Time and the Rani Part One

The one where the Rani impersonates Mel...

Season 24 bursts onto the screen like a jack-in-a-box, eager to get going and unrelenting in its determination to entertain. The pre-credits sequence is a riot of busy CGI which would have been mightily impressive at the time, but has sadly dated since. Still, it's a statement of intent: Doctor Who is back (again!), and this time means business. The CG TARDIS being buffeted through space might not be as awesome as the opening model shot of The Trial of a Time Lord, but it shows that Doctor Who is using the latest technology it can afford to keep up with the Joneses (or at least try to). 

Inside the TARDIS the Doctor and Mel lie unconscious on the floor (love the continuity of the exercise bike in the background), and as the TARDIS is brought down onto a barren planet in a rainbow beam of LGBTQ+ splendour, a weird-looking alien looks on, framed by a computer-enhanced pink sky. These opening moments are a real assault on the eyes - it's brash, brazen and bursting with courage. It's the most exciting, and excitable, season opening yet.

Of course, the multi-coloured body lying on the TARDIS floor isn't really Colin Baker, although it is the Sixth Doctor, whose era stops here (Colin Baker era: 1984-86; Sixth Doctor era: 1984-87). The assault on the TARDIS has somehow, and rather weakly, triggered a regeneration, realised in laughable fashion when a clawed creature turns the Doctor's prone body over and we see his face merging into a new visage (the curly blond wig is awful). Kate O'Mara is back as the magnificent Rani, who delivers the immortal line: "Leave the girl. It's the man I want!"

Without stopping for breath we then launch into a brand new title sequence, and another new version of the theme, this time by Keff McCulloch. The CG titles look stunning, boasting exploding galaxies, tumbling meteors and a spinning TARDIS in a sequence I'd argue can stand up with pride today. It's a renaissance in the way Doctor Who is presenting itself: shiny, flashy, vivid, busy. The overall look is very comic book, although I really dislike the awful new logo. It's the first redesign in seven years, and I wish they hadn't bothered. While it's perfectly in keeping with the graphic novel/ comic strip theme, it just looks cheap (especially the "Doctor" bit). I'm quite partial to the tumbling WHO though, and don't mind the winking Doctor's face at all. I think it tells you something about this new Doctor before you've even met him. He's friendly, funny, quirky. It's quite different to the beaming face of Colin Baker at the top of The Twin Dilemma, which lulled the viewer into a false sense of security.

The music, on the other hand, is not so great. I think it wanders too far away from the basic touchpoints of Delia Derbyshire and Ron Grainer's original, and although it's trying to be just as bright, new and in-yer-face as everything else, it doesn't sound like "proper" Doctor Who. Sometimes it sounds like it's being played on a kazoo, which is never a good thing.

Post-titles, we get straight on with the story, no messing about at a snail's pace like Castrovalva. The Rani has abducted Albert Einstein and several other geniuses in relation to an unspecified experiment, and she is subjugating the indigenous Lakertyans to use as her slaves. Their leader Beyus obeys his mistress in order to prevent repercussions for his people, and he is joined by his flighty daughter Sarn, who the Rani seems to instantly dislike. O'Mara is playing the Rani much more glamorously this time, probably because since her last appearance in The Mark of the Rani, she had enjoyed great success playing super-bitch Caress Morell in American soap Dynasty. O'Mara only played the part in 19 episodes across Dynasty's sixth and seventh series, but her success made her hot property, so Doctor Who was lucky to get her back (it was basically the first thing she did after leaving Dynasty).

This new-look Rani is caked in make-up, has big 80s hair and a beauty spot, and is dressed like a camp space version of Caress Morell. You can feel producer John Nathan-Turner's influence here, but somehow it works, because O'Mara is so damned good at delivering the Rani's withering put-downs with an edge of camp. The character may have lost some nuance in the change, but the Rani's gained so much more in sassy screen presence.

The Rani's laboratory equipment is damaged (how did that happen?) and she needs a genius to help her fix it, which is why she shot down the Doctor's passing TARDIS. The new Doctor, played by the impish Sylvester McCoy, makes a less than impressive debut, stirring from his stupor and leaping off the table, drowning in his predecessor's patchwork costume. McCoy fumbles his first few lines with a breakneck delivery, then tumbles across the set like a slapstick comedian. "This is idiotic," the Rani snipes, with her usual barbed accuracy. Time and the Rani was written with Colin Baker in mind, before McCoy had been cast or the Seventh Doctor characterised, and you can tell. McCoy overstretches his performance in a desperate attempt to do and be something, even if he's not sure what that something is yet.

I feel sorry for him, because as we all know, when his Doctor settled down and found himself, it was a vast improvement. But here, McCoy - rudderless and desperate - goes for the easy option of comedy, his forte, but while he is undoubtedly comfortable and capable doing it, it feels laboured and over-rehearsed.

Yet there are still flashes of the future in McCoy's performance, moments where you can see his Seventh Doctor peeping through already. There are moments of seriousness where McCoy is stiller and calmer, more contemplative, hallmarks of where his Doctor's headed. The basic tenets of the Doctor shine through despite his confusion - his anxiety about what sort of man he is or was, the nature of the experiments, his automatic reaction to the Rani wanting to destroy Mel ("Let's not be hasty"). Despite all the pratfalling and malapropisms (which I love, by the way), you can tell this is the Doctor. That was never the case with The Twin Dilemma.

