Time and the Rani

Chapter The 231st, when Doctor Who reaches the Emulator orchestra hit sample era.

Plot:

The Rani has allied herself with some giant and not that quiet bat people, the Tetraps, and with them has enslaved the locals on the planet Lakertya, set up a laboratory there and installed a giant brain. This may already sound like a bizarre plan, but you ain't heard nothing yet! She plans to blow up an asteroid orbiting the planet that is composed of strange matter; this will turn the planet and brain into a time manipulator apparently. She has abducted various geniuses from across time and space, and linked them up to the brain to work on the chemical formula for a detonator for the asteroid. One of the geniuses she has left a space for is the Doctor. She causes his TARDIS to crash land on Lakertya, which brings about the Doctor's regeneration. She and a Tetrap bundle the new Doctor out of the TARDIS, leaving Mel unconscious lying on the control room floor. Before the Rani links the Doctor into the brain circuit, she drugs him to induce temporary amnesia, and pretends to be Mel (wearing a wig and dressing in the same costume); this is so he will unwittingly help fix her broken lab equipment. Mel befriends a Lakertyan rebel Ikona, avoids the Tetraps and the Rani's explosive bubble traps, and breaks into the lab while the Rani is elsewhere. At first, neither she nor the Doctor trust that the other is who they say they are. Persuaded at last, the Doctor plays along with the returning Rani for a while to try to get information on her plans, but she sees through this and connects him to the brain circuit.

The Doctor's eccentricities impact the collective genius brain, so the Rani disconnects him, and Mel traps her. It's too late, though, as the formula for detonating the asteroid has been found. The Rani escapes, sets the countdown to missile launch, and goes off towards her TARDIS to escape the planet. The Doctor and Mel remove the explosive anklets that the Rani has put on the Lakertyans to keep them in line, and place them round the giant brain. The Doctor sabotages equipment in the laboratory to jam the countdown. He confronts the Rani before she escapes and bluffs that the Lakertyans are waiting to attack. She activates the anklets, destroying the brain and causing the countdown to resume. Unfortunately, this kills Beyus the leader of the Lakertyans, who stayed to guard the brain. As there was a delay, the missile sails past the asteroid and the planet is safe. The Rani escapes in her TARDIS but the Tetraps, having learned that she was going to abandon them on the planet as it was destroyed, have broken in, and capture her to take her back to their home planet. The Doctor assures Mel that his new persona will grow on her; they say goodbye to the Lakertyans and resume their travels in space and time.

Context:

I didn't make an attempt to interest any of the family in a story with such a poor reputation (see First Time Round for more details of the regard in which Time and the Rani is generally held), so watched an episode every couple of nights on my own over a week in May 2022 from the Blu-ray disc in the Collection box-set. I watched the standard versions as transmitted* rather than the alternative extended episodes on another disc in the set. I then spent a couple of weeks not writing up my notes into a blog post; no particular reason for this, just a lot going on in the house at the moment. I have, for example, had to watch all seven episodes of Stranger Things 4 volume 1 twice over with my ST-enamoured middle child (boy of 12), and that takes up a lot of time, believe me. 

* The beginning credits of part 4 as transmitted had an early version of the title sequence where the Doctor's face is less visible, half faded into the starfield background; it is not reproduced on the Blu-ray. At the time, as a teenager overthinking it, I believed this was deliberate to tie in with the narrative, showing the Doctor is under threat in the story (as he's plugged into the Rani's brain drain circuit). It was, of course, just a mistake. 

First Time Round:

Time and the Rani is a very unpopular story. In the few whole series polls run by Doctor Who Magazine over the years, and in various other polls online that one could find with a google, it's consistently in the bottom 10, usually the bottom three. At the time it first went out, though, it didn't feel that way to me. This is very different to the other classic series story that regularly languishes at or near the bottom of polls, also coincidentally an introductory story for a new Doctor, The Twin Dilemma. The reaction of people I came into contact with first time round to Colin Baker's debut was in keeping with its reputation now (see the blog post here for the full gory details); Time and the Rani at the time felt like an exciting new start. I remember watching the first episode and enjoying a lot of it - it's always fun seeing a new Doctor in action (unless the script has him strangling his friend). A clear memory of the broadcast of the second episode is that I - having just started my final GCSE year at high school in September 1987 - was at a careers and education fair, in the masonic hall in Worthing - during the day, and made my own way home, excited to press record on the video to tape the next episode and see how they resolved the cliffhanger. I didn't think it was perfect by any means, and as the season progressed I thought later stories improved on Time and the Rani; but, I can honestly say that first time round I liked it, over-the-top camp in technicolour, risible dialogue and all.

