Time and The Rani: Rank - 283

 Time and The Rani

(Series 24 (20th Century), Dr 7 with Mel, 7-28/9/1987, producer:  John Nathan-Turner, script editor: Andrew Cartmel, writers: Pip and Jane Baker, director: Andrew Morgan)

Rank: 283

In which the Dr bumps his head on the Tardis console and has a bad dream before playing the spoons, while an old Galiffreyan rival steals the intelligence of leading scientists and dresses up as his companion... 

While we're on the subject of dodgy debuts...It seems strange to think that this episode was the baseline for everything that could go wrong with DW back when I started being a fan and yet here we are nearly at the end of January before reaching it. Anyway, anyone whose ever seen it will know why this universally hated story is near the bottom of the list: That script! (particularly the dialogue). The incomprehensible plot! Those lurid colours! The acting! Kate O'Mara impersonating Bonnie Langford! (that one alone might just be the most misguided in all of 20th century Who). And then there's poor Sylvester McCoy, dropped in at the deep end on a production team in disarray and a TV executive who was trying hard to axe the show completely and made to regenerate wearing Colin Baker's and a terrible wig because, understandably, the actor they'd just axed didn't want to come back for just one scene/story. Never mind having to speak lines written before anyone had the first clue what the new Dr might be like, never mind who was cast in the role. This is one of those stories where it was always going to go wrong because nobody felt fully in charge: not the actor just hired, the new script editor who arrived after it was commissioned nor the producer who thought he'd left the show only to be brought back at the last moment. It's the sort of story where nothing goes right and everything goes slightly wrong, the one that more than any other fans watch to make fun of and then hide from the general public in shame. For all that, though, there's nothing quite so ridiculously wrong with it as many of the lower ones on the list. It actually makes more sense than either of Pip 'n' Jane Baker's previous scripts and Kate O'Mara tries hard to make things work as the baddy. There are parts I actually like a lot. For 1987 Lakertya really does look like an alien planet with its computer bubble traps are some of the best of the 1980s. There's a fair bit of promise here that a more confident production team would have ironed out - but of course nobody was confident in DW anymore in 1987 after a suspension year and a sacking and the future of the show still in doubt. In other words if there's a reason this story doesn't work its the fault of Michael Grade, who still has the audacity to show this story as a reason why it should have been 'rested'.

Positives + McCoy is far from his best here, playing a wildly comic ditzy version of his stage persona as a circus performer as everyone tries hard to stop him being like Colin baker without actually knowing what to make him like. You can see why so many fans hated him on the spot after the first episode when he's extremely irritating, misquoting axims and playing the spoons. But Sylv, an improvisational comic whose TV experience had mostly been on children's Tv before this, learns on the spot how to shrug off all the people giving him notes and learn and grow into the role. by episode 4 he's nailed the darker, moodier Dr we'll come to know more. In the context of what was going on behind the scenes the wonder isn't that he messed up episodes 1-3 but that he got there in the end.

Negatives - It's a longstanding complaint that people in Drip 'n' pain Baker's scripts don't talk the way people do. Any people. This really shows in this story's big emotional scenes where people are trapped or scared or - God help us - impersonated by a renegade timelord in a girly squeaky voice. There should be a lot of moving stuff in this plot but it ends up just being pantomime.