Line #96 Recap/DoctorWhoS22E3TheMarkOfTheRani


1	[[WMG:[[center:[-''[[Series/DoctorWho Doctor Who]]'' [[Recap/DoctorWho recap index]]\
2	'''Sixth Doctor Era'''\
3	'''Season 22:''' [[Recap/DoctorWhoS22E1AttackOfTheCybermen 1]] \| [[Recap/DoctorWhoS22E2VengeanceOnVaros 2]] \| '''3''' \| [[Recap/DoctorWhoS22E4TheTwoDoctors 4]] \| [[Recap/DoctorWhoS22E5Timelash 5]] \| [[Recap/DoctorWhoS22E6RevelationOfTheDaleks 6]]\
4	'''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E1WarriorsOfTheDeep <<< Season 21]]''' \| '''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS23E1TheMysteriousPlanet Season 23 >>>]]''']]-]]]
5	!The Mark of the Rani
6	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rani_6192.jpg]]
7	[[caption-width-right:350:"Once I've gotten the Doctor right where I want him, I'll destroy every fibre of that cursed, colourful [[ImpossiblyCoolClothes coat]]!"]]
8	->Written by Creator/PipAndJaneBaker\
9	Directed by Sarah Hellings\
10	'''Production code:''' 6X\
11	'''Air dates:''' 2 - 9 February 1985\
12	'''Number of episodes:''' 2
13
14	->'''The Master:''' Ah, but you've not been informed of my purpose here.\
15	'''The Rani:''' Oh, I know why you're here. To destroy the Doctor. You've never had any other. It obsesses you, to the exclusion of all else.\
16	'''The Master:''' You underestimate me. Certainly I want to destroy him, see him suffer, but that is just an exquisite first step. I have a greater concept, one that will encompass the whole human race!\
17	'''The Rani:''' You're unbalanced. No wonder the Doctor always outwits you.
18
19	JustForFun/{{The one w\|ith}}here the Master [[GroinAttack gets kneed right in the ol' timespheres]].
20
21	'''This story was NOT brought to you by the tourism boards of Gallifrey or Miasimia Goria.'''
22	----
23
24	We open with a bunch of grubby miners from OopNorth, going to the bathhouse after a long day's work. The old woman who runs the place herds them into a room - where poison gas suddenly comes up from the floor and knocks them all unconscious. Meanwhile, the Sixth Doctor and Peri are in the TARDIS, which is being pulled off course by a "time distortion". Both Creator/ColinBaker and Creator/NicolaBryant [[OohMeAccentsSlipping massacre]] American accents as the Doctor establishes that the only person who could pull the TARDIS off course like that is a Time Lord (or a Dalek, but we're pretty sure it's a Time Lord). Back in the bathhouse, two gas-masked [[{{Mook}} mooks]] carry the unconscious miners into another room, mysterious red marks appearing on their necks. In a serial called "The Mark of the Rani". Hmmmm, can't imagine what ''those'' are.
25
26	The Doctor and Peri land in what we'll learn is Industrial Revolution-era Killingsworth, and set off to track the time distortion. The miners from the bathhouse have apparently been brainwashed into homoerotic behaviou
27	r and [[KickTheDog small-child kicking]], which is an improvement on Peri's dialogue. She makes a valiant effort to convince us that she's A) intelligent, with her specialty in botany and B) insightful, talking about extinction and the effect of technology on the environment, but despite her hideous dress covering up her two best assets, it's not working. Her obliviousness extends to the Doctor, who notices there are no birds, but completely fails to notice the blatantly-moving scarecrow Peri points out. Those of us who have seen the Master before know random disguises are his [[PlanetOfHats hat]], so clearly, we've got at least one renegade Time Lord hanging about.