Reaction:

I said above that this story felt like a brand new start, but it is talked about more as the last gasp of the previous era. The writers Pip and Jane Baker had previously written only for Colin Baker, and in the previous year had become the go-to team for putting together scripts for the production team when circumstances meant they were in a last minute rush. The story, so popular wisdom has it, was a hastily rewritten version of what was going to be Colin Baker's swansong, as he'd been offered one more go at the start of the next season to pass the baton on to the next Doctor. Coincidentally, in the gap between watching these episodes and writing up the blog post, I've finished reading Richard Molesworth's excellent recent work of Doctor Who research The John Nathan Turner Production Diary 1979-1990, which puts the commissioning of this story into context and casts some doubt on the popular wisdom. The book is the result of Molesworth's extensive analysis of a mountain of archived paperwork to create an approximation of the production diary of the final decade of Classic Who, and so gives the best illustration of what day-to-day working was like. From this, it's clear that when the scripts for Time and the Rani were commissioned on 22nd December 1986, Colin was already confirmed not to be coming back to do one story (he'd made that very clear several weeks earlier at the start of November). Undoubtedly, story discussions had happened prior to that date, and maybe Nathan-Turner was still hoping that he could tempt his previous leading man back. There were, though, still several months to go before production on the story started, during which time the new script editor Andrew Cartmel arrived to make his mark by encouraging rewrites.

On the whole, I think collectively he and the writers succeeded in making it more of a celebration of the new rather than the old. Apart from the presence of the Rani (who'd only appeared once before) and Sylvester McCoy's predecessor's outfit, which is dispensed with early on, there's no links back to the Baker era. The tone is very different, as one would expect when the script editor of all of Colin's tenure Eric Saward was no longer involved. There's a moment at the end where Donald Pickering's Beyus sacrifices himself a bit pointlessly, staying in the brain chamber until it's safely blown up, so he gets obliterated with it. A common theory is that this would instead have been the Doctor if Colin had come back for these four episodes, and that's what would have caused him to regenerate. I'm not massively convinced of this, though: Beyus dies on his own in a not particularly heroic way, while the main action - including the confrontation with the villain - is happening elsewhere. I think it's more likely that it's just a less effective bit of writing left in the final product. It's not made very clear why Beyus remains at the end to get blown up, as he doesn't actually do anything, then later dialogue seems to suggest he was being overcautious; "He must have been convinced that it was the only way to be certain of saving the rest of us" isn't exactly an endorsement of his actions. It's not the only less effective bit of writing. As in all their stories, Pip and Jane cannot do dialogue that sounds anything like anyone would actually ever say. There's enough to and fro, escape and recapture of characters that if you removed it and tightened up the script you could lose the entire third episode, but this isn't unique to this story by any means: there are very many classic Who four-parters where part three is just marking time. Weighed up against these negatives, though, is a lot of good stuff.

Things that are good about Time and the Rani: the new theme arrangement and title sequence, which uses CG elements for the first time in Who's history; the effects work throughout, particularly the combination of techniques used to create the bubble traps; Keff McCulloch's score, which - even more than Dominic Glynn's work the previous year - embraces the synth pop music of the time and brings a lot of energy, taking the series into its final musical era of the 20th century; the extensive location footage, and the use of models and set dressing elements at the location to create a unique alien world (it's not really correct for the world as outlined in the script, alas, but it is visually interesting); the colourful set design; the Lakertyans look great in terms of both make-up and costume, and the Tetrap design is great too - their long poisonous tongues are yuck, and the visualisation of their four-directional eyesight is also interesting and well done. There's one scene that is particularly strong, a stand-out of the era that never gets much attention: the Doctor and Mel dance around one another, each thinking the other is an imposter, then take each others pulse (the double heartbeat or lack thereof proving that they are or are not a Time Lord). It's lovely, and the relationship between them shown in this short section is so warm compared to the more antagonistic Doctor / companion dynamic of recent years. A lot of the reason for this greater warmth and tactility is new leading man Sylvester McCoy. He delivers a great performance here despite reportedly receiving little to no direction on how to attack the role. Already there is some clowning and some brooding (the proportions of each in the mix would be continually adjusted for the better in his future stories). The clowning should not be dismissed, as it is a vital ingredient to the character, and there are many great moments of physicality, like his Chaplin-esque haring around a corner to a halt bouncing on one foot.

Best of all is Kate O'Mara. Getting her back after a couple of years to play the Rani was a huge coup, as in the interim she'd become mega-famous in a recurring role in US soap Dynasty. It's hard to reconcile what the Pip and Jane Rani scripts tell about who the character is (amoral scientist who does not care about the repercussions of her experiments) and what's actually shown (glam panto villain with an epic lip curl), so my advice is not to try and just go with it. Overshadowed in her first story by having to share the antagonism with Anthony Ainley's Master, this story gives O'Mara space to shine, and I'm glad that the story exists just for that reason. I'm certain that many people think that the central idea of the first couple of episodes to have the Rani impersonate Mel is 100% cringe, but I think it's some kind of twisted genius. Bonnie Langford seemed game to have herself sent up, O'Mara attacks the task with brio, and the script gives her some great moments of switching being panto evil and Mel's ridiculously bouncy positivity within the same scene. Every moment that the Doctor's eccentricity annoys the Rani and she has to suppress it is a joy to watch (at least for me). None of this, or anything else in the story, is deep or dark, but that was all to come; also to come was a better thought-out companion character that wasn't just the one-note sketch of bouncy positivity with which poor Langford was saddled. It's sad that Colin was robbed of his regeneration story, but Sylv got a proper post-regeneration story, complete with all the beats (early confusion, picking a new costume, proving himself to his sceptical companion, defeating a returning villain to show he's still the same Time Lord), and it was just the start of a new phase of Doctor Who that would have its missteps for sure, but overall would get better and better.

