Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor Who Debut Was a Total Train Wreck
Time and the Rani launched a new Doctor with neon chaos, quarry nonsense, and instant fan trauma.
Plot Summary
The Rani captures the Doctor, triggers his regeneration, and attempts to acquire unprecedented power over time and space by impersonating Mel.
Notable for:
Sylvester McCoy’s debut as the Seventh Doctor — the first regeneration story since The Caves of Androzani (1984).
Colin Baker was fired and refused to film a regeneration scene, so McCoy wore Baker’s costume and a wig for the pre-title sequence.
John Nathan-Turner originally preferred not to include the regeneration, but he later changed his mind. Andrew Morgan wanted to use a clip of Colin Baker, but JNT refused.
Kate O’Mara’s second (and final) televised appearance as the Rani.
Written by Pip and Jane Baker, who also wrote The Mark of the Rani, the Rani’s debut story.
Andrew Cartmel’s first story as script editor. He famously disliked the script, calling it a story “that wasn’t about anything.”
Location filming was at Cloford Quarry, Westdown Quarry, and Whatley Quarry. So much quarry they needed three of them!
The Doctor and Rani’s age is given as 953. Strange, then, that the Doctor regresses to 900 in the new series! (Notably, he was 749 in The Ribos Operation.)
Pete commentary:
A Kid’s Show
I don’t know if any other Doctor Who adventure feels more “kid” than Time and the Rani—at least from the TV canon.
The design is the first clue: ’80s Doctor Who is infamously neon, but this takes it to a new level. From the synthesized, super-early-CGI rainbow credits to Mel and the Rani’s outfits to the Lakertyans green look to the brightly lit sets, it’s hard to process the sensory overload. There’s some dark stuff in this one, but it’s literally washed over with light and color.
The story isn’t terrible, but the dialogue feels very unreal. Bonnie Langford, primarily a theater actor, struggles to make anything that comes out of her mouth sound like something a real person would say. The Rani’s smug veneer from The Mark of the Rani has gotten 10x thicker, as has her makeup. That’s fitting, but she almost feels like a caricature of her own character. The writing and her performance wouldn’t be out of place in, say, The Curse of Fatal Death. And McCoy’s antics, while in general charming, certainly amplify the feeling of silliness.
The spoons. And McCoy doing pratfall after pratfall in ep 1.
In short, it’s incredibly difficult to take Time and the Rani seriously as a Doctor Who story. Doctor Who is famously adaptable to different genres, but taking a step back, it’s hard to believe this is the same series that gave us The Caves of Androzani just 3 years earlier.
The Regeneration
The regeneration is, sadly, absolute trash. There were circumstances, but McCoy in a wig ended up adding to the infamy of this episode. And the excuse “We didn’t know people would rewatch/scrutinze” no longer holds water at this point. By 1987, the show had clear international appeal and home video was rapidly expanding. Just inexcusable considering what they were able to do decades before with the “whiteout” in The Tenth Planet.
The fashion show is pretty basic. You get a couple of moments with the scarf, one of Pertwee’s tuxes, and the Fifth Doctor’s outfit, but it’s all pretty pointless and unmemorable. I suppose you don’t need to make too much out of this—they just treat it as “hey, remember when he looked like this?” But considering the interesting things they did in the past—Davison’s Doctor unraveling the scarf, and the Sixth Doctor proudly displaying how different and unhinged he is by stubbornly adopting the technicolor dreamcoat—the show is already capable of doing more with this opportunity.
McCoy (and the show) are of course trying some things out, and one of those things is the Seventh Doctor misquoting cliche expressions (“Fit as a trombone,” “A kangaroo never forgets,” “Time and tide melts the snowman,” et al.). I remember at the time thinking this could be an interesting quirk of the Seventh Doctor, but in hindsight it’s another kid-oriented thing that undermines the Doctor’s authority needlessly. It’s good that they dropped it.
The Lakertyans
The Lakertyans are almost interesting: The makeup is like a low-budget Draconian, which is fine, but what’s underexplored is their apparent instinct to turtle and surrender when threatened. The Rani has effectively taken this society hostage, but the only explanation for why they don’t resist is the insect dome. But why don’t they destroy it? Why do they have no weapons? Why do they just let the Tetraps strap lethal ankle bracelets to them? You get the impression they’re kind of like the Thals of various races that allow their worlds to be conquered.
Why do the Lakertyans even GO to the pleasure dome or whatever it’s called? “Let’s go hang out at the place where there’s a giant mechanical bee hive full of lethal micro-drones!” “Nah, I think I’ll just stay home and read.”
Finally, Ikona’s unilateral decision to ditch the cure to the insects’ venom is NUTS. I guess it’s teaching them to solve hard problems and grow a pair? You’d think he’d be arrested/cast out on the spot.
The Rani
Kate O’Mara fully understood the assignment. Her performance is scenery-chewing and OTT, but amazingly so. She also knows how to satisfy by deliberately underplaying certain lines—in particular, “Cretin,” which was dripping with the perfect amount of disgust and arrogance.
