Time and the Rani Part Four

The one where the Rani cracks the secret of Loyhargil...

OMG Mel, please stop screaming! Mel has always been a vocal companion (as proven by that cliffhanger to The Trial of a Time Lord part 9), but Bonnie Langford goes all-out here, screaming at everything she claps eyes on, from Urak to the Rani and even the sight of the Doctor in the cubicle. I wouldn't mind so much if it wasn't for the fact Langford has such a piercing scream, it goes right through me (much like Deborah Watling's did at times!).

Amusingly, trying to feed the Doctor's knowledge to the Rani's giant pink brain results in the big veiny blob developing "multiple schizophrenia", spouting awful jokes and this incarnation's (short-lived) love of malapropisms. The Rani is forced to switch off the process, before the revived Doctor shoves her in his cubicle and locks her in. Kate O'Mara tries her best to act imprisoned, but we can all see it's a fairly flimsy sheet of Perspex which she could quite easily break through if she wanted.

I'm not sure what the Rani's scheme is, despite the fact she explains it to the Doctor in true 'confessional baddie' fashion. I think this is right: the Rani wants to launch a missile at the passing lump of strange matter, and in the resulting explosion helium-2 will fuse with Lakertya's upper atmosphere to form a shell of chronons (I don't have to tell you what chronons are, do I?). As the shell is being formed, the hothouse effect of the gamma rays will cause the primate functions of the brain to go into chain reaction, multiplying until the gap between shell and planet is filled.

As the Doctor summarises, she's trying to create her own time manipulator so that she can bring order to chaos across the cosmos, including sending Earth back to the Cretaceous period so the dinosaurs can fulfil their untapped potential. I'm not sure what potential the dinosaurs ever had beyond eating and roaring. Perhaps the Rani thinks they'd develop their own language, their own culture and a civilisation resulting in such advancements as aeroplanes, ironing boards, and afternoon tea?

It's very silly, and a disappointingly megalomaniacal plan for a character who was less interested in domination than she was experimentation in her previous story. The Rani is characterised differently in this story, rather more generically. Although she still has some kind of (misguided) moral compass, Pip and Jane Baker write her more like a female Master. It lets the character down.

And then the Rani triumphantly exclaims she has the loyhargil (thanks to the Doctor hilariously correcting the brain's miscalculation!), but what is loyhargil and why does she need it? The TARDIS Wikipedia tells me that loyhargil is the lighter substitute for strange matter, and she loads this into the rocket to launch at the lump of real strange matter in orbit, thus starting her entire devilish process. I think the explanation and importance of loyhargil (anagram for Holy Grail) is lost in the editing process somewhere.

When he finally finds out what the Rani's up to, it becomes the moment the Seventh Doctor is forged. The Rani is trying to create a time manipulator, raising the stakes much higher than he initially thought. It will stand him in good stead for future, darker adventures, involving stellar manipulators, living metal, and evils from the dawn of time. I like the rather hippy way he relates the loss of Earth's civilisations: "Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Louis Pasteur, Elvis! Even Mrs Malaprop will never have existed!"

While all this scientific gobbledegook is going on, the Tetraps traipse across to the Centre of Leisure - lolloping and limping like injured monkeys - to affix explosives to the ankles of the Lakertyans. Then they all lollop and limp back home (why don't they fly?), never fulfilling their monstrous potential en masse, which is a shame as there's an awful lot of them.

Mel and the Doctor successfully think of a quick way to release the Lakertyans, proving that the whole exercise has been a waste of time just to fill out the episode. "Remove the bangles!" proclaims the Doctor, leaving Ikona in charge of freeing his people, popping the explosives inside his brolly. And he'll need those ankle bombs for later, as he plans to encircle the giant brain with them to blow it up.

The story comes to a head with the traditional big bang, with the loyhargil-filled rocket taking off (great model work), but because the Doctor delayed the launch, it misses the strange matter and flies off into space. The Rani's base blows up, and Beyus with it. It's one of those pointless self-sacrifices that happen in Doctor Who from time to time, because Beyus didn't need to stay back. There is an element of the Bakers earning the right to kill Beyus in this way because the character was, in part, betraying his people by collaborating with the Rani. But Beyus was doing what he thought was right for the greater good, to protect his people from the Rani's retribution. Perhaps he felt guilty about it in the end (there's not much in Donald Pickering's performance to go on), explaining his sacrifice. Doesn't help poor Faroon though, does it? She's lost a daughter and a husband during this adventure.

The Rani escapes in her TARDIS, but we later see she's become a prisoner of Urak and his batty pals, who intend taking her to their planet Tetrapyriarbus (all their words start with 'tetra') to synthesise their thirst for plasma (presumably blood plasma). The sight of Kate O'Mara dangling from her wrists against a CSO backdrop is a bit rubbish. We will meet the Rani again one more time, when she concocts a plan to, well erm... pickle the Doctors' heads in the 30th anniversary mess Dimensions in Time.

The story closes with the traditional farewell to the survivors outside the TARDIS, inside which are all the geniuses from the Rani's base. It would have been nice for us to meet some of these geniuses - the closest we get is Einstein looking fascinated by the TARDIS controls - but I'm glad some of them look suitably alien, and they're not all from Earth history.

The Doctor offers the Lakertyans the antidote to the killer insects, something he somehow nabbed off-screen from the Rani's lab and managed not to spill in his pocket (it's a very elegant, fragile glass bottle). Ikona, without gauging the will of his people, rashly pours the antidote away, claiming the Lakertyans need to meet their own challenges. This is a very stupid thing to do: no doubt more Lakertyans will die needlessly before they can synthesise the cure themselves. Nice sentiment, Ikona, but judging by the gasps of shock and horror amongst your people, I doubt it'll get you elected.

Time and the Rani is a camp romp which sometimes borders on pantomime (usually when it involves action), but there's conviction at its heart, and some great, stylish visuals: the Tetraps, the brain, the Centre of Leisure. There's some nice work from Wanda Ventham in a thankless guest role, and Sylvester McCoy makes an unsteady, but ever steadier, debut. It's a pity the Rani's written more generically this time around, but there's vigour and enthusiasm at the heart of Time and the Rani which I think was missing from recent seasons. It might have had a wobbly start, but Season 24 is trying to get back to basics: the Doctor and his friend rattling around the universe in a police box, having adventures, meeting monsters and siding with the underdogs.

First broadcast: September 28th, 1987

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The model work for the rocket.
The Bad: Ikona pouring away the antidote (and the fact it's in a really delicate glass bottle in the Doctor's pocket!).
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ (story average: 5.3 out of 10)

Ace says "Professor": 0

NEXT TIME: Paradise Towers...

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

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.

Time and the Rani is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Time-Rani-DVD/dp/B002SZQCDO