Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Time and the Rani Part Two


The one where the Doctor and Mel are reunited...

As well as everything else that changed with part 1, there's also the fact Doctor Who was now broadcast on Monday nights at the surprisingly late time of 7.35pm, after Terry Wogan's chat show and before sitcom Hi-De-Hi!. The move to a weekday evening slot harked back to the Davison years, when episodes were shown at around 7pm, but this even later slot showed the BBC was thinking about Doctor Who in a different way. As a matter of fact they were thinking about Doctor Who as something of an embarrassment, to be tucked away in the schedules, hidden in plain sight in primetime. This scheduling was the beginning of the end sadly...

On Lakertya, Mel is screaming her lungs out inside a bubble trap which is bouncing its way across the rocky landscape, before settling on the surface of a lake, where it runs aground. The interaction between special effect and location is so impressive, and you really believe it's there. I could do with a bit (lot) less squawking from Bonnie Langford, but at least Ikona voices my feelings on that score.

Mel and Ikona have been teamed up in this story but the two actors don't seem to click in the way the characters need. As tall and imposing as he is, Mark Greenstreet is not giving his best performance, coming over as rather wooden, and Langford struggles to connect with him. It's as if Greenstreet has taken the initial idea that Ikona dislikes Mel, and used that as the basis of his entire performance, when in reality he should soften towards her the more time they spend together. He's just a bit too stiff.

The duo meet Lakertyan Faroon striding across the barren landscape in her flowing pumpkin robes. Faroon is played by the incandescently beautiful Wanda Ventham, who must have had a 20-year contract with Doctor Who insisting she appeared in one story every seventh year of the decade (The Faceless Ones (1967), Image of the Fendahl (1977) and Time and the Rani (1987)). That contract must also have included a clause that she would prefer to co-star with Donald Pickering, as she does in The Faceless Ones and here (there was a contract breach in '77!).

Ventham's first scene makes all the nonsense elsewhere in the story worth enduring as she earns every penny of her salary when confronted with the death of Faroon's daughter Sarn. Ventham, who is so elegant and poised that she even makes scales look glam, injects so much heart and emotion into the scene that she puts the rest of the cast to shame. As her eyes flood with tears, she looks down on the skeleton of her departed daughter, and thankfully the sometimes over-enthusiastic Langford mutes her own performance to match the mood. It just feels to me that as soon as Wanda Ventham walks on, everything gets classier. It's a pity she has little else to do for the rest of the story.

Inside the Rani's lair, Sylvester McCoy is busy putting the excesses of part 1 behind him. It's as if as soon as he gets his new costume, he becomes his Doctor properly. He seems more studied in the part, and while the comedy is still very present, he tempers it with moments of pure Seventh Doctor melancholy and brooding anger. As the amnesia wears off, the Doctor is emerging like a butterfly from a chrysalis and it's so enjoyable to watch. The Seventh Doctor's eclectic ways are demonstrated most clearly when he's left alone by the Rani, and after wandering nonchalantly for a few moments, he picks up the spoons and starts rattling away with them! His Doctor is almost fully formed...

The reunion between the Doctor and Mel is a lovely scene, sadly overplayed at first with a regrettable session of self-defence and wrestling. The accusatory dialogue between them is amusing: the Doctor bizarrely calls Mel a washerwoman, then tells her to look in the mirror at "the face of evil", while she calls him a "raving lunatic" and a "miserable fraud"! At first they rail against each other ("I've had enough of this drivel!"), then gradually come to realise they're old friends. Sweetly, it's the mention of carrot juice that does it. The Doctor insists he dislikes the drink, making Mel realise there may be something in his claim to be the Doctor after all (carrot juice being part of her fitness regime for the Sixth Doctor).

