Time and the Rani DVD NTSC Region 1 for North America DVD PAL Region 2 for the U.K. VHS Video NTSC A NTSC B PAL

(Doctor Who Story No. 148, introducing Sylvester McCoy) written by Pip and Jane Baker directed by Andrew Morgan produced by John Nathan-Turner music by Keff McCulloch 4 episodes @ 25 minutes each Story: The Doctor regenerates into his seventh form as the TARDIS crashes on the planet Lakertya. What mysterious experiments are nearing completion in the nearby laboratory complex? Will the Rani be able to suppress her true nature enough to successfully impersonate the Doctor's companion Melanie and win his help? What is in store for the lizard-bird-like Lakertyan people, or for that matter, the Rani's bat-like Tetrap servants, should the experiments succeed?

DVD Extras include:

• Audio commentary by Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Bonnie Langford (Melanie), and writers Pip and Jane Baker.
• "The Last Chance Saloon" making-of featurette (28 min.) with McCoy, the Bakers, Kate O'Mara (The Rani), script editor Andrew Cartmel,
  director Andrew Morgan, graphic designer Oliver Elmes, producer John Nathan-Turner, and BBC Head of Series & Serials Jonathan Powell.
• "Helter-Skelter" featurette (9 min.) on Doctor Who's first CGI title sequence
• "7D FX" featurette (12 min.) on the story's visual effects, with Colin Mapson, Mike Tucker, and Dave Chapman.
• "Lakertya" featurette (2 min.) discussing the original vision of the planet and why something else ended up on screen.
• "Hot Gossip" actors featurette (2 min.)
• "On Location" (4 min.) - 1987 interviews of McCoy, Langford, O'Mara, and Nathan-Turner.
• Interview of Sylvester McCoy on Blue Peter. (1 min.)
• Photo Gallery
• Pop-up Production Note Subtitles
• Easter Eggs

As we enter a new era for Doctor Sylvester McCoy and script editor Andrew Cartmel, we are about to experience a noticeable shift in style and a complete and total change of writers on the show, as the curtain comes down, seemingly forever, on all those who have contributed before. However, we have to wait one more story for that curtain, as writers Pip and Jane Baker get one final kick at the can.

"Time and the Rani" actually works better than a lot of McCoy's other adventures as a solid story/plot idea that can be done true justice on television. However, its development and execution fall prey to a few too many bad judgment calls and choices of poor taste. Half of the scenes work really well to deliver the right stuff at the right moments for a good Doctor Who adventure, while the other half, we wish we could just leave out...

First Impressions

Keff McCulloch's new version of the theme tune was past the first verse and halfway through the bridge section before I recognized it and began to wonder if I was now looking at some kind of title sequence. Ah yes: the Doctor's face, a new logo, some episode titles and writer credits. That was much more like it. Finally I could settle down and start to figure this story out. It wasn't until a second episode came along with a more normal opening, however, before I knew for sure which CG shots were meant to be title sequence and which were meant to be story.

As for McCulloch's theme, I certainly don't think it helped to leave out the introductory bars, but with a much longer title sequence, something had to change, and it is nice to get the bridge section in the opening as well as in the credits. As for the rendition itself.... not bad. The bassline is as catchy and satisfying as ever, even if technically something's missing. The main instrument carrying the melody is a bit too buzzy and has too much constant tremolo slightly wavering the pitch for my tastes, producing what I call a "cheesy" sound. However, I love the way it fades into distant echoes after the first two phrases - very nice. Although this version may never be my favourite, and I was sad to be losing Dominic Glynn's version of the theme from the previous year, which seemed it hadn't got as much screen time as it deserved, we were getting nice variety again with this version, and ultimately I do like this one as well.

