The Mark of the Rani

Mysteriously drawn off course, the TARDIS lands the Doctor and Peri in England during the Industrial Revolution. In this troubled time when machinery is taking jobs away from miners and poverty looms, the Doctor finds himself pitted not only against the Master, but another renegade Time Lord, the Rani, who has her own agenda for experimentation on the people of Earth. The stakes are raised even higher when the Master's plans go beyond his quest for revenge and move to changing history itself and making Earth the centre of his own private empire.

Better. The season takes a promising upward turn with this episode, introducing the Rani as played by Kate O'Mara. Unlike the Master or the Meddling Monk she has no real axe to grind with the Doctor; she is on Earth to experiment on the humans and could do without either of her fellow renegades getting in her way. Her alliance with the Master only comes under duress as he holds the results of her experiments hostage, until he convinces her that Earth would make an ideal power base and the humans perfect slaves. The Rani already rules over a planet called Miasimia Goria, and figures she could use another. The Master's presence, however, is never really explained in full; last time we saw him in Planet of Fire he was burning to death in the flames of the numismiton furnace. But he's back. And he ain't happy. He's got a big time grudge against the Doctor as always but now it's personal with Peri as well. There's the difference between Anthony Ainley as the Master and Roger Delgado's original version; no matter how things went he always treated Jo Grant with a certain measure of respect, but then again, she never watched him burn to death either.

Plot wise we're looking at a pretty solid script, even if some of the dialogue sounds a bit flowery.

Writers Pip and Jane Baker are new to the series with this one, and they obviously have a love of language, although it materializes in some corny lines like the Master advising the Luddites to "Hold hard,". As this is a historical adventure there is a man of some significance in the script: George Stephenson, the man who would design and buil a steam locomotive named The Rocket. The Doctor is of course delighted to rub shoulders with an inventor, and the Master is delighted at the opportunity to enslave such a mind to his own cause. The Rani isn't interested in the humans to the same extent; her mission is to extract chemicals from the brain that allow rest and sleep, and operating during violent eras in history is perfect cover.

Jay sat in on this one with me once more, and we were delighted with the cast of extras, especially the nice triceps of one of the Rani's assistants. And young Luke, assistant to Stephenson, was pretty easy on the eyes as well. The episode has a lot of visual appeal what with the extensive location shooting at the UK's version of Black Creek Pioneer Village... complete with a sign advertising the tea shop which no-one got out of the shot in time. One would have thought the Restoration Team would have done something about that. The DVD release doesn't feature any enhancements to the program material itself - although that bit where the Doctor drops his tracking device down the mine could have been done better - but it is a great sharp image we get of the inside of the Rani's TARDIS, which is custom made to feel like a chamber one steps down into as opposed to the bright console room that the Doctor uses.

Now I have a question though. The Doctor chose to leave Gallifrey and got raked over the coals, forced to regenerate, and exiled for the sin of stopping bad things from happening to good people. The Rani, on the other hand, caused trouble on Gallifrey and was sent away, and has carried on more or less the same, and there's no trial for her, no rebuke. Much the same for the Master; if they're that bad why don't the Time Lords just sort them? They can do it. They even went so far themselves as to try and get the Doctor to attempt to wipe out the Daleks, so what's so hard about reining in two more renegades? Of course, there's no real answer to this one; it just wouldn't make for good story if everyone could be sorted out so easily.

But speaking of Time Lords and control, here comes the next story...

NEXT EPISODE : THE TWO DOCTORS