want to scare her off completely. On that Monday that the tapes were released, I was off work ill. Such was my enthusiasm to pick up this story (and Time and the Rani, the other story featuring Kate O' Mara's titular villain that came out the same day) that I walked - walked! - the three miles or so from my home to central Worthing and Volume One on Montague Street to buy the tapes, even though I was very poorly. Then I walked back. Six miles walking for The Mark of the Rani and Time and the Rani!!!!! I was an idiot in those days. It took me another two days to recover from this stupid jaunt, during which time I watched both stories. The Better Half came to visit me during that period and realised while nursing this poor pathetic specimen in front of her that she definitely loved me, and would be stuck forever with me and my Doctor Who collection, poor thing. As such, I can't help but have warm feelings for both these stories.

Reaction:

Like that Brighton v. Cardiff football match I went to in February 1985 (see above), The Mark of the Rani is a game of two halves. The writers of the story, Pip and Jane Baker, are infamous in Doctor Who circles for writing florid polysyllabic dialogue and erring on the side of too much camp in characters and scenarios, but even their sternest critics would have to admit, I think, that underneath all that they could plot a tale. The Doctor Who stories that they contributed in 1986 and 1987, and other non-Who examples of their work for the small screen that I can think of, are consistently tight and focussed adventure plots. Nothing too fancy (apart from the verbiage) but nonetheless solid and effective. This is also true of the first part of The Mark of the Rani. Yes, the Master's plot is hopelessly silly, but that's his M.O. and the script has the decency to mock him for it, with the more sensible Rani providing withering looks and asides at his convoluted escapades. The historic setting is a nice change of pace and allows for something that had not, believe it or not, been very common in Doctor Who for decades by 1985: the Doctor meeting a real person from history. The promise of the name dropping done in episode one is that the Doctor and George Stephenson are going to partner together in the final part to defeat the 'Luddites' and the two Time Lords who are manipulating them. In episode two, though, there are elements (magic trees and dinosaurs) that emerge from nowhere, and George Stephenson's only in about three scenes and does nothing.

What the hell happened to Pip and Jane here? I almost wonder if they were in such a rush that they both had to write an episode each in parallel, hoping that they would match up, such is the disjoint between the first and second parts. All the promise of the first half is squandered in the second, which is a great shame. The one very good thing that the Bakers deliver in this story is the Rani herself. The show had never before this point - such was the tunnel vision of the usual patriarchal approach - had a recurring female villain. The Bakers find a new take to differentiate the Rani from the show's other recurring Time Lord foe; she doesn't want to rule the world, she doesn't particularly want to harm the Doctor; she just wants to get on with her work. It's just that her work is amoral and has terrible consequences. This is indeed how the character is for the first episode; but, in the second, that all gets lost and she becomes full-on panto hiss baddie. Kate O' Mara relishes this change in the performance, and it could easily have been made into a more smooth character arc rather than again seeming like an abrupt bump. The issue is the presence of the Master. If the Rani's going to turn fully bonkers super-villain by the end, you don't need him; in the first part, though - where the Rani is an unwilling accomplice, gently sending the Master up - they work well together, and it's very enjoyable. It would have been better to pick a lane and either have the Rani alone with the character arc of going from nasty but at least purposeful experiments through to turning people into trees, or keep both the Rani and the Master working together with a plot that was more in keeping with each's original character.

The story has come in for some criticism over the years for historical inaccuracies. Its difficult to pinpoint exactly when it's supposed to be set, but it isn't quite so bad as has been made out. If Stephenson is working on a locomotive at Killingworth then it must be at least 1814, and it can't be any later than 1829 (the last time that the named visiting geniuses are all alive, Humphry Davy dying in that year). It's probably before 1820 when Faraday completed his apprenticeships with Davy, assuming they have been invited together. Luddite activity mainly happened for a couple of years after 1811, but there were still attacks on machinery happening as late as 1817. It's certainly plausible, at least in terms of the dates, that when Stephenson's workshop was set up it was protected in case of Luddite-style attacks, as mentioned in the dialogue. Of course, Luddite action was mainly against textile machinery not mine workings, and the activity did not take place this far North. Maybe the mine's owner Lord Ravensworth is just paranoid. It's easy, of course, for me to dial up all these facts with the internet at my disposal; the Bakers did not have such a tool. I think, though, that they just wanted a story with Stephenson and Luddites together, despite them not having much to do with one another, and they thought the dates just about lined up, with a bit of artistic licence.

There is a lot to recommend the story, in both episodes. The time and place is very effectively presented, with clever use of the locations (Blists Hill and the Coalport China Museum); there's great  direction from Sarah Hellings, who gets excellent performances from all the cast, particularly regulars Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant as the Doctor and Peri; these two are given good opportunities from the script to be charming and fun occasionally, unlike the sniping and moaning at each other that is all they normally get from stories in this era. The stunt ending for episode one - the Doctor on a runaway gurney - is daft but exciting, and Jonathan Gibbs' score is evocative and interesting throughout. As badly as they join together, the two episodes would combine to be an above average story for the period, if it weren't for the people turning into trees towards the end. In the right place, a spooky tree transformation can work. One of my earliest memories of being utterly terrified by something I saw on TV was someone turning into a tree in a children's drama show. I must have been very young when I saw it, but it left an impression such that it stayed with me and I eventually managed - with help from the internet - to track down what this fragment of disturbed memory was: The Man Who Hated Children, one of the later episodes of series 3 of Shadows, a horror anthology series for kids shown in the ITV regions in the late 1970s. I am not alone in being haunted by this moment for more than forty years, I have found testimonials online from multiple sources who were similarly scarred.

