22x3. The Mark of the Rani
Writers: Pip and Jane Baker
Director: Sarah Hellings
Script Editor: Eric Saward
Producer: John Nathan-Turner
Synopsis: Seeking revenge against the
Doctor, the Master hijacks the TARDIS to 19th-century England where the
exiled Time Lady known as the Rani has been extracting brain fluid from
humans, turning mine workers violent and threatening to inflame an
already tense situation against the backdrop of the emerging Industrial
Revolution.
Review: The main merits of "The Mark of
the Rani" are the portrayals of its Time Lord characters and the
historical setting. After the sometimes disturbing violence in the
previous two installments, "The Mark of the Rani" finds the Doctor
operating with a more familiar moral center, expressing outrage at the
behavior of the Master and the Rani and resolving the situation without
resorting to physical violence. The Master is sometimes slightly campy,
but in a way that's cpnsistent with his character, while the more
practical but equally ruthless Rani gets to poke fun at his
Bond-villain-esque tendencies. The concept behind the plot is clever,
with the Rani choosing a location and era where the violence exhibited
by her victims would draw less suspicion, and the pseudoscience
underlying her scheme is portrayed plausibly enough. I'm less
comfortable with the sociopolitical implications, however - while the
miners only turn violent under the influence of the Rani's
interference, their understandable concern for their jobs never
receives a particularly deep examination, and I can't help but wonder
what the British miners who had been involved in the then-recent
industrial disputes of the '70s and '80s would have thought of this
(though the scripts were reportedly commissioned before the pivotal
1984-85 Miners' Strike). I was also less than impressed with the way
the serial ends. The Doctor corrals the Master and the Rani into the
Rani's TARDIS, which he has programmed to take them into exile outside
the galaxy, only for them to find themselves menaced by an escaped baby
dinosaur (of which the Rani has several in her control room for no
reason that's ever stated) that's growing rapidly due to some temporal
thingamajiggy. Meanwhile, in what's easily the serial's lowest moment,
three men have run afoul of traps that the Rani placed in the woods and
been transformed into trees - yes, trees - and nothing is ever said
about trying to restore them to human form or even disarming the rest
of the traps.
Rating: **1/2 (out of four)
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