Doctor Who loses control of his TARDIS yet again, and ends up in the early 19th century. And there's trouble at t'mill. Or rather at t'pit. The peace of the Northumberland mining village of Killingworth is being disturbed by a series of Luddite riots. Those with knowledge of social history might point out that Ludditism was much more widespread in the textile industry than in coal mining, but this is not a goof by the scriptwriters. These particular riots have been fomented- for their own nefarious purposes- by two renegade Time Lords who have arrived in Killingworth, quite independently of one another. (Exactly what their nefarious purposes are would take too long to explain).
One is the Doctor's old enemy, The Master who, like the Doctor, possesses the power to regenerate himself. All The Doctor's many incarnations have been quite different, both in appearance and in personality, from their predecessors, but Anthony Ainley's Master is, with his goatee beard, deliberately similar in appearance to the character played by Roger Delgado in the early seventies, and in personality is just as villainous.
The other renegade is a new character making her first appearance, the female Time Lord (or Time Lady?) known as The Rani. Although both renegades are evil and join forces to fight The Doctor and his companion Peri, their alliance is an uneasy one because of their differing personalities. Unlike The Master, The Rani is not obsessed with power for its own sake, but is a gifted scientist obsessed with scientific knowledge who will do anything, however immoral, to attain it. It was originally intended that Kate O'Mara's character should, like The Master, be a recurring character in the series, but she only appeared in one more serial, "Time and the Rani", before the series temporarily came to an end in 1989.
Although a number of adventures over the years had been set in the Earth's past, this was the first story since the days of the First Doctor to feature genuine historical characters, in this case the engineer and inventor George Stephenson and Lord Ravensworth, a landowner, industrialist and politician and a patron of science and learning. Part of the Master's scheme involves kidnapping Stephenson and other leading scientists and engineers of the time, such as Michael Faraday and Thomas Telford, who have been invited by Ravensworth to a scientific conference. (His ultimate ambition is to force them to work for him, thus giving The Master the power to control Earth's Industrial Revolution from its inception).
Colin Baker's mop of blond hair gave him a youthful appearance, but his Doctor did not really have the same boyish enthusiasm and manner as his predecessor, Peter Davidson. (I always assumed the two actors were around the same age, but in fact Baker was older by several years). His Sixth Doctor could be rather grumpy and irascible and could have something of a superior air about him, lacking the Fifth Doctor's often refreshing humility. One thing that connected the Sixth Doctor with most of his predecessors was an eccentric dress sense; he always wore a brightly coloured coat which made him look like a refugee from a production of "Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat". Nicola Bryant's Peri was probably the best companion of the eighties, certainly better than her predecessor Nyssa, with a feisty and determined personality which recalled Louise Jameson's Leela from the seventies, although the two women were supposed to come from very different backgrounds. Although Nicola was British, she always played Peri as an American. (Was this a deliberate attempt by the producers to increase the series' popularity in America?)
This serial was originally broadcast in February 1985, during the 1984- 85 British miners' strike, so its theme of industrial unrest in the mining industry must have seemed very topical at the time. It is sometimes said that during the late eighties the "Doctor Who" scriptwriters tried to smuggle left-wing, anti-Thatcherite messages into their scripts, but "The Mark of The Rani" seems to have, if anything, a conservative political slant, with its sympathetic portrayal of Ravensworth as a benevolent, enlightened employer, its enthusiastic advocacy of new technology and its critical assessment of the Luddite movement. (The only miners in the story who support machine-breaking are those who have fallen under The Rani's evil influence). During this period "Luddite" was often used as a term of abuse by the political right, especially against trade unionists, although Left-wing historians sometimes tried to rehabilitate the original Luddites, whom they saw as hard-working men driven to desperation by grasping employers.
One commonly quoted received idea about "Doctor Who" is that the series went sharply downhill in the eighties after Tom Baker left the role in 1981. Although there certainly were some feeble episodes during this period, the decade was by no means a period of continuous decline and there were some good adventures, of which "The Mark of The Rani" was one. Certainly, it has its weaknesses, regardless of what one may think of its politics. The idea of a land-mine which turns people into trees rather than blowing them up is more like something from a surreal fantasy than from serious sci-fi, and there is a massive plot hole in the Master's grand scheme. (Why would a Time Lord, a member of a race whose technology far exceeds even that of twentieth century humans, want to kidnap a group of nineteenth-century engineers for their scientific knowledge?) Overall, however, the story is a good one. The early industrial setting (shot on location at the Ironbridge Gorge museum) gives the serial a very distinctive visual look, and O'Mara's Rani was a brilliant addition to the series. It is a pity that more use could not have been made of her.
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