The Mark of the Rani Part One

The one where the TARDIS is thrown down a mine shaft...

What wonderful scene-setting from director Sarah Hellings at the start of this story, coupled with some gorgeous, contemplative music from Jonathan Gibbs (so different to his work on Warriors of the Deep and Vengeance on Varos). It feels so mellow and laidback, and we're given the time to work out where we are, when we are, and what's going on. It feels like a Catherine Cookson adaptation, and the location filming at Blists Hill open air museum gives it vital authenticity. It's a gentle opening which capitalises on the BBC's famous expertise when it comes to period drama. This episode feels good already.

We watch a bunch of tired miners eschew a pint at the local inn for a good bath, making their way to the local bath-house for a scrub. They don't quite manage to get fully undressed before a mysterious gas floods the room and they're rendered unconscious. There's an immediate assumption that these men are dead, but it's not long until they're back on their feet, only rather more active than before. Whatever's been done to them has made them more violent, ready for a fight, and they rampage through the village, kicking over baked potato stalls, shoving little kids to the ground, and accosting a cart transporting some kind of machinery.

Meanwhile, the TARDIS has been pulled off course by some kind of time distortion, bringing it to Earth near a northern mining village during the Industrial Revolution, instead of at Kew Gardens (this explains why Peri is coincidentally dressed ready for the 19th century, even if her frock is bloody awful). The two of them look like a preposterous couple of travelling minstrels as they wander through fields in pursuit of the source of the time distortion. The Doctor's ridiculous clown outfit is particularly incongruous among the hedgerows, making me long yet again for a more appropriate costume for this incarnation. It makes him look like a fool wherever he goes.

There's some lovely writing for Peri in this episode by newcomers Pip and Jane Baker, who have taken the time to think about her as a character, giving her opportunities to react and interact. Her concern for the loss of hedgerows and birds in the industrialised 20th century is a nice nod to Peri's background in botany (first and last mentioned in Planet of Fire), and throughout the episode she acts as a temper to the Doctor's extravagance, apologising for him and trying to explain his erratic behaviour. It's the best Peri's been written since her debut, simply because she's being written as a proper character, rather than a pair of boobs in heels (I'm sorry, but it's true).

But what's this watching the Doctor and Peri from afar? It's a living scarecrow (is Jon Pertwee making a cameo?), an unexpectedly creepy addition to proceedings which sadly doesn't last long at all when it's quickly revealed the scarecrow is actually the Master in disguise! His appearance is somewhat out of the blue, and it's not clear why he was standing in a field dressed as a scarecrow watching the Doctor walk past. If he wanted to spy on him, why not just hide in the bushes? It's a strange aberration, but it kind of works because it's so odd!

The Doctor and Peri come upon the angry miners attacking the man and his cart, and learn that men have been carrying out this thuggish behaviour for some time now, smashing up machinery for fear of losing their livelihoods to industrialisation. While the Doctor gathers information, the horse impatiently stamps the ground with its hoof as if to say "Hurry up and get on with it!" I love how horses have an unerring ability to upstage their human co-stars in almost anything they appear in!

The Doctor and Peri make for the village of Killingworth, hoping to meet locomotive genius George Stephenson, who is holding a meeting there in two days time with various other geniuses of the age, including engineer Thomas Telford, scientist Michael Faraday and chemist Humphry Davy. This "inspiration of geniuses" is odd because no such meeting ever took place, leaving the Doctor rightfully curious as to what's going on. His efforts to get to see Stephenson are amusingly scuppered by a jobsworth guard and his angry-looking dog, and again it's nice to see Peri try her hardest to temper the Doctor's exuberance, charming the guard into letting them through.

Elsewhere in the village, the chucklesome Master is going round talking to himself ("First things first, I've a death to arrange") and persuades the angry miners that the Doctor is intent on mechanising the mine operation, rendering the workforce jobless. The Master also proves how thoroughly evil he is by killing the poor dog with his tissue compression eliminator. This is surely the most dastardly thing the Master has done for some time, and for killing that dog I hate him all the more.

The miners soon catch up with the Doctor and try to push him down the mine shaft in a well-staged attack which sees Colin Baker dangling from a chain above an abyss. It's impressive that Baker is doing his own stunts, which reaches a peak at the end of the episode when we see him hurtling down a hill toward his doom. However, this time the Doctor is saved by Lord Ravensworth, played by the marvellous Terence Alexander, a man born to play roles like this. I love how Ravensworth instantly gets the better of the Doctor by blustering at him so much he's rendered speechless!

Unusually we get to follow the Master's investigations as well as the Doctor's, and while our hero quizzes Ravensworth about the local thugs, our villain discovers that the old crone running the bath-house is not all she seems. The hag is actually a renegade Time Lord in disguise, named the Rani, and it seems the Master and the Rani know each other of old. The Rani is written superbly, and Kate O'Mara brings her to life with great relish. The Rani has no time for the Master's childish games, and calls him out at every opportunity, recognising just how ridiculous the Master can be. She refers to his "mad schemes" and his "pathetic vendetta" against the Doctor. "I want nothing to do with you," she says dismissively, telling him to "clear off"! The Rani is a KWEEN!

