"What happens if you pull Colin Baker's chain?"
Tachyon TV present an alternative DVD commentary to The Mark of the Rani
Topics up for discussion include: niche porn featuring faux miners in recursive bath houses, Colin Baker's sotto voce, an extremely violent Michael Palin, Renegade Time Lords Reunited, two impossible competitions, a very special song and the sound of silence...
The podcast is available from the usual place
It all started so well, so what the hell happened.
The Mark of the Rani Part Two
As the Doctor hurtles to his certain doom on a trolley he is rescues by none other then George Stephenson. I wondered when he would turn up as he kept being mentioned during part one, so it was nice to finally see him. I also wondered what Michael Faraday was up to as I am sure his story would have been more interesting than the Rani and the Master bickering for 45 minutes!
Gawn Grainger was good as George Stephenson and the scenes featuring him were amongst the highlights of the episode.
Certainly, the Rani’s TARDIS was a masterpiece of design by Paul Terice. It looked great and I think was nice than the Doctor’s TARDIS, which by that time was starting to look a bit dated. There was certainly a bit more imagination in the design of the Rani’s TARDIS where the Doctor’s looked a bit dated after being the same for twenty-odd years. I don’t hold with the belief that the TARDIS should be bright white and clinical looking like some fans seem to think is what TARDIS’s should look like at all. Give me the Rani’s TARDIS anyday (well apart from the baby dinosaurs).
The less said about the dinosaurs growing up at the end of the episode the better I’d say. Colin Baker is a fine Doctor but he was saddled with some pretty bad stories. Mark of the Rani is certainly not one of the worst of the Colin Baker era but there are faults with it.
Colin is great as usual and Nicola Bryant is also good as Peri despite the fact that she really has very little to do and it doesn’t help that she had a pretty dodgy costume. She was a bit too covered up for my liking, certainly more covered up than she ever had been before anyway.
I really can’t think of much else to say about the episode apart from the fact that I really liked the direction and that the Master was a complete waste of space in the story, a shame really, as I do like Colin Baker’s Doctor. His Big Finish output is certainly stronger than his televisual offerings!
There's a bloody good reason why it's taken so long for this piece to materialize... I just couldn't summon up the effort to go back to watch the second episode.
The Mark of the Rani - Episode Two
To say that nothing at all happens isn't far from the truth. What little action there is is stretch out well beyond the tensile strength of narrative and the result is your mind starts, not so much wandering, but going on a full blown long haul trip with jet-lag, an ill-fated holiday romance and malaria thrown in for free. If you distilled the plot from this episode you'd get about half the amount of brain juice the Rani is extracting from each of the pitiful inhabitants of Killingworth.
The least yawn inducing moment comes from the Master, sulking around the place like someone who's about to let rip from the arse but is trying really hard to nip it back in. Look at him, tippy toes, buttocks clenched, breaking out into a cold sweat just in case he lets rip and follows through. The Mark of the Master.
"...a Prince Albert Bolt for a Time Rotor."
Half of the episode is spent tossing aimlessly around a small copse looking for ingredients for a sleeping draft. Turning a SciFi series into an even slower than usual edition of Autumnwatch, minus Bill Oddie or Kate Humble, should be sufficient to induce a persistative vegetative state in anyone who may be suffering from a Rani sucking. Ah yes, the mark of the Rani, as the Master so ridiculously states. Given her rapacious capacity for draining the men folk of the village if he'd spotted a love bite, or herpes, would he have exclaimed similar? At least she's a chemist and treating of some STDs should be well within her grasp.
As is, apparently, offering an IVF service to Tyrannosaurus Rex. That's after she's spent her time crafting a TARDIS solely from S&M gear. A studded collar around the edge of the console, nipple clamps on the food machine and a Prince Albert Bolt for a Time Rotor. Lovely.
The Rani's need to create the world's first pointless minefield was further evidence that this episode had more padding than Kate Moss in a Sumo Wrestler Fat Suit. What I know about land mines can be written on the inside of a Lady Di commemorative mug and whilst there had to be some point behind planting mines that turn animal matter into vegetable matter it's escaping me for the moment. If only Peri had trod on one, it might have actually made me want to tune in next week to see the Doctor and a shrub traversing the Universe.
I just can't be bothered any more, will this do?
The Bumper Book of Made Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about part 2 of The Mark of the Rani: with the two evil Timelords being banished off to remote areas of the cosmos the BBC were prepping a new sitcom spin-off. Terry Master and June Rani would have seen the tiresome twosome in a series of mediocre, sub-farce, adventures as Terry Master attempted to prevent his boss, Mr Rassilon, from inviting himself round to their TARDIS for dinner at inopportune times. With hilarious consequences for no-one.
