The Mark of the Rani (TV story)

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The Mark of the Rani was the third story of Season 22 of Doctor Who. A new Time Lord villain, the Rani, was introduced in this serial.

Synopsis

In 19th century England, the Doctor finds himself facing two competing enemies: his old adversary the Master, and the Rani, another Time Lord with a sinister plan. The local population are turning violent and unpredictable and, with a major meeting of the brains of the Industrial Revolution due to happen in the village soon, the Doctor must work out what exactly is causing all the problems. Only the Doctor can stop both the Master and the Rani's evil plans.

Plot

Part 1

File:Mark rani part1.JPG
The Master and the Rani join forces

Something is amiss in the mining village of Killingworth, in the early part of 19th century England. Miners are being gassed in the bathhouse and transformed into thugs and vandals, attacking men and machinery, being perceived as Luddites by other locals. The Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown witness the phenomenon when they arrive in Killingworth looking for the cause of some sort of time distortion, and he also notices one of the rampaging miners has a strange red mark on his neck. With his usual audacity, The Doctor foists himself upon the local landowner, Lord Ravensworth, who is concerned by the ferocity of the local Luddite attacks, with the most passive of men suddenly turning violent and unpredictable.

The answer lies in the local bathhouse. The Master has turned up at this key point in human history and forces his way into the presence of the old woman who runs the bathhouse: in reality another Time Lord known as the Rani. She is a gifted chemist and is using the set-up of the bathhouse to anaesthetise the miners and distill from them the neuro-chemicals that enable sleep. This is what accounts for the red mark on the victims. These chemicals are then synthesised for use back on Miasimia Goria, a planet she rules and which the Master has visited, where her other experiments have left the inhabitants without the ability to rest. He persuades her that they need to deal with the Doctor together, but also steals some of the precious brain fluid she has collected to ensure her collaboration. It is a rocky partnership, full of half-truths and deceptions. The Master heads off to deal with the Doctor, egging on local miners to attack his enemy and persuading some of them to throw the Doctor's TARDIS down a mine shaft.

The Doctor has meanwhile dressed as a miner and infiltrated the bathhouse, where he soon deduces the Rani's schemes. She traps him but he still challenges her ethics, prompting her to reveal she has been coming to Earth for centuries to harvest her precious chemicals. The Master convinces the Rani to let him deal with the Doctor. He has the TARDIS pushed down a mine shaft, and the angry Luddites put the Doctor in a cart to ensure that he follows it.

Part 2

File:Mark rani part2.JPG
Inside the Rani's TARDIS

After the Doctor is saved by inventor George Stephenson, he and Peri return to Lord Ravensworth's, where Stephenson has planned a meeting of scientific and engineering geniuses in the village. The Doctor is worried about the wisdom of such a meeting in the current circumstances, but elsewhere the Master is so desperate to see the event take place he uses mind-control over Stephenson's young aide, Luke Ward, telling him to kill anyone who tries to prevent it. The Master wants to use the finest brains of the Industrial Revolution to help speed up Earth's development and then use the planet as a powerbase. He strikes a deal with the Rani that she may return to Earth at any time to harvest more brain fluid if she helps him achieve this.

While the villains are away, the Doctor returns to the bathhouse and dodges the booby traps to find a way into the Rani's TARDIS. Her control room contains jars of preserved dinosaur embryos. She summons her ship to the old mine workings using a remote control device, with the Doctor still inside. He hides while his adversaries converse, with the Rani confessing to have also laid landmines in nearby Redfern Dell; and when the coast is clear the Doctor slips away to report back to Ravensworth, Stephenson and Luke, whom he sees is behaving strangely.

To make herself useful Peri is using her botanical knowledge to make a sleeping draught for the afflicted miners, but her quest for herbs leads her to Redfern Dell. The Doctor gets there in time to save her, but not before Luke accidentally steps on a mine and is turned into a tree. The Doctor then surprises the Master and the Rani, who are lurking at the edge of the Dell, and takes them prisoner with the Master's own Tissue Compression Eliminator. Peri is given charge of them but the Rani's deviousness outstrips the Master's and she is the one who enables them to escape. The Rani and the Master flee in her TARDIS, but the Doctor has also developed a trick or two: he has sabotaged the navigational system and the ship starts heading out of control. In the destabilised condition, one of the jars containing an embryo tyrannosaurus rex falls to the floor and the creature begins to grow, affected by the time spillage.

The Doctor and Peri make an exchange with Ravensworth, who has retrieved the TARDIS and accepts the phial of brain fluid, which he is told to return to the affected miners. Before the eyes of an astonished scientist and his financier, the TARDIS departs...

