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

The Faceless Ones

A strangely-titled beast, ‘The Faceless Ones’ returns us to a story in six parts after another string of four part adventures. After a story that was a bit ‘weird’ in ‘The Macra Terror’, we find the Doctor and his companions returned to Earth in present day England for this one. It’s played pretty straight, and involves a fair bit of filming at Gatwick airport, a departure (pun unintended I swear) from any sort of location shoot Doctor Who had enjoyed previously.

Doctor and Jamie behind the tyres of a 'flying beastie'.

I was impressed that Episode One in fact starts off with the Doctor, Polly, Ben and Jamie running around the runway under planes. There’s a chilling and mysterious murder to kick start the saga, oh and the episode exists! However, four of the six episodes of ‘The Faceless Ones’ do not exist.

Polly, avec long hair. Compare please to her pic in 'The Macra Terror'

The strangest thing about this story is Polly’s hair. In episode one of the Macra Terror her hair is cut very short, but suddenly it’s back to full length in the opening episode of ‘The Faceless Ones’. The only guess I could make was that pre-filming for ‘The Faceless Ones’ took place before ‘The Macra Terror’, an entirely studio-bound story, began shooting. Anneke Wills had not had her hair cut yet, and then had it cut just before shooting started for ‘The Macra Terror’. Then they realised they had all this film shot with long-haired Anneke, and had to get her a wig for the studio scenes in ‘The Faceless Ones’. As conspiracy theories go, it’s not one of the most interesting, but it’s the best I could come up with.

This story features pens that freeze people, doppelgangers aplenty and the writing out of Ben and Polly. It is sad to see them go. Michael Craze had been told his contracted wouldn’t be renewed, and Anneke decided to leave with him. In all fairness, they had taken on Frazer Hines (the production team) back in ‘The Highlanders’ almost on a whim, and the three companions did appear to be one too many. It would have been nice if we’d had more adventures with Polly. As it stands for Michael Craze and Anneke Wills, only one story exists complete in the archives, and it’s their first – ‘The War Machines’.

They were apparently contracted for all six episodes plus two of the next story. It’s a bit odd then that they were written out of ‘The Evil of the Daleks’, as well as episodes four and five of ‘The Faceless Ones’. They just reappear at the hanger at the end of episode six to say goodbye! Bit unfair on both that they couldn’t have a decent send-off, but at least they go to say ‘goodbye’, which is more than poor Jackie Lane got with Dodo.

Pauline Collins guest stars are Samantha Briggs in this story, and they hoped she would agree to become the next companion. A lot of the action centres around her and Jamie, and that may be why Ben and Polly disappear for so long, however she decided not to sign a contract and only features in this story. Samantha and Jamie did make a nice pair doing their investigating, there was good chemistry between them and it would have been interesting to watch that relationship develop. Frazer Hines’ role as Jamie had been limited up to this point, and it’s the first time Jamie gets to hold a fair strand of the plotline.

Another notable cast member is Bernard Kay, back again for his third (I think) role in Doctor Who. This time he plays Police Inspector Crossland, who in the end becomes the director of the Chameleons, a faceless race of aliens wanting to replace young people and take over the Earth. He plays the two roles very differently and very well. And we have Donald Pickering, the perfect villain, cast in the role of Captain Blade.

 The plot, written by first-time Who writer Malcolm Hulke and David Ellis, struggles to hold up for six episodes – it was originally planned as a four part adventure. There is an awful lot of investigating going on through the middle of the story. The Doctor has trouble convincing anyone that he’s not a lunatic, people escape, get captured again, evidence disappears, classic stuff to pad things out.

Pauline Collins, Bernard Kay and Frazer Hines.

Donald Pickering

Speaking of Patrick Troughton, he is very strong in ‘The Faceless Ones’, and in this story the Doctor really takes the lead. He plays the straight and serious stuff – which he is getting more of now – brilliantly and his Doctor is warm and honest and basically fantastic! Troughton may have taken a little while to sort out what would be the main characteristics of his Doctor, but now that he has he has quickly overtaken Hartnell as ‘my favourite Doctor’. Well, he only had one Doctor to overtake as they’d only been one!

The final part and a bit sees some of the action taking place up in space. The cgi in the reconstruction may have been better than what was originally done – the satellite that the Chameleons are based apparently frustrated the director, Gerry Mill, a lot. A bit slow in places, poor treatment of Ben and Polly, but Troughton, Hines and Pauline Collins make this story quite good.

7/10