Such was the power of this sequence that I have not attempted to rewatch it to date; it could either be just as scary as I remember, or not nearly as bad, and neither of those options seems that appealing. Crucially, though, it only worked because it was in the right context. Shadows was a supernatural-themed series, rather than the fairly rigorous science-based world of Doctor Who; what makes it worse is that the first episode of The Mark of the Rani leans in to the science even more than usual, making one wonder exactly how - and why - this methodical scientist the Rani has created land mines that turn a person instantly into the tree. The change being instant also makes it risible; in the Shadows episode the transformation is gradual, not done in a second with a puff of naff pyrotechnics. I can't reliably recall how realistic the eventual tree was in the 1970s programme, but some images are burned into my soul: roots growing out of the character's trouser leg, bark appearing on their skin, and finally - when the man had been absorbed, his sad face peeking out of a knot in the trunk. The trees in Mark of the Rani appear to be made of plastic, and are erected in a real wood so they look ridiculous compared to the real trees around them. Plus, in The Man Who Hated Children, the man-tree post transformation does not bend a rubbery branch like an arm to save a damsel in distress. It's as if every contributor from script to final image got it 100% wrong. And don't get me started on the baby dinosaurs...    

Connectivity: 

Both The Mark of the Rani and Revolution of the Daleks feature a female incarnation of a Time Lord and more than one TARDIS.

Deeper Thoughts:

Calling the capitol, calling the capitol... The Mark of the Rani has two villains, and they get punished for their villainy at the end of the story. Sort of. There's not much in the way of due process - the Doctor feeds them to some baby dinosaurs inadvertently after sabotaging their ride - but it's something. We need stories to show us the inspiring myth that bad deeds end up being punished, because most of the time life isn't like that. I write these words on the 19th January 2021, the last day of the 45th president of the United States being in the White House. As ever, I find myself unable to type his name. At the time of writing, doom-scrollers across the world including myself are waiting to see exactly which group of rappers and neo-Nazis he is going to pardon before he leaves. By the time this is published and you're reading it, Joe Biden's inauguration will be in the past, you lucky thing. After that, the proceedings of 45's second impeachment trial will begin in the US senate. I don't hold out much hope that he will be found guilty, but it does look more likely than it ever has before that he might face some consequences for his actions. In 2016 when he won the election, he had already transgressed political and social norms on the campaign trail, and there was every expectation he would continue to do so in power; indeed some people who should know better wanted him to do so, to mix things up a bit.

As with my reaction to the UK's Prime Minister A. Johnson's behaviour, it was a surprise to me how very thin a layer of political and social norms exists between order and chaos. Norms, for instance, like accepting the result of an election you didn’t win. It turns out that you don’t have to do that, and that the long history of such things happening was just out of some misplaced feeling of politeness that egregious populists don’t have to display. Despite not being able to provide any evidence to persuade even partisan Republican courts that there was any widespread voter fraud - courts that must have known how dangerous taking this path was liable to get - the 45th president of USA kept repeating the big lie. He even repeated it in his supposedly placating speech made to the rioters who had broken into the Capitol at that very moment, and were intent on finding and destroying the electoral college votes (and probably much worse actions than that too). He also in that same speech said to the rioters in the Capitol, without qualifying that he was excluding anyone wearing a Camp Auschwitz T-shirt or waving a confederate flag or such, that “We love you” and “You’re very special”. It did not look like he was calling for calm at all.

Several of 45’s tweets after that reiterated the big lie and stirred things up further, precipitating the temporary and then permanent ban of his account on twitter. This, even more than the language used in his speech before his followers stormed the Capitol, seems damning to me. I still don’t think he’ll be found guilty, as he seems to have managed to evade any responsibility for anything he’s done throughout his long life. This unchecked behaviour led to the enablement and maybe even partial normalisation of white supremacy. This is where the abstraction of even something light like Doctor Who does get it right: just like the Master, coming back every time even though he was thought to be completely destroyed the last time, certain evils just won’t go away. I don’t know that the solution is to strengthen those norms; after all, if the heavily codified US procedures underpinned by an unassailable written constitution can’t prevent these things from happening, maybe nothing written down on paper will. The best course of action would seem to be don’t elect populists, and maybe the tide is turning on that, but it could very well turn back again. By the time you read this, you’ll be living in a day of hope, but each day after that will be an unending challenge.

In Summary:

The first episode goes like a Rocket, but - in the words of Radiohead - gravity always wins, and the second episode comes down with a hell of a bump.