The Rani disguising herself as Mel is so audacious that you can scarcely believe it as it’s happening. It’s funny how the Doctor half falls for it, occasionally spouting lines about how evil and bad the Rani is. It goes on a tad too long, but—the goofiness of seeing Kate O’Mara in Mel’s ultra-’80s outfit aside—it’s a pretty smart plan, and almost works.
It’s also great how the Rani plays Mel as a backhanded slap to the character.
Once she changes back, the Rani clearly took a quick side trip to visit her hairdresser.
It’s hard to argue with Grace’s assessment that this isn’t a particularly good episode for Mel, who gets trapped in a mine, captured by Urak, and generally responds to every twist and unexpected thing with her trademark canary cry. She continues to scream in the bubble even after it lands in water. She screams about the Tetraps when she should be running. Etc.
The Rani’s overall plan is, uh, strange. Simulated strange matter will detonate actual strange matter, which will *somethingsomething* and transform Lakertya into a time manipulator? I suppose you could argue it’s no better or worse than any other technobabble plot, but because we never see the Rani as the master (mistress?) of time, like she plans to be, we don’t feel the stakes. It’s really just taking a trendy science thing and mentioning it in a Doctor Who story. It’s also not that interesting from an educational standpoint—all we hear about strange matter is that it’s really heavy.
That said, the megabrain is pretty fun. I really love the closing of the third episode. Even though it’s a lousy cliffhanger, I love the idea of the Doctor, his personality quirks amplified by regeneration crisis, being a really “bad influence” on the collective hive mind. It’s like the troublesome-student scene in The War Games x100.
Misc
Leaving the appearance of the Tetraps a mystery is pretty effective, actually. It’s too bad that they don’t milk their first appearance in episode 2 for much drama. It’s really just, “Here’s Urak.”
The Tetraps’ “glitter guns,” which shoot stun nets, is pretty creative.
The “bubble mine” is a bit weird. Again, if the goal is to kill, why not just use an explosive? I suppose the idea being that the mine kills ONLY the person who steps on it. Theoretically, if the Rani was taken hostage, she could lead the person to one of the mines.
When Ikona saves Mel from the mine, the entire thing disappears, not just the bubble.
What did Pete’s family think?
Grace enjoyed the story, though she didn’t think it was a good episode for Mel. She thought that she didn’t do anything and basically screamed a lot. She was very engaged with the Rani’s switcheroo with Mel, asking a lot of questions.
Four Questions to Doomsday - Pete
Why did the Randomizer take us here? It liked the de facto post-regeneration crisis of The Highlanders, so it jumped right to another one. It’s also in love with disguises—the Doctor in the Highlanders impersonating an old woman, a German doctor, and a soldier; the Doctor and Rose as kitchen staff in Rise/Age. The Master as a senior naval officer in The Sea Devils. The Rani is just following the formula.
What if the evil plot had succeeded? Beyus chickens out or is too late to stop the rocket from hitting the asteroid. The Rani is happy, but she’s still overpowered by the Tetraps in her TARDIS. Mel and the Doctor barely escape in the Doctor’s TARDIS. The Tetraps bully the Rani to tell them how to operate the time manipulator, but she turns the tables on them by fooling them into erasing their entire history. The Doctor has to stop her, but now she can wield the power of time. The Time Lords may get involved, but there’s a good chance the Rani has foreseen that, laying a set of traps for them to convince them to leave her alone.
Where’s the Clara splinter? She sold a bunch of ankle bracelets to the Rani but made them so easy to disable that they’re compatible with any old wire, electrical or fiber-optic.
Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? Ogron who dated Cassandra once. It’s not wrong to be disappointed or even angry that this is McCoy’s debut, and ended up setting the tone for most of his first season (Paradise Towers and Delta and the Bannermen continue much of the neon silliness). His Doctor thankfully ended up being more mysterious and darker than Time and the Rani would lead you to believe, but he definitely started on the wrong foot.
Chris commentary:
Ah, the rage-quitting story returns.
September 7, 1987, a day that will live in infamy …
Well, not really. I didn’t even mention it in my diary at the time, which was the last diary entry I would write that year.
20% of the people who watched the first ep quit before the second! I’m not alone
The Two Bonnies
It’s not just that Baker wouldn’t film the regeneration, it’s that the whole story was supposed to be his swan song. He would die defeating the Rani and the giant brain.
Pip and Jane Baker think they’re being so didactic, but they’re just either incomprehensible, pseudish, or unintentionally hilarious. “The Center of Leisure!”
There are so many unnecessary layers to this evil plot! A rocket? An asteroid? Strange matter? A Time manipulator (cribbed from the “Race Against Time” book)? Some other materials? And she’s somehow building the Key to Time or something? Make it make sense!
I wish I could report Race Against Time is a good choose your own adventure … but 1987 me would have been annoyed by that too.
One Questions to Doomsday - Chris
Where’s the Clara splinter? Making the Rani’s Mel costume.