28
29	The brainwashed miners come upon a piece of equipment being hauled into town, and attack it, though not before the Doctor and Peri have witnessed them - and the strange mark on their necks. The equipment belongs to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Stephenson George Stephenson]], the famous engineer who built England's first railway line. And just in case anyone was ambivalent about what significance the scarecrow Peri [[{{Lampshaded}} pointed out]] might have had, the next shot is of the scarecrow spying on the Doctor and Peri, hopping a fence to follow them, and letting out a ''very'' distinctive [[EvilLaugh chuckle]]. Oh, it's definitely the Master - he's stalking his favourite enemy.
30
31	The mysterious woman who runs the bathhouse hijacks a local kid to do her bidding (and unfortunately, her [[OohMeAccentsSlipping accent]] leads to Creator/ColinBaker on the DVDCommentary asking "what part of Jamaica" she's from), and a close-up reveals that the makeup people totally forgot about half of the prosthetic Creator/KateOMara wears in the rest of her scenes. The Doctor and Peri ride by on their way to see Lord Ravensworth (the local landowner), and his [[AppliedPhlebotinum timey-wimey detector]] goes haywire when it's pointed at the bathhouse and the rapidly-becoming-obvious woman who runs it. Detects a Time Lord, you say? And there's a mysterious woman lurking about, experimenting on people and generally being very suspicious? No, couldn't be a certain fellow renegade classmate of yours who's got this Thing for experimentation and a serious lack of morals. Six is ''not'' one of the more observant of Doctors.
32
33	More workers (we're just going to start calling them Luddites, because that's supposedly what she's turning them into) show up at [[strike: the Rani's]] the mysterious woman's bathhouse. She follows them in, and the Master, brushing straw from his clothes, spies on her for a bit, then goes back to stalking his other ex. There is much blah-blahing from the Doctor and Peri trying to bluff their way into a meeting held by Stephenson (which will be attended by a number of other historical geniuses and men of learning), but they eventually get in to see Lord Ravensworth - who, despite not being a historical genius, has to do ''something'' in this plot to justify Terence Alexander's casting. The Doctor and Peri bicker and the Master continues to be the most blatant stalker in history, and a bunch of Luddites mistake the Master (with his thing for black velvet and big vocabulary and anachronistic gadget [[strike: that looks like a vibrator]]) for one of the geniuses attending the meeting, but he sends them after the one in the "yellow trousers and a vulgarly-coloured coat".
34
35	They corner the Doctor by what appears to be a simple mineshaft, but when one of the Luddites falls in, suddenly transforms into something resembling the Bottomless Pit of the Underworld. Peri [[ScreamingWoman screams and throws rocks]] at the Luddites, but the Doctor is saved by a timely gunshot from Lord Ravensworth, who's actually kind of badass, and really not at all pleased with gatecrashers to his meeting. He and the Doctor establish that the personality changes in the Luddites are only among the men, and [[strike: the Rani]] the mysterious woman in the bathhouse obliges by showing us her experimentation on two new subjects, with a close-up on a device attached to the neck area - the source of those marks popping up in the dead Luddites.
36
37	And thankfully, the Master decides to pay the Rani a visit, establishing who the villains are and freeing the show from pretending the woman in the bathhouse is anyone other than the Rani. He interrupts her, she dispenses with the disguise, and within five seconds, they're [[TheMasochismTango bickering like an old married couple]]. We get some lovely exposition about how [[{{Ubermensch}} brilliant]] the Rani is, how she's been exiled from Gallifrey for [[ScienceIsBad experimenting]] [[NoodleIncident on the Lord President's cat]], and the fact that she really, really kind of ships [[HoYay Doctor/Master]]. She tells them, in essence, to get a room, and he tries to [[BlackmailIsSuchAnUglyWord sweet-talk]] her into teaming up with him, and when the niceties don't work, outright blackmails her by stealing the only vial of brain fluid she's got (she needs the fluid for her aliens on the [[EmperorScientist planet she rules]]). The brain fluid becomes the {{MacGuffin}} invoked every time the Rani has to do something completely counter to her established amoral, rational, and scientific nature.