I have often said that I will quite happily sit and watch anything. A few years ago, that statement would probably have been true (so long as you didn't try to make me watch The Secret of Nimh). Nowadays, I'm more picky. Reality Shows, Charmed, Ruby Wax... the list of things I refuse to sit and stare at goes on and on.
The point I guess I'm trying to make is that I know s**t when I see it. And while I admit this was far from the best Doctor Who I've ever seen (The Satan Pit, take yet another bow), I honestly don't believe it's as bad as everyone says it is, because I was perfectly able to watch it and not fall asleep or break into MST3K-style riffing. And for me, that's pretty gosh-darned spiffy.
So what if the plot is random gibberish? So what if there is absolutely no logical reason for the Master to be there? So what if the effects are rubbish? So what if it has land mines that turn people into trees? It's got three Time Lords who can bicker with the best of them! It's got some rather fantastic location shooting! It's got George Stephenson! It's got... got... um...
I sat (well, layed down, I had the sofa all to myself) and watched this with an open mind, despite some of the other reviews that have appeared here, and found myself moderately entertained for an hour and a half. And in the end, I think that's in no way worth the £10 I paid for it. But then everything these days is overpriced, so I guess that's just par for the course. But hey, I enjoyed it and I suspect that at some point in the future I'll watch it again. And I know I say that a lot, so schtum.
The Bumper Book of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about Mark of the Rani: When writing the script for this adventure, the Bakers couldn't agree on what the land-mines would turn people into - their final choice was between trees and beautiful nude nymphs. Sadly for all concerned, the coin used in the toss was from Canada.
Mucking About With The Rani, part two
(NB: For best results, please have this music on hand to play before starting.)
When we last left our hero (for lack of a better word), the Hooded Claw had tied him to a runaway trolley which the Bully Brothers had then placed on a railway track to a bottomless shaft. With Perpugiliam Pitstop left tripping over her own skirts it looks like this time the Doctor could be shafted for good. But wait! Here comes Georgie from the Ant & Dec Hill Mob to close up the hole in the nick of time. Safe!
It's not going to get any more exciting than this, folks. Enjoy the cartoon nostalgia while it lasts.
Out of all the episodes from Season 22, none more than this one are stuffed to the gills with Seemed Like Good Ideas At The Time. The Rani's TARDIS interior may be all swish and black and spruced up, but was it really wise to make the Doctor's own, where many more wonderful moaning scenes were yet to be filmed, look like such a heap of shit in comparison? Which of course it was, as Tegan and Peri both took a gleeful childish delightful in pointing out every few minutes. The Rani's Turner trap is so outlandishly cartoonish that all it lacks is Shaggy and Scooby to lure the Doctor into it. Puppetsaurus Rex? Pants. And then of course there's
THAT
BASTARD
TREE.
One can only suppose George Stevenson was autistic, since it's the metal straps that catch his attention and not the plastic and foam-rubber trolley, the fat tub of lard on top of it, the bint in skirts or the rampaging mob. Or indeed much of anything else in this whole episode. Lord Ravensworth's lackey meanwhile gets to loose off one blank rifle cartridge before the Luddites are on him; luckily his personal force field saves the day as all of their blows visibly fail to make contact. And once Stephenson starts his speech on Luke's education and bright future then it's obvious his protege's had it, though it's a good thing they didn't waste any money on acting lessons.
"Couldn't they have broadcast the story about the Lord President's cat instead?"
The editing in the next scene is so bad that roughly four days pass between the Master creeping round the wall and him hyponitising Luke, judging from the number of light/dark transitions. Luke is noticeably more fey once he's under, making you wonder what else the Master uses besides the watch and the maggots to impose his will. Indeed, the Rani is disgusted enough at the crap direction to rip the whole flex out of her viewing apparatus in a strop. Well done.
"Peripheral vision?" Fuck off.
If the Rani's so bloody clever, why does she keep feeding the Master's ego with admissions of how much she's in his thrall? She can hardly take her goons into the street, so naturally it's much more intelligent to leave them sprawled dead in the bathhouse floor with Chinese burn rashes, a canvas volcano for company, and HANDY GAS MASKS FOR ANY SOD TO USE WHO SETS THE TRAP OFF. Why not just leave a big neon sign saying TARDIS HERE instead? Nobody needs to fink to the Time Lords, they can just use the Arsehole Indicators they used to track down Pat Troughton at the end of The War Games.