The Rani may be a renegade Time Lord, exiled from Gallifrey like the Master, but there's more to her than mere villainy. The Rani is a master chemist and prefers dabbling in science to conquering the universe. The Master manages to weedle out of her what she's up to: she's extracting the chemical in the human brain which promotes sleep to try and calm the rampaging aliens on Miasimia Goria, a planet she rules. She's been experimenting on her aliens to try and heighten their awareness, but in so doing has lowered their ability to sleep, leading to unrest. The only place she can get the brain chemical needed to calm her aliens down is on Earth, but the extraction of the chemical has the side effect of leaving the patient more violent (hence the thuggish miners). The Rani doesn't want to conquer Earth, she just wants to cure her people.

The Master's plan, on the other hand, is predictably less straightforward ("It'll be something devious and overcomplicated," the Rani rightly says). It would seem he was responsible for bringing the Doctor's TARDIS to Killingworth with the express purpose of killing his old foe, but by sheer coincidence also discovered the Rani's machinations and has decided to kill two birds with one stone: kill the Doctor (and Peri) and use the Rani's technical and scientific expertise, and the combined ingenuity of the finest brains of the era, to transform Earth into a power base (don't ask me how he managed to get Stephenson to invite everyone to a meeting of geniuses, he just did, OK?).

As the Rani, who never fails to hit the nail on the head, says: "You're unbalanced."

The Doctor decides to investigate the bath-house himself, and drags up as a mucky miner in need of a good scrub. "Will you find me an old coat?" the Doctor asks, and swaps his patchwork monstrosity for a grubby miner's jacket. It might not be the height of fashion, but anything's better than that multi-coloured carbuncle he usually wears. Once in the bath-house, he's gassed unconscious, and comes round shackled to one of the Rani's experimenting tables. Here, he quickly learns that not only is the Rani present, but also the Master. His total lack of surprise or particular interest in the fact the Master survived the fires of Sarn is remiss of the writers.

The last 10 minutes degenerate into something of an overwritten jumble, with Peri captured by the baddies, and the Master organising for the TARDIS to be chucked down the mine shaft (great visuals culminating in a shot of the police box tumbling to its doom!). It comes to a climax with the Doctor, bolted to the trolley, hurtling feet-first towards the mine shaft after speeding down a very long and steep slope from the village to the mine. It's an inventive, exciting cliffhanger, a welcome change from someone pointing a weapon and saying "Die, Doctor!", then not killing him. This cliffhanger is properly dangerous, and it's hard to see how he's going to get out of it.

Quickies:

• Sarah Hellings' direction is creative, shooting at the Master through the bars of the gate as he lurks around the pit yard, and adding real jeopardy to the closing scenes of the TARDIS and the Doctor being thrown down the shaft. It's the most action-packed cliffhanger for years!
• I don't know what accents the actors playing the angry miners are trying to pull off. A few more lessons with RADA's vocal coach wouldn't have gone amiss, particularly for Kevin White as Sam Rudge ("Talks funny, don't he?").
• I had to smile at the Master's description of the Doctor: "You can't mistake him, he's mean-looking." Says the man dressed in demonic black and goatee beard!
• Pip and Jane Baker are renowned for their flowery dialogue, but it's not too bad in this episode, although pity poor Anthony Ainley having to pull off: "Fortuitous would be a more apposite epithet." Fair do's, he manages it though!
• Ainley gets some corking lines throughout actually ("Finito TARDIS! How's that for style?"). I love the way he responds to Jack's description of the TARDIS (drawn expertly by the Master, I must say) as a coffin. "Appropriate description, a coffin, yes..." He mutters it to himself, under his breath, as a little amusement of his own. It's a nice touch.
• Best of all though is Kate O'Mara's welcome to Peri: "Who's this brat?"

The Mark of the Rani part 1 is an enjoyable, atmospheric and entertaining foray into history which feels so authentic thanks to the marvellous location filming. The story could probably do just fine without the Master, but he's so gloriously overwritten that his presence adds a charming campness to proceedings, and it allows the Rani to level a series of withering putdowns at him at every turn, sending the character up in the process. This is by far the best Sixth Doctor episode yet...

First broadcast: February 2nd, 1985

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Kate O'Mara is deliciously contemptuous as the Rani, a baddie who just wants to be left alone to get on with things!
The Bad: Those dodgy northern accents.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

Word repetition: 5 - Peri dares to suggest the TARDIS is playing up. "Malfunctioning? Malfunctioning! MALFUNCTIONING?!" roars the Doctor.

NEXT TIME: Part Two...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part Two

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site.

The Mark of the Rani is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Mark-Rani-DVD/dp/B01GWDWA7Y