| 144[1] – Time and the Rani | |||||
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| Doctor Who serial | |||||
 The Doctor uncovers a plan to kidnap Earth's geniuses |
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| Cast | |||||
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| Production | |||||
| Writer | Pip and Jane Baker | ||||
| Director | Andrew Morgan | ||||
| Script editor | Andrew Cartmel | ||||
| Producer | John Nathan-Turner | ||||
| Executive producer(s) | None | ||||
| Production code | 7D | ||||
| Series | Season 24 | ||||
| Length | 4 episodes, 25 minutes each | ||||
| Originally broadcast | September 7–September 28, 1987 | ||||
| Chronology | |||||
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Time and the Rani is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from September 7 to September 28, 1987. This story was the first to feature Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor.
Contents |
Plot
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Synopsis
The TARDIS is attacked by a powerful force whilst in flight. The entire console room is distorting and the Sixth Doctor and Melanie Bush are both knocked unconscious. The ship then materialises on the planet Lakertya as a Lakertyan, Ikona, looks on. The TARDIS' doors open and the renegade Time Lady, the Rani enters. She tells her unseen companion to "leave the girl" and that the Doctor was "the man I want." As she leaves, a lumbering, hair-covered creature, Urak, enters and turns the Doctor's prone body over. At this moment, the Doctor undergoes regeneration.
At her Lakertya base, the Seventh Doctor regains consciousness in the Rani’s laboratory, where she is supervising the incarceration of a kidnapped Albert Einstein. The Doctor's mental state is caught in his former persona, and he recalls his last conversation immediately before he was forced to regenerate. He overcomes his temporary disorientation and recognises the Rani. Examining her equipment, he sees an asteroid which he identifies as being composed of strange matter. The Rani refuses to discuss her "ethics" with him and pulls a gun on him; he tries to run, but trips. The Rani's assistant Sarn rushes to help the Doctor; when the Rani threatens to punish her she escapes, but the Doctor is stunned and captured.
Inside the TARDIS, Ikona rescues Mel, who soon regains consciousness and escapes, only to run into Sarn. In her panic, Sarn traps herself inside a transparent bubble, which explodes and kills her.
The Rani orders Urak to reset the trap while she injects the Doctor with an amnesia drug. When the Doctor comes round, the Rani pretends to be Mel, asking him to repair a faulty machine in her laboratory. Ikona recaptures Mel, believing her to be in league with the Rani. She saves him from another of the bubble traps, convincing him that she is friendly.
Puzzled and confused, the Doctor refuses to continue work. He and the Rani return to his TARDIS to fetch a radiation wave meter. There, the Doctor changes his clothes, choosing a new outfit for himself.
Mel sees Urak and stumbles into a bubble trap. Ikona rescues her and they retrieve some weapons and head for the Rani’s fortress. Ikona meets Sarn’s mother Faroon. Faroon discovers her daughter’s skeleton and goes to speak with the Rani's other assistant, Beyus.
The Rani is captured by Urak who mistakes her for Mel. Mel meanwhile makes her way into the Rani’s control room where the Doctor believes her to be the Rani. The two travellers eventually identify one another by feeling each other’s pulses. Beyus tells the Doctor the combination to unlock the control room door – it is 953, the Rani's age (also the Doctor's).
Outside the control room, Mel finds the cabinets containing Einstein and other kidnapped geniuses and sees that a space is reserved for the Doctor. The Rani returns; the Doctor hides in a dark Tetrap eyrie. The Rani locks the gate behind him and he finds himself surrounded by awaking Tetraps.
Beyus rescues the Doctor and tells him to go to the Lakertyan’s Centre of Leisure, where the reason for Beyus' obedience to the Rani will be revealed. The Doctor takes a micro-thermistor from the Rani’s machine and leaves.
Mel is captured by the Tetraps and paralysed by their sting. The Rani sends the Doctor a message that she will exchange Mel for the stolen micro-thermistor.
At the Centre of Leisure, the Doctor and Ikona find that the Lakertyan people are indolent and apathetic. There is a new globe-like device suspended from the Centre, but no one will tell Ikona its purpose. The Rani, using remote control, suddenly stops the globe from spinning and killer insects emerge from it. Everyone runs out of the Centre.