Connectivity: 

Both Time and the Rani and The Dominators see at least one member of an invading race accompanied by some monstrous assistants arriving on a peaceful planet (that looks like a quarry) and using some of the populace as a workforce. In both instances, they don't intend to take over the planet long term, but instead are planning to blow something up to use for another purpose, which in both cases will mean the planet is destroyed but only as a means to an end. Dialogue in both stories mentions quarks (though it's referring to the actual sub-atomic particles in Time and the Rani, not some robots that happen to named after them).

Deeper Thoughts:

Joining in / plugging in. My memory has been jogged by the "back to school" associations of Time and the Rani, which like all of Sylvester McCoy's season openers kicked off early in a new academic year, and also by watching Stranger Things and working out that the young cast of high schoolers in the 1980s-set show are fictionally around the same age as me  (Dustin, Mike, Will and Lucas would all now have turned 50 in our present day, assuming none of them get killed by a Demogorgon in series 5); finally and most significantly, my eldest child has started his own GCSE exams (he's halfway through at the time of writing). This has made me reflect on when I was finishing high school and doing my GCSEs (I was part of the first year to do these exams after O-levels were phased out the previous year in the UK). What's markedly different between me and him is how much of a joiner I was in those days. He doesn't dabble in anything extra-curricular, but by the time I was his age I had been part of Worthing Hospital radio for a couple of years, presenting on Saturday afternoons as one of a posse (ugh! - I later briefly had my own show doing 50s and 60s rock and roll on Friday nights) plus doing many ward visits to take dedications, and fund raising, and even weekly committee meetings (I remember they were a bit dull for teenage me, even though I wasn't exactly a raver). I had also recently done public speaking competitions representing the school, and for the whole of my final year I was one a handful of pupils running a young enterprise company, Sox n' Box, that sold socks and boxer shorts with spray-painted slogans and logos on them. I was part of a group who regularly met to play role playing games, like the Stranger Things kids, and I was even writing a novel on the side (it wasn't very good, a sub par Douglas Adams thing). I don't know how I managed to get any schoolwork done, let alone how I managed to pass those exams.

What's interesting is that, despite being a massive Doctor Who fan in those days, I never joined anything related to the programme. The Doctor Who Appreciation Society was affiliated to a network of local groups, and many fans of my age have nostalgic stories of the first time they attended such a group, nervous at meeting fellow fans (who can be a bit scary en masse). I was never brave enough even to investigate if such a group existed nearby (there most likely was one in Brighton, if not Worthing). This also probably explains why I had joined some of those other things; I was essentially dragged along by my schoolfriend Andrew Dancey to hospital radio and to the young enterprise thing. He was presumably worried about turning up alone first time out. He certainly took to the radio thing afterwards, and made it his profession (as did another friend from that time who was also part of Worthing Hospital radio, Duncan Barkes). I was always better as a wingman than a squadron leader, though, so would never have tried to reverse the roles with Andrew or anyone else accompanying me to a Doctor Who group. Most people didn't share quite my level of enthusiasm for the show anyway, though Andrew and others had occasionally watched with me one on the seven whole VHS tapes that constituted my Doctor Who collection at the time. This paucity of entertainment probably explains why I stuck with things like hospital radio rather than duck out once Andrew had got his feet under the table: there wasn't a whole lot else to do in those days of four TV channels, and no world wide web.

This probably explains my eldest's lack of joining. If he wants to interact with his friends, entertain himself by watching a TV series or film, express his own creativity, or play a computer game, he can do all this without leaving his bedroom (if he has his tablet on charge within reach, he doesn't even need to leave the bed). Even for the middle-aged me, TCP/IP and HTML have helped me be more part of Doctor Who fandom than I otherwise would have been, even though I still keep a lot of it at arm's length because of shyness. This makes me less concerned about my son; his generation doesn't need to join in, as they are constantly plugged in. This can definitely be a positive. After a recent Maths paper, he came home still dwelling on one of the final questions, which seemed impossible to solve. In my day, if I was lucky, I might have had a brief chance as we left the exam hall and trooped off home to canvass a friend or two about what they thought about that difficult question about the intersecting circles. My eldest was able to just use his phone and search social media for "Edexcel Maths GCSE paper 1 circles" and find that everyone had hated that question, and some people were already making up memes about it. Like the geniuses wired up to the Rani's giant brain, we're all connected and it's very often a negative experience with a Babel of voices bickering; sometimes, though, the connected masses are greater than the sum of the individuals, and we get something that's an overall good. Loyhargil!

In Summary:

It's not cool, it's not deep, it's not dark, but I like it. So there!