Jon Pertwee would be the first person to ask what's so brilliant about the Rani's remote-controlled TARDIS anyway, from the number of times the Time Lords pissed about with his. Or the Master, in this very story, thus rendering the whole subplot completely pointless. Inside, the dillitante Doctor does everything but look straight at the camera while he mugs it up. Strange sort of chap, mulls Ravensworth, but not as strange as Jack Ward's epileptic fit in the chair behind him.
Couldn't they have broadcast the story about the Lord President's cat instead? It would have been far more interesting than the next ten minutes of long-winded talking bollocks. There is one artsy shot where the camera focuses on Colin through a dew-covered spider's web while he muses the 'come into my parlour' line, but City Of Death it isn't. Peri Shaky-Head meanwhile gawps obliviously onwards to Redfern Dell, now strewn with grey plastic tits - Colin Baker must remember the same DC Thompson comics I do, since in the commentary he refers to the place as 'Dingly Dell'. I think I also counted an "I'll explain later" rate in this episode only marginally smaller than Curse Of The Fatal Death.
NOOOOOOOO DIDN'T HAPPEN DIDN'T HAPPEN DIDN'T HAPPEN. Col's expression as he rounds on his adversaries with the TCE conveys more about this scene than any reviewer possibly could. They should have locked Pip and Jane in a padded cell - now move, before he forgets his abhorrance of violence AND NEITHER DID THAT THE HORROR THE HORROR and re-enacts Vengeance On Varos.
Can't sleep. Tree will eat me.
Oh Lord, but it's not over yet. Leaving Peri to guard two Time Lords is asking for trouble; the oldest trick in the book with the Master's watch doesn't work, but fortunately the second-oldest with trick with the powder in the face does. All this padding looks the same to me. Ainley comes to the rescue in his usual fashion of cocking things up still further; one masked-on video dust cloud later and finally it's into the Rani's TARDIS they go. Activate the mirrorlon condensors and set the animatronics regulator to maximum. Good. Can we go now?
"It's not time spillage that's been drawing all the energy and willpower from my desiccated corpse"
Speaking of TARDISes, are we expected to believe that any number of miners could haul it vertically back up through the shaft without getting stuck, or navigate it through mine tunnels that it clearly cannot fit through? And where is the Master's TARDIS kept throughout the story? We never see the thing, but if it's disguised in the typically genius fashion for this story then it'll be swarming with tourists before the week is out. Didn't anyone realise that both it and the instant tree dispensers might just be a LITTLE bit incongruous, left behind on 19th century England for that bunch of dolts to stumble across? And precisely what did the Doctor hope to achieve by twiddling a couple of knobs on a TIME MACHINE that can return to its point of origin ANY TIME THEY'RE READY?
Oh I give up. My head hurts...
Lord Ravensworth gets to round off the episode by asking the one pertinent question of the whole of Doctor Who fandom. What exactly do we do in there? In 1985, it was crying and masturbating. Mainly.
And that, thankfully, is that. Things look grim for the home team as we're now batting one for three with one inning left to play, and the nicest thing I'm prepared to say about The Mark Of The Rani in particular is that having reviewed it, there is no earthly reason to ever have to stick it on again. It's not time spillage that's been drawing all the energy and willpower from my desiccated corpse.
The Bumper Book Of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about The Mark Of The Rani part two: Pip and Jane Baker's original script ending had Kate O'Mara finding Anthony Ainley in the shower, who informs the viewers that the previous season had all been a dream (an idea which Michael Grade was impressed enough with to use almost immediately).
The Mark Of The Rani, part one
It's a bad sign for a story when the DVD insists on running all the worst bits for its menu loops...
So. Mark Of The Rani then. We're watching Sid Sutton's fanwank video for Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon, so this is definitely Colin Baker territory. Sure enough to rub it in, after the title come the five most dreaded words in the English language, as well as being the five shortest the pair would ever write. Must focus. Be positive. Um. Well, Ironbridge Gorge looks quaint enough, and period costume drama has traditionally been the strongest facet of the BBC's output. The production team takes great pains to show it off to us too as the opening setup scene, with no dialogue to speak of, meanders across really slowly and drags on FOR EVER - I'm guessing director Sarah Hellings had a bet on with Lovett Bickford, and Bickford lost.
Oh sod this.
