7.1: Time and the Rani

In which Kate O’Mara drags up.

Broadcast: September 1987

Watched: January 2012

So, funny story: I did roll straight on to the pre-credits after watching The Ultimate Foe, just so I could hear the best Doctor Who theme tune. I think they do the regeneration as well as they could under the circumstances. 

Time and the Rani, Part One

“Why I chose you as an assistant I’ll never know.” Is this another metatextual joke?

The best theme. My Doctor. I’m not saying it’s *good* but there’s stuff to like, and again it’s one where the thing that makes it so hated is the meta-text – another relaunch, a shiny new credits sequence, and the story they choose to tell with it is *this*. Also, this is the Doctor under whom the show will eventually be cancelled. I think there are reasons people hate it that aren’t on screen.

The set up isn’t bad – the Rani is up to something involving human scientists again, and using the amnesiac Doctor to help her. It doesn’t look that bad either – I mean, it looks incredibly 1987, but it looks like it was meant to, it doesn’t look *cheap*. The trap/bubble effects are quite good. The tinsel in the tunnel – which Toby Hadoke makes jokes about in the RTD Who’s Round podcasts – isn’t.

One big problem is it’s aliens fighting aliens and who cares (the Lakertyans girl who get blown up is *terrible*): that means everything is in an OTT panto tone. That isn’t helped by the Rani doing a passable impression of Bonnie Langford. 

Mel is another problem – she isn’t bad, really, but she’s had no intro, we have no reason to care about her, there doesn’t seem to be a character beyond, “Oh, the Doctor has a companion, right?”

I think there does need to be a regeneration scene of some sort – it would be weird to just launch again with a new Doctor with no explanation, especially with the same companion. Sylv is younger than I imagined at this point, and the spoons and spoonerism are a bit annoying. But I liked the bit where he wears his predecessors’ costumes, and he does feel a breath of fresh air after Colin: when he says, “The more I know me, the less I like me” it’s hard not to read it as a comment on his predecessor.

Basically, not great, but would probably be mid-table in any ranking of season 22 or the Williams era.

Only other things: O’Mara’s delivery of “Einstein” is really annoying, like her minions will know that this is when the audience are meant to gasp. I hadn’t realised that Sylv spends part of this looking like he’s on the cover of Human Nature [the original 1995 novel featuring the 7th Doctor, not the TV version featuring the 10th; I have no idea what I meant by this].

Time and the Rani, Part Two

“You’re completely different! Nothing like you were!” I know the Bakers liked Colin but it’s hard not to read this as, “Please come back to me I’ve changed”.

A friend once said that fans would like this story more if it had been designed like The Brain of Morbius rather than the 1987 Argos catalogue. They weren’t wrong.

I’m not sure it was a great idea to portray the new Doctor as a total moron in his first story. Or to have an entire scene debating the merits of different types of plastic. The Rani’s irritation at “brilliant but sterile mind” is quite nicely played, mind.

Attempting to get tears out of an alien crying for her badly acted daughter isn’t great either.

Mel screams more, and more annoyingly, than any previous companion. And her memory is a plot point *in the third story running*.

That said, the Doctor and Mel having a fight which she comes extremely close to winning feels oddly like atonement for Twin.

Time and the Rani, Part Three

Sad to report that this isn’t holding my attention. Even if I still maintain it’s no worse than a lot of rubbish starring Tom Baker. Perhaps tonally more awkward, but better made?

The attempt to make Lakyertkans people, rather than aliens, is brave but high risk. Don’t do it in the debut – there is a reason RTD held this back for his second story. The discussion of collaboration is similarly wasted by the distancing effect of the make up.

The Tetraps are rubbish. So is the title Time and the Rani, come to that. The giant talking brain is the stupidest thing of all mind and it’s played as a dramatic revelation.

Talking of tonal uncertainty, the “Centre of leisure” (looks rubbish BTW) is far funnier when you think of it instead as “the leisure centre”. The fact the mirror ball is full of KILLER BEES is also hilarious, but the show doesn’t seem to have noticed.

Other things that are becoming increasingly irritating: Mel’s screaming and the Doctor’s spoonerisms. The trick with the holographic Mel is quite good, although Sylv’s reaction is a reminder he isn’t worked out how to play the part yet.

That’s Wanda Ventham.  Huh.

Some of the incidental music is weirdly reminiscent of Our Friends In The North, which I wasn’t expecting.

Time and the Rani, Part Four

Yeah, not great. Another thought on why this gets less forgiveness from old school fandom than similarly terrible Williams stories: the glossy production makes the bits that don’t work (the moments of panto, the Tetraps, Mel) feel like bigger failures. At least Horns of Nimon feels like it’s all one thing. (This is not to say Nimon is actually better.)

The other problem... a lot of this is technobabble nonsense. Lot of discussion of elemental particles and control of “time” as if it’s some kind of force, that doesn’t really map onto time as we’d understand it. One reason that Vervoids works is that it’s all very comprehensible human motivations, and a clear structure. Here... not so much.

I like that the Rani’s plan is the same as the computer’s in Slipback. Also, the Doctor saying he’s certain while crossing his fingers. Mel obviously coming onto Ikona, followed by him tipping away the antidote because freedom or something, is not so good.

The bit where the incidental music starts to riff on the theme tune is hardly I Am The Doctor, is it.

Obviously the collaboration plot ends in self sacrifice, obviously.

Oh well, it’s over now. And Peter Tuddenham supplied “special voices”. Well I never. [He used to play the computers in Blake’s 7: here he’s playing a giant brain.]