38
39	The Master and the Rani continue their labyrinthine, overcomplicated plan. They utilize [[StuffBlowingUp tree mines]] (because the Rani has clearly read the EvilOverlordList and knows mines are the sneakily evil way to go), [[EvilLaugh evil laughs]] done in counterpoint, and the ever-popular [[KansasCityShuffle "distract the dumb American with your weapon of choice and knock her out"]] ploy, but the Master's [[FatalFlaw stupid obsession with trying to kill the Doctor]] overrides the Rani's common sense. His pride gets them trapped in her TARDIS, which has been futzed-with by the Doctor to send them to the end of the universe with a rapidly-growing T-Rex embryo (because [[RuleOfCool everything's cooler with dinosaurs]]). The Rani is ''not'' pleased, and gives the Master a [[GroinAttack knee to the bollocks]] for his trouble, but unfortunately, is still stuck with him in a runaway TARDIS with a meat-eating dinosaur. At the end of the day, she's just not very good at her job.
40
41	----
42	This serial is significant in a rather surprising way. Despite the "celebrity historical" being a regular feature of the revived series that happens at least [[OnceASeason twice every season]], George Stephenson was the first real historical personality to appear in the series since the various Dodge City figures in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E8TheGunfighters "The Gunfighters"]] all the way back in 1966[[note]]Well... Gray the solicitor in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E4TheHighlanders "The Highlanders"]] was a historical figure too, but a long way from "celebrity", being basically an original character attached to an extremely minor historical figure. And King John showed up in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS20E6TheKingsDemons "The King's Demons"]] but of course it wasn't the ''real'' King John.[[/note]]. This story was also the first to mix a real historical celebrity into an aliens'n'monsters plot, an idea so obvious it's surprising to realise [[NewerThanTheyThink they only started doing it in 1985]].
43
44	!!Tropes
45
46	* AndIMustScream:
47	** Luke and two of the miners' tree-ification by the Rani's land mines. Say what you like about the basic concept or the realisation of it, the thought of being trapped conscious and immobile in tree form for a potentially very long time must be one of the scariest ideas in the show's history.
48	** Not only that, the remaining mines are still out there (as far as we know), waiting for other unsuspecting folk to activate them.
49	* ArtisticLicencePharmacology: If that really was meant to be mustard gas in the Rani's booby-trap, the miners' face-covering gas masks would not have kept the Doctor and Peri safe. The gas should have given them severe chemical burns on the parts of the body that are not covered by the masks.
50	* TheBaroness: The Rani.
51	* BavarianFireDrill: Backfires. The Doctor tries doing the old "pretend we've been invited but were left off the list thing", but it doesn't fool Lord Ravenworth for a second. Mainly because he ''wrote'' the damn list.
52	* BigBadDuumvirate: If the Master weren't so [[IdiotBall obsessed with one-upping the Doctor]] and the Rani were [[EmperorScientist more willing to cut her losses]], they might actually be dangerous.
53	* BrandishmentBluff
54	* BreatherEpisode: After the unrelenting nastiness of the past few stories, the show busts out a (relatively) LighterAndSofter story poking fun at how overcomplicated and full of themselves Time Lords, especially evil Time Lords, are, and especially [[LampshadeHanging hanging many lampshades]] on the Master's propensity for getting out of trouble and his general nutiness.
55	* CantArgueWithElves: And one should not try to out-plot or out-lecture Time Lords.
56	* ComplexityAddiction: The Rani lampshades the Master's tendency for over-complicated plans:
57	-->''"What's he up to now? It'll be something devious and over-complicated. He'd get dizzy if he tried to walk in a straight line."''
58	* [[CoolStarship Cool Timeship]]: The Rani's TARDIS is a far more advanced model than the Doctor's, with a gorgeously designed console room to boot.
59	* DeadlyGas: The Rani gases up people going in for a bath, then has her goons drag them to her lab and extracts their brain fluid.