The Doctor agrees to the proposed exchange, but The Rani tricks him with a holographic projection of Mel. The Doctor reinserts the micro-thermistor in her machine, but the combined brain power of the kidnapped geniuses is still not sufficient for her purposes. Urak suggests that she link her own brain in. She refuses and orders that the Doctor’s cabinet be prepared.
The Doctor notes that the Rani has a fixed trajectory rocket launcher and realises that she must be working to meet a specific deadline. Ikona distracts the Tetrap guarding the entrance to the Rani’s fortress and the Doctor enters. He is caught by Urak, paralysed and placed in his cabinet. The Rani then enters a sealed room, followed by Mel; inside is a massive brain. With the Doctor’s input, the brain is able to start carrying out the desired calculations. Urak and the other Tetraps leave the fortress to punish some of the Lakertyans by putting control anklets on them which will kill them if they rebel.
The Rani finds that the Doctor is confusing the brain and orders him disconnected. The Doctor jumps from his cabinet, and he and Mel then trap the Rani inside it. In the control room, the Doctor finds that the Rani’s rocket is intended to strike the asteroid of strange matter. The Rani is using the brain to come up with a lightweight substitute for strange matter in order to detonate the asteroid.
The Rani escapes from the cabinet and explains her plan to the Doctor and Mel. She is trying to create a time manipulator, a cerebral mass capable of dominating and controlling time anywhere in the cosmos, at the expense of all life on the planet. Urak overhears all this. The Doctor gives the brain the correct formula and it devises loyhargil, the required substance. As the production of loyhargil starts in the Rani’s laboratory, the Doctor and Mel escape from the fortress.
The Doctor helps remove the control devices from the Lakertyans, then returns to the fortress and places them around the brain. Beyus stays to complete this task as the Doctor, Mel and Faroon escape. The Doctor confronts the Rani, who detonates the devices. The brain nevertheless completes its countdown and the rocket launches, but because of the Doctor’s interference, it misses the asteroid.
The Rani escapes to her TARDIS, but it has been commandeered by the Tetraps who take her prisoner. Urak tells her they will take her to their home world where she can help them overcome their "plasma needs".
The Doctor takes all the captured geniuses on board the TARDIS so that he can return them home. He also gives the Lakertyans the antidote to the killer insects, but Ikona pours it away as he believes they should solve their own problems from now on.
Continuity
- Although this was the first story to feature the Seventh Doctor, it was written in anticipation of Colin Baker returning as the Sixth Doctor. When he declined to even film the regeneration sequence, Sylvester McCoy instead wore his predecessor's costume and a blond curly wig and filmed the sequence himself, making him the only actor to have appeared as two different doctors in the same episode and one of three actors to appear onscreen as two different Doctors (Richard E. Grant played a parody of the Doctor in the licensed production Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death and later an alternative version of the Ninth Doctor in the BBC webcast, Scream of the Shalka; and Jim Broadbent appeared as another parody Doctor in a sketch in Victoria Wood as Seen on TV, as well as also appearing in Curse of Fatal Death).
- A number of spin-off media have provided additional explanation for the Doctor's regeneration including the Virgin New Adventures novels Timewyrm: Revelation, Love and War by Paul Cornell, Head Games by Steve Lyons and the Past Doctor Adventures novel Spiral Scratch by Gary Russell.
- The Seventh Doctor tries on several earlier Doctors' costumes: the Second Doctor's fur coat, the Third Doctor's smoking jacket, the Fourth Doctor's coat and the Fifth Doctor's cricket outfit, as well as other costumes. He also wears the Sixth Doctor's patchwork coat for much of the first episode.
- This was the second and final appearance in the series of Kate O'Mara as the Rani. O'Mara reprised her role in the charity sketch Dimensions in Time (1993) and in the BBV audio adventure "The Rani Reaps the Whirlwind."
- It is never explained how the Rani escaped the predicament in which she had last been seen in The Mark of the Rani (trapped with the Master in her TARDIS and a rapidly-growing Tyrannosaurus rex embryo). The novelisation of Time and the Rani by Pip and Jane Baker claims that the rapidly-growing dinosaur snapped its neck on the ceiling of the Rani's TARDIS and died instantly, although the canonicity of this claim is unclear.
