Time and the Rani Episode 1

Season 24@30. It’s thirty years since season 24 was first broadcast and across the next 14 weeks I’ll be looking at each episode of what was a transformational time when Doctor Who began to re-emerge as a creative force. Though the full extent of this artistic regeneration wasn’t seen till season 25, it is here that the seeds are sown. All four stories are sometimes a contradiction in styles- one minute there’ll be an intelligent or scary moment, the next something silly is happening. Yet it is surprisingly rewarding to re-watch as it was intended- an episode a week – to see just how Doctor Who started to get its mojo back! To start `Time and the Rani` is loud, hectic and peppered with orchestral stings, high camp performances and an unlikely plot. Still it is never boring and as it progresses on you can’t help being carried along by its sheer brio.

Compared to the previous season’s opening salvo of a great big spaceship twisting and turning we have a cheap video effects Tardis, a be wigged Sylvester McCoy and Kate O’Mara ordering her minion to “Leave the girl – it’s the man I want.” For a moment it looks like the series has got even worse! Writers Pip and Jane Baker are not short of ideas but their dialogue sounds exactly like it was written for an arcane stage play; nobody talks like a normal person. Back in the day I never got why the Rani spends half the story pretending to be Mel and yet suddenly now I see it and it still doesn’t make sense. If she’d bothered not to leave the girl, the Rani could have forced the Doctor to fix the machine and avoided having to cosplay at all. That being said, Kate O’Mara’s Mel is a rather cheeky interpretation.

Watching in the full knowledge that Sylvester McCoy’s performance calmed and improved considerably it isn’t quite so alarming to witness his behaviour in this episode. You can understand though why fans were concerned on first viewing that this gurning, accident prone man was really the new Doctor. It suddenly seemed as if Colin Baker had been the epitome of restraint. Sylvester McCoy makes almost every mistake in the book in his first scene even mis-timing a fall which you’d think with his experience he’d manage to pull off. You have to sympathise with the Rani’s exasperation at this knockabout behaviour though Kate O’Mara matches McCoy creating a ham sandwich that makes you wince when watching some of their scenes. All that’s missing is a laughter track. Altogether now- "This goo- what's it for?"

The one exception to the farce is the Doctor’s traditional trying on of clothes which is actually rather wittily penned with some delightful musical cues and brief enough not to outstay its welcome. “Old hat!” muses the Doctor as he pops out sporting the fourth Doctor’s latter day outfit. Now that’s a tone that better suits this new incarnation. The malapropisms- at least when delivered with confusion- also show promise though are overused this week and the best line he delivers is “The more I get to know me, the less I like me.” Hints of something much better coming along. 

It’s all eye bruising, bright and peppered with unnecessary incidental music at every turn. The interior sets make little attempt to be realistic; the Rani’s control room looks more like the Top of the Pops studio. However once you go outdoors it’s a different matter. There’s an impressive matte shot near the start, some subtle colouring to make the place look less like a quarry than usual and those bubble traps are very impressively realised.

This inside / outside rule of thumb can equally be applied to the narrative. Outside the story is content to deliver some well shot runarounds and action. Inside we’re stuck with a series of scenes that try to incorporate exposition into dialogue. By coincidence I’ve been re watching `Horror of Fang Rock` made a decade earlier and if you look at that story’s part 1 it is a perfect example of how to do this. 

The best thing in the episode are those nasty bubbles. The idea was probably borrowed from the 1985 film Explorers in which it was used more benignly as the protective means by which three kids manage to fly a homemade spaceship. Here, Pip and Jane show they’re not all puns and pratfalls. Having already demonstrated how gruesome a weapon these are the cliffhanger sees Mel caught in one bouncing off the rocks. It is a genuinely good example of an end of episode sting and I suspect the only thing that would bring viewers back the following week!