I don't really want to be reviewing this one, you see. If it absolutely must be a Pip & Jane Baker story then I'd much rather be watching Terror Of The Vervoids, the last half of The Ultimate Foe or, God help me, Time And The Rani; because as bad as their later drivel would get - and believe me, the Bakers' indulgances into whimsy, smartarse wordplay and complete technoballs would become ear-chewingly unbearable before the 80s were out - they have at least some kind of menace on display. Whereas The Mark Of The Rani, aside from vague allusions to a hopeless 19th-century mechanised 'plot' concocted by the Master after a night on the wacky-baccy watching entirely too much Dastardly & Muttley In Their Flying Machines, has absolutely no point or sense to it whatsoever. Between the start of this story and the end, no consequences of any kind happen, and nothing that passes across the screen comes even close to suggesting that the human race would be any worse off in the long run if the Doctor were to simply fuck off and let Abbot and Costello, whose own bumblings eventually get themselves blown up, piss about all they want.
"An unintentional foreshadowing of plant life that leaves reviewers everywhere wanting to gnaw their own bollocks off"
There's no call for the Rani to even be there at all if all she wants is a bit of melatonin which Nyssa could synthesize in her sleep. The Industrial Revolution is exposed to dangerous alien technology, some of which is simply left there and never disposed of; people are nobbled by lamprey-sized cellophane lovebites or turned into sentient trees IN FRONT OF WITNESSES, and yet the world simply rolls its eyes at the nutters next door before minding its own business again. All Mark Of The Rani boils down to is ninety minutes of fannying about with Compo, Clegg and Foggy, right down to the comedy downhill chase, albeit with a trolley instead of a bathtub. And yes I know the Marx Brothers parallels are more obvious, but Harpo knew when to shut the hell up.
To give Col his credit, he has managed to completely exonerate himself in recent years from the mid-80s debacle; give him some worthwhile, intelligent material and put him in an environment where you don't have to look at that bloody costume and he is by FAR the best of the Big Finish audio Doctors. Or maybe it just seems that way because the contrast with this season is so great. Whatev.
Now, it is possible to like The Mark Of The Rani in the same way one might like The Time Monster, as a piece of light-entertainment fluff instead of anything approaching real drama. Nobody after all gives better withering looks than Kate O'Mara, and Anthony Ainley at his most bent will always raise a smile, skipping through the sets like they were Rassilon's chessboard and channelling the spirit of Snidely Whiplash from the Dudley Doright cartoon. We wouldn't see the Master so flagrantly 'nine-hundred-years-in-a-sodding-sewer' camp again until Eric Roberts flounced about the TARDIS in Ainley's gayest wardrobe (which our Ant promptly nicked back again for Destiny Of The Doctors).
Oh God, still another forty minutes to go and nothing's happened yet. Bitch bitch bitch. Some subsititute for Kew Gardens moans our Peri, giving us an unintentional foreshadowing of plant life that leaves reviewers everywhere wanting to gnaw their own bollocks off. Have you noticed how whiskery Anthony Ainley is in this story? Look at those chin locks - that scarecrow isn't actually a disguise you know. I have a theory that the Master has a mental relapse if he neglects his therapy sessions of swapping fashion tips with the hairstylist on Dulkis. Common sense goes straight out the window to be replaced by lots of chinny-reckon instead. Like a cosmic Sampson, but twaddle instead of strength.
Ooh, that's quite clever. The effect shot of the Master's reflection looming up on the Rani's thingamajig, the face distorted by the shape of the glass, is really quite, er, effective. Treasure this shot, as that's where ninety percent of the Quantel budget has gone for this episode. Good grief, they got the film crew for nothing; how much more money did they honestly need to scrimp? Anthony's trademark weapon, the Throbbing Cock Ejaculator, fails to compress anything this time; a bit of silent-movie camera trickery and pop, the target's gone. Swizz. Moments later the remaining meager funds are squandered on the wretched sequence where first the Doctor's sub-ether electronic thumb ("After the ten bob that went into making that!") and then a hapless Luddite go down the hole. For God's sake, it's 1985 and they STILL think they can convincingly mask video onto film. Somebody dig up the President of Androzani Major and show them how to do it properly.
"Quick Pip - what's a twenty-letter-word synonym for 'chewing the scenery'?"
The Fuddites - be vewwy vewwy quiet, we're hunting Doctors - collectively exhibit more witless acting and gullibility than Milli Vanilli and their entire fan club. Colin Baker's tenure, with its glitter and tinsel, garish colours and effects, daft-as-a-brush companion and supreme overbearing arrogance always reminds me of much of the Jon Pertwee years. But here they've also shovelled in the Primords for no apparant reason, which is carrying homage a bit too far.
