Time and the Rani

So, like it or not we get a new Doctor in a revamped series where things are quite different to the previous few years. Enter Andrew Cartmel, the new script editor who would bring a swag of new writers and ideas to the show. However, season 24 starts with ‘Time and the Rani’, a script commissioned for ‘safety’ reasons by John Nathan-Turner by Pip and Jane Baker which was originally planned for Colin Baker.

If I thought ‘The Twin Dilemma’ was bad, I was even more dismayed by this one. I don’t honestly know where to start. Pip and Jane Baker seem to get worse with every script they write.

The new Doctor wakes up.

In fairness there was a lot of pulling and prodding from Cartmel on this one and in the end it wasn’t the script or type of story the Bakers wanted to write. And it’s not the sort of I want to watch either. But I did.

Let’s start with our new Doctor, Scottish actor Sylvester McCoy. What’s the hell is he doing in this story? This has to be the least convincing performance by an actor playing the Doctor ever. He does do anything with conviction, and his performance is like a man desperately trying stuff in order to find what works. He plays the spoons on Kate O’Mara’s bust for god’s sake! What was that

Mel and a Lakertian

doing there? I liked the mis-remembered proverbs, but apart from that I found the rest of the performance very very unconvincing. Colin Baker started by being a jerk, a coward and strangling Peri. All principally three things that are instantly unlikeable. However – he did them all with conviction!

The Rani dresses up as Mel.

Pip and Jane Baker wrote a script full of pointlessness, gags and filler. We have five minutes wasted to the Doctor choosing his new costume, a giant brain behind a door trying to work out the formula with help from scientists, most from Earth strangely enough and stuck in booths, and then we are subjected to Kate O’Mara as the Rani pretending to be Mel by putting on a wig and flouncing around. What is this shite?

Mel. Bonnie Langford. For crying out loud she has a fantastic scream but the writers and directors don’t need to make her scream so much, it’s ridiculous. ‘Oh look, a rock!’

Donald Pickering and a Tetrap

‘AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhh!’ it’s monotonous.

Why the need to see a regeneration? I mean, Colin didn’t want to come back to do the scene (or possibly the story) and who could possibly blame him, so why not reboot the series some time in the future after the regeneration. We get it, the Doctor can change bodies. The wig and the fall from the exercise bike (if that’s what is really supposed to have happened) thanks to some sort of meteorite storm it’s all cringe worthy.

The 'ball' speical effect.

Lakertia was supposed to be a green and verdant forest. Then first-time director to the series Andrew Morgan though yet another quarry would make a better location. And there are a whole lot of people living in this quarry. seriously. How do people imagine life on a planet which is just a quarry? No trees or animals to speak of? NOT ONE shown in the story. There were a couple of lakes though, maybe they are full of fish.

The Tetraps were never going to be well-realised. Human-sized bats with four eyes who were pretty much the comic relief from…. the comic relief. The movement of the mouths in no way coincides with the lines spoken. It’s dreadful, embarrassing stuff. The whole thing is embarrassing. One of the worst stories I can remember.

This is the brain. It's point? I dunno.

There is a great special effect of a spinning ball that captures people spins them around into the air and then comes down to Earth and explodes. It looks fantastic but again, it’s such a convoluted concept. Why wouldn’t you just set normal landmines?

The music is quite on the nose, although I don’t mind the new version of the theme music or the opening credits. The new logo however is awful – two pieces done in completely different styles which don’t go together. It doesn’t bode well for the next few stories.

1/10

Mark of the Rani

Pip and Jane Baker contributed this story, with an historical setting set in the Luddite Riots and including George Stevenson, the man who invented the steam train. We see the introduction of a new villain (ess) in the Rani, a Time Lady played by Kate O’Mara, and the return of the Master from what appeared to be certain death in ‘Planet of Fire’.

The story is very solid, and has the feel of a more traditional story than those of recent times. It has its issues and its embarrassing moments – principally in the second episode where Luke Ward is turned into a tree which then saves Peri by moving its dodgy rubber branch from the dame fate – but it is basically a tight and enjoyable tale. Pip and Jane Baker, a husband and wife team, seem to write well for the time its set, no doubt Eric Saward also had a strong hand in parts of the script too.

Anthony Ainley and Kate O'Mara

Having said that, the Master was definitely superfluous to requirements in this one. We do get a great dynamic between Anthony Ainley and Kate O’Mara, that’s for sure. It’s even a little bit humorous at times, but it does prevent the writers from exploring the Rani character further. As a new villain, I as an audience member would have liked to know more about her and see more scenes with her opposite Colin Baker.

Thankfully the Doctor-Peri relationship has cooled down somewhat by this stage, and they clearly care a lot about each other. The use of George Stevenson as a character was well written and realised, thankfully because it was possible that it just would turn out cheesy and pointless. The direction is strong, and the location, in a sort of open-air museum I think, was just perfect. You couldn’t asked for a better place to shoot and hence it all feels very authentic.

The cast help sell that too, it’s solid all the way across and features some pretty special beards too! I really enjoyed seeing the interior of the Rani’s TARDIS, which I thought was well done. What wasn’t well done was the dinosaurs. They were fine when stuck in a jar with some sort of green liquid, but the final scene when the TARDIS is hurtling through time and they fall and grow was, along with the tree-incident, the main effects-failure of the show.

The story features a large amount of location filming, which is what makes the setting so convincing. To be able to use the trolleys and train tracks, and to see the whole town functioning, is the highlight of this story.

7.5/10