The Doctor explains that he has regenerated, and out of the blue Mel says: "I know about regeneration, of course." Oh well that's a good job, we don't have to spend several episodes explaining it then. Mel's acceptance of the Doctor's change might be rather cursory, but she does take time to notice the difference, in height, appearance, even his hair. And it's also in Mel's character that she would accept the evidence of her own eyes and just get on with things. The moment where they check each other's pulses and the penny drops is heart-warming, McCoy and Langford briefly touching foreheads like familiar old pals. Later, he gives Mel's nose a little nudge, something that would become common between he and Ace, but which began way back in Attack of the Cybermen between Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant.

But there's a very specific moment where I think the Seventh Doctor arrives properly. Now his thoughts are in place, the Doctor enters brooding mode: "I've become more of a fool it seems, Mel. Doesn't bode well for my seventh persona, being so completely taken in by the wretched Rani." McCoy delivers this with a progressively darker tone, until he drops the mic with the superb: "But what does she want with me?" He growls that last line with the steel of Season 26's darker Doctor, and briefly you spot that unsettling element of danger within him. Look out monsters - the Seventh Doctor is coming!

There are still unfortunate moments of slapstick that look too rehearsed to convince, such as when the Doctor assaults the Rani with his scarf, or the whole routine where Mel rolls the Doctor over her shoulder, then he swings her about on his back. I could've done without all that. But McCoy is a physical performer, an obvious fan of physical comedy, as am I. While this Doctor has the look of Buster Keaton, he shows sparks of all the silent comedy greats, from Charlie Chaplin (that sideways skid as he rushes from the Rani's lab) to Harold Lloyd (dangling over a cliff in Dragonfire) to Stan Laurel (the magic routine in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy). McCoy knows his silent comedians, and he does it well.

The Doctor establishes that the Rani is gathering creative minds from across the universe - including Albert Einstein and Egyptian philosopher and mathematician Hypatia - as well as something called strange matter, found in the core of a neutron star. The Rani has a place set for the Doctor, a recognised genius in the field of temporal physics, and it all has something to do with that big heartbeat behind the locked door. It's back to the plot, and a mystery to solve, in double-quick time. Pip and Jane Baker's brevity in getting through the basics and back to the story is impressive.

Quick thoughts:
  • Kate O'Mara's delivery of "I'm overwhelmed" when the Doctor says she doesn't have a spark of decency in her! 💓
  • Keff McCulloch's incidental score plays like a manic computer game, punctuating every spare moment without dialogue as if he's paid by the millisecond. There's even a bit where the Rani and Doctor carefully slide the PES into place, and McCulloch drowns the moment with jeopardy music which feels so inappropriate. At times the score sounds remarkably similar to his work on Remembrance of the Daleks, which I much prefer.
  • We finally get to see the Tetraps, which have been lurking around the edges of the screen since the cold open of part 1. They look magnificent, with moving eyes and tongues, and demonstrate the ambition prevalent in this rejuvenated series. But if the bat-like Tetraps have four eyes, why do they need to turn their heads?
  • The Rani's TARDIS is "disguised" as a mirrored pink pyramid, completely failing to merge with its surroundings. Is her chameleon circuit broken too? Sadly, the interior is not a recreation of Paul Trerise's gorgeous grey and pink set from The Mark of the Rani, but a CSO backdrop instead (not even a CSO backdrop of Trerise's set). 
  • I love the gravity director Andrew Morgan gives the moment when the Rani realises the Doctor's memory has returned. "You know, don't you?" she concedes, tearing off her wig as the room goes dim and lights flash about them. It just feels like a "moment".
As part 2 comes to an end with the Doctor cornered by slavering Tetraps, I feel like the Seventh Doctor is almost fully formed already. The reliance on comedy in the absence of characterisation is beginning to lessen, as if McCoy is creating his version of the Doctor on the go, as we watch, making it up as he goes along but making good choices as he goes. It'll be interesting to watch this Doctor develop over time, something his predecessor didn't get to do properly.

First broadcast: September 14th, 1987

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Wanda Ventham's first scene.
The Bad: Bonnie Langford and Sylvester McCoy wrestling.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆


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