Meanwhile Jane Maxwell and Oilcan Harry continue to bicker at each other like Season 19 never ended, and once the Doctor has got himself stupidly strapped down and the insults start flying, it's about all Peri and her wobbly bottom lip can do not to repeatedly bang her head against the wall. What in the name of God are they even saying? "Fortuitous would be an apposite epithet." Y'wha? I start hitting the telly, convinced it's switched over to a bizarre episode of Countdown with Richard Stilgoe in the dictionary corner. Bravely Kate O'Mara tries to remain aloof and dignified, but she hasn't a mission since we all recall wincing through her Bonnie Langford impressions in Season 24.
Quick Pip - what's a twenty-letter-word synonym for 'chewing the scenery'?
In more time than it takes Colin Baker to say 'for fuck's sake woman, just go down the shops and buy some Night Nurse', we finally get to the low-tech cliffhanger with the trolley. And if you thought the Master was crap before, the stupid ass-backwards bastard can't even get this right - Snidely, you're supposed to tie the victim to the track and let the train mow him down. It's fitting then that the last shot of the episode should be a crash zoom into a deep dark hole.
The Bumper Book Of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about The Mark Of The Rani part one: the 18-month hiatus was actually brought about by an infringement lawsuit from the makers of Scrabble, who objected to Pip & Jane Baker's script.
No one would have believed, in the early years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space.
No one could have dreamed we were being stalked, as a sexual predator eyes up the drunkest women in a bar that swarm and multiply around the ladies lavs.
Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets and yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably inferior to a stoat regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely, he drew his pissant little plans against us...
The Mark of the Rani - Episode One
How on Earth is anyone meant to take the Master seriously as a threat? He spends most of this incarnation puking up new definitions for the word parochial at every single turn. Even by his ever decreasing standards this is a pissing little plan he's thought up. It's a good job he's been sucked down the Eye of Harmony - if he'd been around for much longer his next plan for Universal domination would have started with a little light shoplifting from Iceland and involved sticking a frozen chicken down his pants.
The Master, an example of the law of diminishing returns in action. There's only one way you can go after you've bid for Universal domination. And that direction is not up...
This is the man who held the Universe to ransom a with an intergalactic karaoke machine, threatening the species of the Universe with his rendition of "Brown Girl in the Ring" (Logopolis); created a dimensionally recursive version of the Arndale Centre which was much less confusing than the real thing - it's got more chemist shops for a start (Castrovalva); terrorised camp air stewards with a mostly racist act involving a mask made up entirely from Barbara Cartland's desiccated husk (Time Flight); decided it would be a good idea to screw-up GCSE homework throughout history by removing the Magna Carta from the syllabus (The King's Demons); etcetera, et-bleedin'-cetera.
"The script, on the Sanctuary Base wall that the TARDIS failed to interpret, was actually Geordie written phonetically."
The man has absolutely zero intelligence and zero ambition left after being bested, time after time, by the Doctor. And yet, his latest wheeze, scrapes the bottom of the barrel so far that he's through its base and is merely scrabbling around in the muck beneath. Universal domination, by capturing a group of boffins from a mining village in the early 19th century simply smacks of desperation. Isn't it simply sufficient? No. No Einstein, Hawking and Chico Time for him. A group of incomprehensible accents from pre-industrialised Britain will suit just fine, as he carries out invasion after invasion with steam powered juggernauts. Perhaps his sole motivation in life is to have lots of greased up, naked men, shovelling coal into his engines doing his every bidding. Bows and arrows against the lightening...
The best he could hope to get out of all of this, surely, was claim early ownership over Greggs pasties, Georgie Jeans and Viz Magazine. Should he ever have been able to communicate to the thick brained locals with their even thicker accents - even the TARDIS's telepathic circuits strained at their upper tolerance levels to decode the local dialect as anything approaching English.
"Looking reet canny in 'is Geordie Jeans"
One gent in particular appears to have swallowed the whole of Gateshead in order to produce a squawking voice that sounds like it's somewhere between incandescent rage and a NUFC fan who's in the final throws of sexual ecstasy. Whilst simultaneously eating a kebab.
There's even part of the Grand Unified Theory of Doctor Who that states that the script, on the Sanctuary Base wall that the TARDIS failed to interpret, was actually Geordie written phonetically.
Where's Daniel Jackson when you need him? Probably stuffing his face with mashed pig flesh in pastry and looking reet canny in 'is Geordie Jeans. Cos they're really tight in the arse...
