Time and the Rani Episode 4

Season 24@30. After all the meandering of the past two weeks this final episode gets the story into gear with surprisingly effective results. You do wonder about the Tetraps though. This week they come out of their den to have a walk to the Centre of Leisure and there’s about 15 of them we see leaving the Rani’s HQ. Yet only three enter the Centre. Have the others gone shopping? I love the way too they refer to themselves with the forename `Tetrap`. “Tetrap Steve, Tetrap Joyce we’re going to the Centre of Leisure”. The other thing about them is that despite having eyes all around their heads they still turn round to look at things! Tetraps- crazy name, crazy guys!

Tetrap Joyce and Tetrap Steve on their way to Aldi

This week Sylvester McCoy starts to show how good he is going to be. There were hints in the first three episodes but its been a very directionless performance perhaps meant to illustrate post regeneration issues but this week McCoy really becomes the Doctor. He’s splendid, mixing in the malapropisms with intellect and starting to gain the upper hand with an increasingly melodramatic Rani. You have to admire P&J for thinking big too- turning the whole planet into a Time Manipulator by filling the atmosphere with chronon particles – yes it’s pretend science but I do like this sort of thing. So long as it makes sense within the fiction why not? I’m still not sure assorted human geniuses –especially ones from a time before time travel was even thought of- would be of any use to the Big Pink Brain mind you. On the other hand they seem a casual lot who barely bat an eyelid at their predicament when woken and taken around the Tardis.

Not that the episode is without some silly moments. My favourite is when the Doctor wants to disarm the explosive ankle things that the Rani has insisted the Lakertyans wear. Even though he would obviously know what to do he assigns the job to Mel on the grounds that she’s “the computer expert.” As the job involves wiring and circuitry surely an electrician would be better than a computer expert?

The denouement as the Rani herself refers to matters is actually rather satisfying in that it is her mistake in falling for the Doctor’s challenge that not only causes the demise of the Big Pink Brain but also means a delay causes the rocket to miss that asteroid thus avoiding the planet’s fate as a Time Manipulator. We see the rocket launch too courtesy of an excellent model shot instead of the customary Apollo rocket footage which many alien rockets strangely resembled back in the day. Worryingly that rocket just zooms on and you wonder if there’s a poor planet somewhere that it hits whose inhabitants don’t know why.

To finish, Ikona smashes the means to rid the Lakertyans of those pesky glowing insects with a grand gesture that makes even the hitherto silent extras gasp. What a flannel he is!  All the Lakertyans have to do is never actually open the globe and they’ll be fine; you can see why they were easily overcome in the first place. The Rani meanwhile, despite being seen escaping is somehow caught by the Tetraps (ouch!) who have somehow got into her Tardis. How does this happen? We never really know except for an enigmatic look from the Doctor which will become a Thing during the McCoy era whenever the writers don’t want to bother explaining how an event happened. 

As far as I recall watching `Time and the Rani` in 1987 was slightly alarming with the balance still tilted too far towards the comedic and the sort of scenarios that invite ridicule from a wider audience. Appropriately given the title time has been kind and now this story seems a faintly silly but never less than enjoyable outing. 

Strange Matter!

One of the working titles of the story and a key ingredient in the Rani’s plan, Strange Matter or at least the idea of it is a real thing, sort of. It is a theoretical concept suggested by scientists in the 1970s but is not so far confirmed to exist naturally anywhere in the Universe and is described on one science website as “unarguably weird”. Strange Matter is said to be heavier than matter which is made of atoms containing nuclei full of protons and neutrons. Everything in matter is neatly packaged with particles staying inside protons and neutrons. In strange matter the particles are not contained and free to zip about as they choose.

Strange Matter could not be created in something like the famous Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland because the heat generated would destroy the particles. “Like trying to create ice cubes in a furnace” is how one scientist described it.

It has been concluded that the most likely place where strange matter might exist would be in a neutron star. MIT Physicist Edward Farhi said: “At the core you have densities and pressures large enough to form strange matter. If strange matter formed in the core, it would eat its way out and consume the star.”