The Mark of the Rani

“I thought he was dead!”
”As you can observe I am very much alive”

– Peri and The Master

Killingworth sounds like the name of a village straight out of a Doctor Who writers dreams, and so it’s quite odd the place hasn’t been appropriated before. The plot for this serial would appear to be straight forward, two renegade Timelords against a third in a “vulgar coloured jacket”, yes this serial sees the providential return of the Master, having been very much killed in the last serial to feature him.

Indeed the writers couldn’t get out of that one, it wasn’t so much an escapable scenario, it was very much plainly and irrefutably terminal. The only mention to how the Master survived is the fact he’s clearly alive, with no one actually bothering to come up with a reasonable explanation, if one could possibly ever be forged, about how the hell he got out of burning alive. That said, Derren Brown may have been a previous regeneration, there is a resemblance.

The Rani’s plans are quite simple, extract the fluid from the brains of humans that allows sleep to be parcelled back to her own subjects on Miasimia Goria, where she’s cocked up a few experiments and turned her subjects riotous. It’s the Master’s hijacking of this fluid that ensures the Rani’s co-operation in his revenge.

The Master’s plot itself seems all in all to be rather infantile compared with his usual plans, indeed in the early days the Master could be seen as a cunning corporate manipulator, now he’s just a daft schemer in stupid clothes, something the revived series has done little to rectify. All the Same the Rani’s comments of this vendetta being quite juvenile is pretty much on the money for this one.

The Rani was dreamed up by Nathan-Turner as an adversary along the same lines as the Master but with a background in chemistry and tits. Indeed the similarities between the two characters are apparent enough before it gets hammered in that they’re featuring in the same serial, for example both have a hyperactive like of costumes, though in the Rani’s case this at least has a point to it. The comparison to the Master may also be a little unfair as the Rani’s duplicitous plans don’t, thankfully,involve the Doctor and so her ploys are incompatible with the Master’s. Al the same her desperation to see them through as shown in the scene whereby the Master effectively teases her with the bottle of brain fluid gives us a chilling indication that the Master’s antics are quite insignificant compared with what the Rani is up to.

That said the Master’s plans do later evolve into something a little more satisfying, as he strikes an interesting deal with the Rani to make the earth a military power base. Yes, he’s had that ambition for quite some time. He sweetens it by saying that should he succeed the Rani would be welcome to harvest all the fluid she needed, which is a tempting prospect, and thus, she agrees.

The Doctor and Peri share a somewhat calmer relationship than they have in past serials, perhaps mainly due to the fact they don’t have much screen time together. Even so when they do the Doctor has more of an appreciation for Peri’s talents, such as using her knowledge as a student of botany to help collect herbs in Redfern Dell, however thsi also leads to the most ridiculous aspect of the serial: mines that turn people into trees, the Rani cuttingly remarking she’s increased her victims life spans in doing so.

If I’m giving the impression that I’m struggling with this one, I am. It’s not that this serial is a particularly bad one, in fact it’s quite good, but the action itself happens on a very drawn out time scale, across two 45 minute blocks very little actually transpires, besides the residents going mad to help along some of the drama, by doing rather riotous things like shoving the TARDIS down a miners shaft. The serial does at least carry off another one for the historical characters, namely George Stephenson, whose contribution to the serial on the whole is largely inconsequential, as such if you’re looking for a historical gem here, what you’ll get instead is aliens and dinosaurs.