The Bumper Book of Made Up Doctor Who Facts has this to say about part 1 of The Mark of the Rani: specialist dog shit suppliers to the gentry, Stools & Son, were shipped in to supply Mr Baker's facial smearings.
As Johnny Rotten once said to a crowd of safety-pin wearing, phlegm-encrusted adulators packed into a New York auditorium, ‘Ever feel like you’ve been cheated..?’ It’s a phrase that springs - yet again - to mind as a cliff-hanger reprisal once more inserts some hitherto unseen ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card for the Doctor to resolve the previous week’s un-resolvable. The spirit of Rocket Man is strong here, brothers.
The Mark of the Rani Part 2
Rescued by George Stevenson - who, naturally, is more distracted by the Doctor's metal bonds than the garish yellow trousers he's sporting - the time-travellers make their escape from the Geordie hordes before they get wind that Andy Cole has been sold to Man. Utd. Back at his workshop, Stevenson and the Doctor engage in some typically self-aggrandising banter whilst young Luke Ward ponders the nocturnal activities of his now bestial father. How, precisely, did he get that love bite, seeing as his wife is not responsible? And why has a seemingly increased upturn in the trouser activity department only made him more aggressive and more likely to trash the nearest shopping arcade? ‘Your father’s not the man he was’, Luke is warned by the Doctor. But seeing as that state is now about two levels up from Cro-Magnon, it’s no wonder that young Luke has a troubled brow beneath that impossibly floppy fringe of his.
why has a seemingly increased upturn in the trouser activity department only made him more aggressive and more likely to trash the nearest shopping arcade?
Meanwhile, the JR Ewing and Alexis Carrington of time-travel are hatching one of their interminable schemes that will simultaneously a) reduce the Doctor to a vegetable (did they not see Colin Baker’s performance in ‘The Twin Dilemma’ and realise they could save themselves the effort?) and b) use the combined intellects of two dozen nineteenth century genii for their own nefarious ends (probably involving enslavement, mutual ego masturbation and licking various fluids off one another’s nipples). By the way, is there a reason why when Anthony Ainley walks across the screen he has the gait of a hapless, octogenarian incontinent who has recently cacked himself? Twenty years later I’m surprised we haven’t been told.
Disposing of her muscular manservant - much like her alter-ego would later do in half-a-dozen nineties tabloid exposes - the Rani decides to go into the landscape gardening business; laying what appear to be ‘the Frisbees of doom’ for the unsuspecting Doctor to step on and turn his coat of many colours into a plant found only on particularly clement tropical islands. But before he can fall into her trap, both Peri and Luke Ward - now zombified beyond all manner of natural acting by the Master’s spinning balls - take a turn on this countryside version of The Adventure Game; with Luke soon whooshed into a tree so plastic looking that its concentric markings have ‘Made in Hong Kong’ stencilled throughout. ‘The tree won’t hurt you’, yells the Doctor, rather unhelpfully seeing as Peri is completely oblivious of young Master Ward’s metamorphosis. Though the fact that Luke’s first instinct post-transformation is to give her a good grope around the thoracic area should probably be a clue.
And that’s it. Honestly! As though the Bakers realised that having a plastic tree save the heroine was just a touch too - well, shite really - for a popular, early evening family show, they just seem to give up on what plot they’d devised; leaving the Master and the Rani to toddle off like a particularly naughty pair of school-kids whose conquer-smashing activities have upset the other children. And besides, are we really meant to think that two ‘genius’ Time Lords are going to be impressed by the combined intelligence of twenty or so industrialists from a backward planet still two centuries away from the MP3 player?
leaving the Master and the Rani to toddle off like a particularly naughty pair of school-kids whose conquer-smashing activities have upset the other children
Oh, I’m forgetting. About halfway through this episode there’s a scene inside the Rani’s TARDIS which is all right. Okay. You could even say not bad. In fact, Paul Cornell once described it as one of the few highlights of this era of Doctor Who. And to be fair the art department has done a decent job of making a different - though similar - version of the time/space craft with which we’re all so familiar; with a gyroscopic column, pop-up controls and a typically eighties pastel décor which makes the whole thing look expensive. And needless to say it was junked by the time of the Rani’s return two years later.
But I’ll say that again. A piece of studio scenery and a working prop is perhaps the highlight of this episode. Not exactly the ‘Do I have the right…?’ speech, is it?
Lastly - and I know I shouldn’t - but here are one or two niggling points that, for some reason, have never bothered me until now…
If the extraction of the brain chemical removes the miners’ ability to sleep, how come none of them ever look shagged out?