Sylvester McCoy often strikes me as an actor who delivers his best when allowed to take chances on multiple takes, after which an editor can sift the gold from the rubble. BBC television recording methods of the eighties are perhaps not best suited to this, and Doctor Who's schedules were worse than many others in that regard since it pushed for so many new complicated sets and time-consuming effects as well. As a result, much rubble ends up in the finished product along with gold, his performances often seem hit and miss, and his dialogue doesn't always come through with clarity. But when he is "on", which is most of the time, his is a Doctor that I thoroughly enjoy. Doctors six through nine seem to be the troubled ones in the canon, and of those, McCoy's seventh Doctor sports the best balance of mysterious and endearing qualities making him my favourite.

The seventh Doctor almost looks as though he'll get away without any major problematic regeneration trauma symptoms in this debut here, as he bounces up and almost manages to take charge of his first scene. But the Rani gives him a dose of amnesia which the script doesn't really use to best effect, and with a few ill-conceived gags on top, yet another Doctor doesn't get around to demonstrate his archetypal sci-fi protagonist credentials soon enough during his debut.

The Rani really has to carry this story for most of the first episode, as did the Brigadier during the third Doctor's opener, as did Ben and Polly during the second Doctor's debut, as did 7-year-old Amelia during the eleventh Doctor's debut. The Rani isn't really up to the task here. She's unbelievably irritable, looking for arguments with everything that crosses her path, and it slows the story down the wrong way and grates on the viewer. Many of the other characters in this tale have the same affliction to a degree, but the Rani is definitely the queen of it.

"Leave the quotes to the expert, Mel."

I also like the Doctor's new habit of muddling up old proverbs and sayings, if done in moderation, as in some cases it results in choice material. "A bad workman always blames his fools" is one of my favourites. A lot of these gems are thrown too rapidly at the viewer though, and it's hard to get the humour out of them. The Rani should really give them more space to be heard before attempting to correct them.

At least we get a bit of a fun contrast as the Rani tries hard to suppress the irritable part of her nature while impersonating Melanie. Though this results in some enjoyable bits here and there, it isn't ultimately a plot device that justifies the amount of screen time that it occupies. The Master's various disguises in previous adventures all seemed to work better dramatically for the audience, even if the motivation for it wasn't always as clear as what we have here. Perhaps it would have been better to hold something back from the audience, and let us discover the deception as the Doctor does.

I'm actually quite amused by the claims by Bonnie Langford and many of the production team that Melanie is a strong character in this. It's been a long, long time since any of the Doctor's traveling companions have responded so consistently with screams to this many situations in one adventure. It seems that at the barest hint of anything beginning to happen here, Melanie takes a deep breath and sets her feet firmly on the ground in preparation to belt out as solid, loud, and long a screech as possible. To be fair, if one examines the final episode closely, Melanie gets a good number of actions helping to resolve the plot, but these are easy to miss and certainly don't make a strong enough impression on the viewer to balance her earlier screaming tendencies.

The costume designer also gets a minus mark for giving Melanie pants of pure bright white in which to run and roll around a dirty quarry in April.... or had the script been followed more closely for that matter, a wet forest/jungle in April. It becomes completely unbelievable that her pants stay gleaming white all the way through the adventure as they do. Of course, compounding the problem here is the fact that the Rani copies this costume and inherits its unbelievability as well.

Both the story and the Doctor's character begin to fare a little better once he and his companion sort out who's who. The timing of onscreen plot movements remains problematic though, as we seem to repeat variations of the same things in each of the four episodes. We also seem to be getting the same information too many times in the story. One wonders if the story shouldn't have been tightened up into three episodes, where we properly finish with a location before tackling more substantial barriers leading to the next one....

Ikona seems to be a decent local lead action character, realized with a good level of gravitas by actor Mark Greenstreet. But I'm at a bit of a loss to tell what this character's own specific aims are most of the time.... he seems to be just wandering around waiting to assist our heroes whenever they need it.

Donald Pickering and Wanda Ventham also give star performances in an adventure that doesn't quite seem to know what to do with them. Although I'm glad to have both of them in this tale, I admit to enjoying them more in "The Faceless Ones" (story no. 35), not to mention preferring Pickering's appearance in "The Keys of Marinus" (story no. 5).