Plus: this Doctor's Scottish. Nobody ever refers to the fact the Seventh Doctor has a Scottish accent, he just does. When Doctor Who was brought back in 2005 there was debate about whether he should have a Northern accent, and later more debate about whether a Scottish actor should disguise his natural accent with an estuary twang. But back in 1987, the new Doctor had a Scottish accent and nobody batted an eyelid.

The Doctor is administered an amnesia drug by the Rani, who inexplicably decides to impersonate his companion Melanie in an effort to get him to comply. Kate O'Mara dressing up in a ginger fright wig and copying Bonnie Langford's voice and mannerisms is chronically embarrassing, despite her doing it remarkably well. It's amusing - funny, even - but also intensely silly and camp. I don't mind camp and silly, but the Rani as Melanie Bush is a sequin too far for me. On a practical level, how does the Rani get hold of an exact copy of Mel's outfit, or the right kind of wig? How does she so accurately remember what Mel was wearing? How does the Rani know how Mel speaks, acts or walks?

Watching a wayward Sylvester McCoy swamped in Colin Baker's multi-coloured costume face off against Hollywood star Kate O'Mara dressed as Bonnie Langford is difficult, testing work. I love O'Mara's perfectly pitched asides, her withering remarks and those little moments where the veil slips as she reels at the Doctor's ineptitude, but I could have done without the mimicry.

I also like how the real Doctor keeps peeping through the amnesia, giving me the idea that the Seventh Doctor's scheming reserve is already beginning to take shape. Does he really not remember anything, or is he pretending in order to gain the upper hand? He clocks the Rani's navigational guidance system distorter and identifies its use ("This would force any passing spaceship into landing here"), he associates certain things the Rani says with his buried past ("You remind me of someone I used to know"), and he asks awkward questions about the laboratory and the experiments because they don't feel right to him. He's solving things without noticing it. It's as if the Doctor is in there, but slightly obscured.

There are also tell-tale hints in some of the dialogue that this was a Sixth Doctor story, such as when the Doctor forcefully demands the Rani mop his brow, and his references to his own superiority and genius. This hubris is very much the Sixth Doctor, not so much the Seventh, who preferred to shelter his genius. The bit where he suspects a "diabolical scheme" also says a lot about what he thinks his previous self was capable of, while the line "The more I know me, the less I like me" also refers to his previous persona, not the current one.

The Doctor insists on going to his TARDIS to collect a radiation wave meter, and we're given the obligatory scene in the wardrobe room where the new guy tries on the old guys' threads until settling on his new outfit. It's all rather silly, but fun, with McCoy dressing up as Napoleon, a beefeater, and even donning a schoolmaster's mortar board (alarmingly prescient when you remember the 1995 New Adventure Human Nature). He also tries on the Fourth Doctor's Season 18 garb, the Third Doctor's frills, and the Fifth Doctor's cricketing costume, before dabbling with the Second Doctor's fur coat.

Along the way he is gradually gaining aspects of his final outfit, starting with the trousers and shoes, then the battered panama hat, and finally the big reveal where he flashes the cream jacket, red braces, question mark pullover and tartan scarf (about the only nod to his Scottishness). It's a very eccentric, bohemian jumble of clothes, the pullover an obvious mistake, particularly when tucked-in as it is here. Without that riot of question marks the new costume would be perfect. This Doctor could walk down the street dressed like this and not turn too many heads, but that jumper ruins it. It's like he's screaming "WHO AM I?" at everyone he meets.

While all this buffoonery is going on, Mel becomes the prisoner of tall, scaly and handsome Ikona, dressed in garish pastels that do not suit Lakertya's landscape. I always think alien races should look and dress in a way that reflects the environment in which they live, but these disco lizards do not fit their barren habitat at all. The make-up's good though, and I like the way they run differently, and that their skeletons have tailbones. It shows a bit of thought has gone in to realising them.

The showy nature of the episode continues with the magnificent CG bubble traps, which careen across the screen and interact with the location so perfectly that the effect still stands up 35 years later. The bubble traps are an ingenious invention, realised so well by the production team, and seeing them bounce off hillsides and explode in a hail of fire is awesome. When Mel gets trapped in one for the cliffhanger, your heart's in your mouth because we've seen how lethal these things are. It's a fantastic first cliffhanger for the new era.

Time and the Rani part 1 is a rollercoaster of vivid colour and brash style. It has a swagger of confidence buoyed by the impressive special effects and it moves at a heck of a pace. McCoy makes a mixed debut, showing flashes of his future qualities of melancholy and introspection, but it's heavily stained by a tendency to lark about. It's obviously McCoy's background in physical comedy which informs some of his choices, and his aptitude with that will be tempered and used to much greater effect later on in his tenure. But for now, it needs reining in so that we, and he, can focus on characterisation. Getting rid of that awful coat is the first significant step. 

First broadcast: September 7th, 1987

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The CG bubble traps are magnificent.
The Bad: McCoy is way over the top and grossly misjudges the size and tone of his performance. Sadly, he's the weakest thing in it.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

Ace says "Professor": 0

NEXT TIME: Part Two...

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

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