Production
| Episode | Broadcast date | Run time | Viewership (in millions) |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Part One" | 7 September 1987 | 24:44 | 5.1 |
| "Part Two" | 14 September 1987 | 24:36 | 4.2 |
| "Part Three" | 21 September 1987 | 24:23 | 4.3 |
| "Part Four" | 28 September 1987 | 24:38 | 4.9 |
| [2][3][4] | |||
Preproduction
- This story's working title was Strange Matter.[5]
- The Loyhargil, lightweight substitute for strange matter, is an anagram of "holy grail".
- Amongst the famous Humans the Doctor mentions towards the end as he explains to Mel the severity of the Rani's plans are Elvis and Mrs Malaprop (a fictional character).
- Ken Trew created the Seventh Doctor's costume, based on a 1930s golfing design.
Casting
- Wanda Ventham and Donald Pickering previously appeared together in The Faceless Ones. Donald Pickering also appeared in The Keys of Marinus. Wanda Ventham also appeared in Image of the Fendahl.
Production
- The story features a pre-credits sequence where the TARDIS crash-lands on Lakertya. This is only the third time in the series history that there was a pre-credit sequence. Castrovalva (1982) and The Five Doctors (1983) were the first two stories to have a "cold opening". Only one more story of the original series, Remembrance of the Daleks would feature a pre-credits teaser, although this practice became commonplace from "The End of the World" onwards (the 1996 TV movie featured a short sequence incorporated into the title sequence).
- The main location used for the planet Lakertya including the exterior of the Rani’s laboratory was Cloford Quarry, in Somerset.
Post-Production
- This story was the first time the Doctor Who title sequence was created with a computer. Many of the effects, like the bubble Mel is trapped in, were done in the same manner.
- Keff McCulloch arranged the new opening theme. It was used until the end of the regular run of the series. A new logo for the series was also introduced with this story along with a new opening credits sequence that moved away from the "starfield" motif introduced in 1980. The new theme arrangement marked the first time since the First Doctor's era that the theme's "middle eight" section was regularly heard during the opening credits (the previous two arrangements used the middle eight during the closing credits only). As with the opening sequence from the Sixth Doctor era, the Seventh Doctor's opening does not use a static image of the Doctor, but rather one with limited animation: the image starts as a scowl, then the Doctor winks and smiles. McCoy wears makeup that gives his face and hair a silver/grey appearance.
Commercial releases
The story was released on VHS in July 1995. The story is also to be released on DVD sometime in 2010.
In print
| Doctor Who book | |
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| Time and the Rani | |
| Series | Target novelisations |
| Release number | 128 (initial printings erroneously have it numbered 127) |
| Writer | Pip and Jane Baker |
| Publisher | Target Books |
| ISBN | 0-491-03186-6 |
| Release date | December 1987 (Hardback)
5th May 1988 (Paperback) |
| Preceded by | The Mysterious Planet |
| Followed by | Vengeance on Varos |
A novelisation of this serial, written by Pip and Jane Baker, was published by Target Books in December 1987.
References
- ^ From the Doctor Who Magazine series overview, in issue 407 (pp26-29). The Discontinuity Guide, which counts the four segments of The Trial of a Time Lord as four separate stories and also counts the unbroadcast serial Shada, lists this story as number 148. Region 1 DVD releases follow The Discontinuity Guide numbering system.
- ^ Shaun Lyon et al. (2007-03-31). "Time and the Rani". Outpost Gallifrey. http://gallifreyone.com/episode.php?id=7d. Retrieved 2008-08-30.
- ^ "Time and the Rani". Doctor Who Reference Guide. http://www.drwhoguide.com/who_7d.htm. Retrieved 2008-08-30.
- ^ Sullivan, Shannon (2007-08-07). "Time and the Rani". A Brief History of Time Travel. http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/serials/7d.html. Retrieved 2008-08-30.
- ^ Time and the Rani at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
External links
- Time and the Rani at bbc.co.uk
- Time and the Rani at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
- Time and the Rani at Outpost Gallifrey
Reviews
- Time and the Rani reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
- Time and the Rani reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide
Target novelisation
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