The Tetraps are a good idea for an antagonistic alien force on Doctor Who, combining 360-degree four-eyed vision with some of the look and habits of bats, but the execution is demanding and ends up being confusing. Firstly it is a bit of a feat to record four separate images for each of the Tetraps' point-of-view shots, no doubt eating up valuable studio time. But simply superimposing them on top of each other doesn't help make clear what's going on - surely such inputs are being put together more sensibly in the creatures' heads so that they can understand what's going on. We should get the forward view prominently in the upper center of the screen, the side views on the left and right, and the back view a bit squashed on the lower part of the frame. It was many viewings of this story before I realised what those messy, dizzy POV shots were trying to portray, and it may have been the novelization that finally made sense of them for me.

Additionally, it seems to be a completely arbitrary choice, unsupported by the story line, to hold back our first view of the four-eyed Tetrap for an episode. Including views of that head along with the introduction of the four-camera POV shots would have made much more sense.

Ultimately, the physical design of the Tetrap doesn't really suspend disbelief, or trigger any fear of the unknown.

953

Keff McCulloch's incidental score for this story was apparently a bit of a rushed job, and is ultimately not his best work for the show. His overall style seems much more suited for creating listening music, primarily in an 80's synth-pop style, than background music for a televisual format, and the music here often pops out at the viewer. There also seems to be a bit too much of an obsession with the main Doctor Who theme. This works for some pieces, like the opening cue just before McCoy's first speaking scene, or the sequence where the Doctor and his friends become busy with preparations to counter the Rani's plans (almost like the signature "building" sequences found in nearly every episode of "The A-Team"). But although the cue backing a mourning scene hits the right emotional note, it really is out of place to put the main Doctor Who melody on top of this, as the Doctor's nowhere around and had nothing to do with the history brought up in this scene. It's too bad the cues that used the Doctor Who theme well, in addition to "March of the Tetraps", didn't make it to the CD release. Although a shorter version of "Future Pleasure" would be welcome, the two cues that did go to CD are really not the best of this story.

Music by Keff McCulloch The Season 24 opening and closing Doctor Who themes, "Future Pleasure", and "The Brain" feature on: Audio CD - The Doctor Who 25th Anniversary Album BBC CD 707 More info & buying options Read about additional music from this story on CD: Audio CD - Doctor Who: The 50th Anniversary Album More info & buying options

Special effects offer some good eye-candy, being generally more advanced than in previous eras of this show. Most noticeable are the very unique bubble traps that the area has been mined with, in addition to a lot of excellent model work concerning the Rani's lair. There are some nice CG space shots of asteroid and planet that deserved full focus as well. But some of the rocket shots in space reveal a lame old shortcoming creeping back into this era, as the rocket's trajectory across the screen is devoid of stars indicating a split screen mix instead of CSO compositing. Not so great. The story is also missing decent lasers, but at least has a unique alternate effect that works well.

The story begins to gel fairly well in the final episode, as the running around ceases to be aimless, and we finally deal fully with the story's main concept, which is good science fiction. We get to see the seventh Doctor on the ball, and leave a bit of his own stamp on the long-running character. One of the most important props perhaps would have worked better if not so prominently placed on the set... behind a glass partition in the back and not seen quite as clearly would have been better. Final dynamics work well, including a bit of added depth for a character or two. "Time and the Rani" nicely ends on a bit of a high note, though after first viewing, I came away hoping that the next story would work better all the way through.

All in all, not a bad Seventh Doctor story, but somehow lacking some important qualities that prior eras had in greater abundance. As the style for this era continued to change, one had to wonder if it really still had a formula best suited for television....

DVD NTSC Region 1 for the North American market: in the U.S. in Canada DVD PAL Region 2 for the U.K. VHS Video NTSC A for North America NTSC B for North America PAL for the U.K.

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