Day 326 — November 22nd 2021
The Mark of the Rani Part Two
The Mark of the Rani — Part Two
The biggest issue I’ve got with this episode is that the historical setting just becomes a backdrop, rather than being in any way integral to the story itself. If you’re going to have Doctor Who meet someone as important as George Stephenson then you really want the resolution to at least hinge on the man in some way — the use of his inventions at the very least, or some of his specialist knowledge coming into play at exactly the right moment. I also think it’s a shame that they don’t make any real attempt to explain who he is to viewers who might not know. There’s some brief shots of Doctor Who and Stephenson looking at a steam train together, and a joke about ‘Rocket’, but nothing more than that. Indeed for all the difference it makes to the story, this could be any old character.
Even the story of the Luddites becomes fairly unimportant in this one, and they only show up to briefly waylay Doctor Who on the way to the climax. It feels like a wasted opportunity, because I think you could tell a really interesting story set during this period, with Doctor Who initially suspecting the Rani, or the Master, of providing updated machinery which has put the workers’ noses out of joint only to discover that it’s just a part of history taking course. There’s probably an interesting debate to be had about the pros and cons of the Industrial Revolution, but with most of this episode taking place between three Time Lords in a woodland grove it could be set anywhen.
I also think it’s a shame that the confrontation between Doctor Who and his two contemporaries doesn’t have an awful lot going for it. There’s no great drama, nothing much in the way of sparkling dialogue. It feels like they all come together because the story requires them to, and then they just mill around a little until they run out of time. That Doctor Who doesn’t encounter them again after their brief meeting in the woods, and the resolution is the result of something clever he did earlier on just feels like a bit of a waste.
Regular readers will also know that I’m not a fan of anything which I feel cheapens Gallifrey and the Time Lords, and this episode has a hell of an example of just that, when the Master and the Rani discuss the events which led to her exile from Gallifrey;
The Rani: ‘I don’t make mistakes.’
The Master: ‘If that were true you’d still be on Gallifrey.’
The Rani: ‘Experiments are subject to the unexpected. They can be capricious.’
The Master: ‘Capricious? Turning mice into monsters?’
The Rani: ‘A marginal error, quickly corrected.’
The Master: ‘The Time Lords didn’t think so.’
The Rani: ‘Spite on the part of the Lord President, just because they ate his cat.’
The Master: ‘Took a chunk out of him, too, I remember…’
It’s the same kind of twee nonsense that sets my teeth on edge as any time Time Lords talk about studying together at the Academy, and I think it spoils the Rani a little. I don’t want her to be an exile who mucked up an experiment once upon a time. I want her to have decided that Gallifrey was too dull for her, so set up shop on another world to keep her interests up. In fairness, I think she’s still my favourite thig in this episode. I love how cold she is when it comes to discussing Luke’s fate, and I sort of understand her logic, too;
Doctor Who: ‘First you turn an innocent young man into your acolyte, force him to betray his friends, and then you do this monstrous thing to him.’
The Rani: ‘Oh, stop being sentimental. What’s happened? Animal matter has been metamorphosed into vegetable matter. So what?’
Doctor Who: ‘You’ll be telling me next he’s better off!’
The Rani: ‘As a matter of fact, he is. A tree has four times the life expectancy of
a human being.’
Ah yes, you can’t discuss this episode without talking about the moment that Luke steps on one of the Rani’s land mines and turns into a tree. It gets held up as being an example of the show doing something stupid and poorly, but I have to admit I don’t mind it! I have a feeling that if I’d seen this as a kid it would have been my favourite thing in the whole story. I can just picture myself playing in the woods at the bottom of our garden and pretending that the trees there were all people who’d been transformed in the past.
Okay, so the actual prop tree itself isn’t the best looking thing they’ve ever put on the screen, and the moment it has to bend a branch to grab Peri and avoid her meeting the same fate is the moment the whole thing falls apart a little, but I certainly don’t think it’s anywhere near as bad a part of the plot as people make out. Although I’ve only just realised that Doctor Who and Peri leave Kellingworth without removing the other mines from the woods, so presumably there’ll be a few more trees popping up the next time a bunch of miners go for a casual stroll.
I think this one has the same problem as the last story, in that it doesn’t really build to any sort of resolution as much as it just comes to an end when the running time is up. In the case of Vengeance on Varos most of the baddies just happen to touch the poisonous vines at the same moment. Here, the climax hinges on the Rani and the Master deciding to enter her TARDIS and fly away only to find it booby trapped. We don’t even get the drama of seeing our heroes search through the mines to find the TARDIS — it’s already been recovered and moved to the workshop to enable a speedy getaway. Still, I can’t complain too much because it does give us the best line of the whole story;
Lord Ravensworth: ‘I will venture just one question, Doctor. What precisely do you do in [the TARDIS]?’
Doctor Who: ‘Argue, mainly.’
Overall I’ve been properly disappointed by this one, because I remembered liking it far more than I have this time around. There’s several elements which just haven’t held up to my memories, including things like the direction, which I recalled as being some of the best the Old Testament ever received. While there’s undeniably some gorgeous shots across the story (the Master seen through the slats in the gate during Part One or the Doctor framed by a cobweb in this one) it’s otherwise nothing to especially write home about. There’s every chance that it’s caught me on a bad day and I’m feeling less charitable towards it, but I was hoping for more.
4/10