Considering that Time Lords are meant to share some sort of ‘symbiotic’ relationship with their vessels, then why does the key to the Doctor’s TARDIS also open the Rani’s?
Do male Time Lords have their bollocks in the same place as every other species? Or does the Rani actually catch the late Tremas’ bollocks when she knees the Master in the groin?
I really should get out more.
(The Bumper Book of Made-Up ‘Doctor Who’ facts has this to say about The Mark of the Rani 2: despite their predilection for filling-in the slightest between adventure gap, even Big Finish have never felt the need to resolve how the Master and the Rani escape the foetal Tyrannosaurus (pssst, it breaks its neck on the TARDIS ceiling before it can devour them…))
Mark of the Rani Episode 1
One of the attractions of this story, for me at least, is the fact that the location filming of this story was at Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire. I used to live not to far away from that in Randlay, near Telford and as a small child went to Ironbrige a few times with my first school. You didn’t need to know that but I thought it would add a little colour to the review.
It is interesting to notice that the first five or so minutes of the episode wouldn’t be out of place in any historical drama and up until the pit workers are overcome by some strange gas in the bath house you wouldn’t even probably know you were watching Doctor Who, had you missed the title sequence. Then you get a reasonably short (well for the Colin Baker era anyway) TARDIS sequence where Peri is dressed in her finery for a trip to Kew Gardens. I guess someone had remembered that Peri was meant to be a botany student and decided that it might be nice to mention it.
The rest of the episode is full of lovely period colour with a few sci-fi trappings much like some other classic Doctor Who stories. One of the major problems of this story happens right at the start when the Master makes his first appearance.
Now I quite like the Master, when he is used properly, but in this story (more than he ever was before) he is totally crowbarred in the plot without the merest thought about what his place in the story actually is. He is totally superfluous to the plot and he is simply there to exact his revenge on the Doctor after he left him to die in the flames at the end of Planet of Fire.
He also takes attention away from the Rani that is the real crime of this story. It is called Mark of the Rani after all and you would think that the Rani is the real villain of the piece, but after watching it you realise that she is not. She is even credited after the Master in the closing titles.
Why did they bother creating the character of the Rani if they intended to put the Master in this story in the first place? Such a waste of a character in my opinion. I know that the Rani hasn’t really been well served (oo-er) with the best of storylines but she is quite an interesting character in her own right. I guess it is the fact that she is not really evil at all, but amoral, that they felt the need to have someone else purely evil in the story in her stead.
I really wish that they had just left the Master out of the story and concentrated on the Rani. That wouldn’t have been such a bad thing and it would have certainly been a hell of a lot better than Time and the Rani was. Right that is a major bugbear of mine about this story out of the way.
One thing that does stand out on this story is the fact that it looks really good. The direction on this particular story is actually very good and, apart from the Graeme Harper directed episodes of this particular season, is probably some of the best direction seen on Who during the eighties. The fact that is mainly shot on film helps of course. I thought that the closing scenes of the episode were well directed and it was made better by the fact that Colin did most of his own stunt work on that scene.
However like the majority of Colin Baker stories it does have a tendency to drag a bit and the episode seems to last a lot longer than just 45 minutes. After a while you do tend to start looking at the readout on your DVD to see how long is left to go on the episode.
After all the complaints about being unable to understand Christopher Eccleston’s Salford brogue, one wonder how the same fans managed with the North Eastern dialect we are presented with in this story. The rest of the characters however speak like they have just swallowed a thesaurus a common complaint in the stories of Pip and Jane Baker who do not obviously subscribe to the theory of not using more words than is absolutely necessary in a sentence. After all, why use four words when you can use 25!
I had never noticed before that George Stephenson didn’t appear in the first episode at all, which is a bit of a shame as they kept mentioning his name every five minutes! Never mind we did get to see Charlie Hungerford in comedy sideburns as the owner of the mine!
I am pretty sure that this story might actually have been more bearable, if it had been in twenty-five minutes episodes, as watched as a 45 minute episode it seems to go on forever!
Three Time Lords brought together in a slightly backward community in the North East? A collection of genii whose combined wit and intellect will bring great advance for all mankind? More Geordie accents than you can shake a perigosto stick at? But enough about the annual Tachyon TV jaunt to Stockton, here instead is this car crash of a pseudo-historical Doctor Who through the filter of a pocket edition of Roget’s Thesaurus.