Cast

Crew

References

Story notes

  • This story had working titles of; Too Clever By Far and Enter The Rani.
  • The music score for this story was provided by composer Jonathan Gibbs. John Lewis was originally hired to compose the score, but a sudden onset of illness — which ultimately resulted in his death — prevented him being able to finish the work and forced the production team to give the assignment to Gibbs just after Lewis had completed scoring the first episode. Lewis' score for the first episode was included on the DVD release.
  • The following was credited in both episodes: "The BBC wish to acknowledge the cooperation of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum."
  • This was the last story of the original series of Doctor Who to be directed by a woman. The next such occasion was the 2007 Tenth Doctor episode Blink (directed by Hettie MacDonald).
  • The Mark of the Rani was shown in 4-25 minute episodes in the USA, Australia and New Zealand.
  • The Rani was conceived as a new, ongoing villain, however the character only appeared once more in the series, two years later in Time and the Rani. Kate O'Mara later reprised the role for the charity special, Dimensions in Time (which is considered non-canonical) and the spin-off audio production The Rani Reaps the Whirlwind for BBV. The possibility of the Rani returning to the revival series has been a source of fan speculation since 2005, with virtually every female character from Rose Tyler to Donna Noble to Lucy Saxon being considered possible Ranis-in-disguise.

Ratings

  • Part 1 - 6.3 million viewers
  • Part 2 - 7.3 million viewers

Myths

  • John Nathan-Turner cast Kate O'Mara as the Rani because of her starring role in the popular American soap opera Dynasty. (O'Mara had yet to begin work on Dynasty when she was cast as the Rani. She was however well known for her appearances in a number of UK soap operas, including for the BBC The Brothers - opposite Colin Baker - and Triangle. Her appearances on Dynasty were filmed between production of this story and her later return in Time and the Rani)

Filming locations

  • Most of the location filming, including the village scenes, was done as Blists Hill Open Air Museum in Shropshire.
  • Granville Colliery Spoil Heaps (now known as Granville Park), Lodge Road, Donnington Wood, Telford, Shropshire (Scene of the TARDIS landing)
  • Coalport China Museum, Coalport, Telford, Shropshire (Lord Raven's offices)
  • Blists Hill Victorian Town, Madeley, Shropshire
  • Park Wood, Bury Street, Ruislip, Middlesex (The tree scenes)
  • BBC Television Centre (TC6), Shepherd's Bush, London

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.
  • The influence of the production team upon the trolley to which the Doctor has been secured at the end of the first episode is a bit too obvious. It unaccountably manages to steer itself when careering down the hill.

Continuity

Timeline

Home video and audio releases

DVD releases

Mark rani region2.jpg
File:Mark rani region1.jpg

Released as Doctor Who: The Mark of the Rani'.

Released:

Contents:

  • Commentary by Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant and Kate O'Mara
  • Lords and Luddites - Actors and crew recall the making of The Mark of the Rani in this specially-shot documentary, featuring Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Kate O'Mara and Gary Cady, writers Pip & Jane Baker, script editor Eric Saward and composer Jonathan Gibbs
  • Deleted Scenes - Nearly ten minutes of additional material from an early edit of Part 1.
  • Now and Then - A short film featuring the Blists Hill Victorian Town location.
  • Playing With Time - An interview with the story's composer, Jonathan Gibbs.
  • Blue Peter - A short film from 1978 exploring the history of Ironbridge Gorge and Blists Hill
  • Saturday Superstore - An extract from March 1984 featuring Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant and Anthony Ainley.
  • Alternative Soundtrack - The option to view Part 1 with the partially-completed original music score by John Lewis
  • Isolated Music Score - Clean synchronous music is available for both episodes.
  • Radio Times Listings (DVD-ROM)
  • Photo Gallery
  • Production Subtitles

Notes:

VHS Releases

  • This story was released on VHS in July of 1995.

Novelisation and its audiobook

Mark of the Rani novel.jpg
Main article: The Mark of the Rani (novelisation)

External links

Template:Season 22

v • e
The Master stories
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According to one account, the Master had the appearance of Roger Delgado while on Gallifrey. According to another, he had Anthony Ainley's likeness. According to another one, the one with James Dreyfus's appearance was the incarnation who ran away from Gallifrey.

Divided Loyalties, A Brief History of Time Lords and The Legions of Death feature, or otherwise acknowledge, the War Chief, but in the process contradicted the notion put forward by other stories that he was an incarnation of the Master.

One account suggests that the incarnation portrayed by Roger Delgado may be the same as the one portrayed by Peter Pratt while some others distinguish them.

According to one account, the incarnation portrayed by Gordon Tipple is the one portrayed by Anthony Ainley, while some others state that the Ainley one was already lost by then.

While fighting to extend his life at the end of his regeneration cycle, many bodies were possessed by the Beevers incarnation, but all kept somehow reverting to his real being until he finally regenerated into the MacQueen one. Hence, these sections cannot be strictly chronological
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