The Mark of the Rani Part 1
We open on a close-up of some pit machinery dragging up a cart full of coal and the remains of Doctor Who’s mid 1980s respectability. As some weary, indecipherable locals trudge their way home following another hard day spent rubbing their faces in the grime of the land, a strange cowled woman beckons them into a bath-house for a quick rub-down and more steam than a typical edition of Top of the Pops. But something’s afoot as the men’s fatigue sans fatigues results only in a spell of unconsciousness that even a dozen Tobies couldn’t replicate and a love-bite that looks as though it’s been administered by a Dyson vacuum cleaner. Something, clearly, is oop…
...a quick rub-down and more steam than a typical Top of the Pops
Meanwhile the TARDIS is being dragged off course (again) and the Doctor and Peri - emerging to investigate the MAL-FUNCTION!!! - soon discover that the steam-cleaned miners have taken a particular dislike to any and all machinery; getting all Newcastle fans after yet another failed assault on the Premiership in the process. Such gross displays of testosterone-fuelled violence and vulgar dialects bring back unpleasant memories of James Bolam’s spit ‘n’ vomit antics in ‘When the Boat Comes In’, whilst the lack of even one decipherable word amongst the supporting cast only proves once and for all that - despite its dab hand in translating all and sundry alien tongues - the TARDIS is well and truly fu**ed when it comes to the mumblings of the North East.
But marauding mackems are hardly the bee-all and end-all of the Doctor and Peri’s worries. For nearby are not one but two of the Time Lords’ most treacherous and tongue-twistingly twattish titans. First up, new-girl-in-town the Rani whose motives stem from a need to keep her alien hordes doped to the gills back on the implausibly names Miasimia Goria (which sounds like some intergalactic venereal disease if ever I heard one) and is extracting the brain fluid from these limited locals’ lobes for just such a purpose. And in the blue corner? Well, get ready to groan yourself into a coma as the Master puts in yet another of his implausibly explained returns from certain death to once again bring menace - not to mention mirth - back to the Doctor’s life. And how exactly is the crown prince of crime going about threatening all of existence this time? By holding it to ransom for some nefarious end? By plotting a scheme to destroy the Doctor so devious that his nemesis will probably shit himself through another half-dozen regenerations? No. This time he’s diverted the TARDIS off course for no good reason than to allow the Doctor to muck up his plans again; and then he’s going to stand in a field until his mortal enemy just happens to turn up. Fiendish, eh? I dunno - you’ve gotta pity the poor bugger, haven’t you? One minute he’s got the whole of creation at his mercy, next he’s doing a cut-price Worzel Gummidge impression and smelling of wee. After this I guess that getting infected by a bunch of talking cats has got to be a step up.
...a scheme so devious that he will probably shit himself through another half-dozen regenerations
Any road, this convention of genii has apparently given the Master some hare-brained idea about harnessing all the clever-dicks of the Industrial Revolution and using them to pilot the Earth around the galaxy with him as their supreme leader (or something). And of course as soon as the word ‘genius’ is mentioned, lo and behold the Doctor comes galloping to the self-adulating rescue, trying to gatecrash his way into the elite meeting by waving around a mobile phone that would have embarrassed even a Wall Street-era Michael Douglas. Not to mention namedropping yet another of his historical entourage. As a result the Doctor soon comes under the scrutiny of Lord Ravensworth - played by none other than Charlie Hungerford from Bergerac - who remonstrates our hero for his lack of working-class hands and ungentlemanly manner; yet somehow manages to miss the whole multi-coloured mess of clothing that the Doctor currently considers to be the height of haute-couture.
Figuring out that the Miners’ mental states seem to have been altered following their post-work rub-downs at the bathhouse, the Doctor sets off to inveigle himself amongst the working-class crowd, smearing dog shit on his face and swapping collage-coat for something a bit more Eccleston. In terms of fitting in, his attempts at camouflage are about as successful as a Muslim going to a Hare Krishna meeting, but somehow the Rani doesn’t see through his disguise until she wipes away the excrement to find the real shit beneath. Cue some oh-so tedious stand-offs between the trio of Time Lords - including dialogue more flowery than a dozen torch-song musicals - and a cliff-hanger which underlines Peri’s totally unsuitable credentials as a mother (poor girl just doesn’t know the right time to push). Leaving us with Colin out of control, staring certain death in the face as his bloated, trolley-bound form heads straight towards the dead-end of an open mine-shaft. Or is it an eighteen-month hiatus..?
(The Bumper Book of Made-Up ‘Doctor Who’ Facts has this to say about The Mark of the Rani 1: the shit-laced dirt that Colin Baker rubs into his face was an executive suggestion by BBC1 Controller Michael Grade)