60	* EvenEvilHasStandards: The Master expresses a rare bit of remorse when Luke gets transformed into a tree. The Rani, on the other hand, seems to find it quite amusing. In addition, he actually apologizes to Peri for getting her mixed up in what was supposed to be a tussle between just him and the Doctor.
61	* EveryoneWentToSchoolTogether: The Doctor's graduating class is not only comprised of him, the Master and the Rani, but pretty much every other Time Lord of the ExpandedUniverse that ISN'T Romana.
62	* EvilDetectingDog: The guard dog assigned to watch the Doctor and Peri smells the Master from a way off, and goes to woof at him instead. Doesn't work out for the poor thing.
63	* ExitPursuedByABear: The Master and The Rani end trapped in a malfunctioning TARDIS with a rapidly-growing T. Rex bearing down on them.
64	%%* FailedASpotCheck: Seriously, Doctor--get your eyes checked.
65	* GoryDiscretionShot: Vaporizing several humans is apparently fine. But vaporizing the dog means the camera has to cut away.
66	* GroinAttack: The Rani gets The Master right in his time balls.
67	* HellBentForLeather: Check out the Rani's trousers.
68	* HistoricalDomainCharacter: George Stephenson.
69	* HistoricalRapSheet: The Doctor discovers his old classmate isn't a new arrival to Earth. She's been popping back and forth for a good long while, stealing brain fluid and causing a few riots along the way.
70	* HamToHamCombat: A ''three way'' example, between Creator/ColinBaker, Creator/AnthonyAinley, and Creator/KateOMara.
71	* IWantYouToMeetAnOldFriendOfMine: Creator/ColinBaker and Creator/KateOMara had previously costarred in Creator/TheBBC drama series ''The Brothers''.
72	* {{Jerkass}} crossed with LargeHam: Definitely a Time Lord thing, if you've seen [[Recap/DoctorWho20thASTheFiveDoctors "The Five Doctors"]] or [[Recap/DoctorWhoS23E4TheUltimateFoe the Trial of a Time Lord]] arc.
73	* KickTheDog: The Rani, even more than the Master, who's usually a walking, talking example of this trope. Poor dog. Poor presidential cat [[note]]Kicked ForScience is still kicked[[/note]]. Poor millers. Poor guy that got turned into a tree. Poor Peri.
74	* LatexPerfection: The Rani successfully disguises herself as an old woman.
75	* TheMasochismTango: Both Peri and the Doctor and the Master and the Rani seem to be dancing to this trope. One wonders why Peri puts up with all the verbal abuse and why the Rani just doesn't whack the Master upside the head with a crowbar and go find another planet with brain-fluid producing subjects.
76	* TheMaster: Is back somehow.
77	* MasterOfDisguise: An Evil Time Lord thing. The Rani's old-woman outfit ''does'' use prosthetics, though, which makes it better than the Master's random scarecrow outfit.
78	** And the Rani's disguise makes sense. She's undercover and probably doesn't want any Time Lords/Time Agents/other aliens spotting her and recognising her. Why oh why, in the name of sanity, was the Master lurking in a field dressed as a scarecrow? It's starting to look like his entire evil career is just an excuse for a bit of dressing up. If only they'd had {{LARP}}ing and {{Cosplay}} on Gallifrey, perhaps his life would have taken a more positive direction.
79	* NoBiochemicalBarriers: The Rani is harvesting the chemical from human brains that lets humans sleep to treat the aliens she has been tinkering with who have lost the ability to sleep.
80	* OohMeAccentsSlipping: Seriously, given that almost everybody is supposed to be from the same village in County Durham and is making a spirited attempt at the accent the variation between even siblings is... astonishing!
81	* OopNorth: Complete with trouble at t'mill.
82	* PunctuatedForEmphasis: "The Mark!... of the Rani!"
83	* TheRightOfASuperiorSpecies: The Rani compares the exploitation of lesser series with stepping on ants.
84	* SesquipedalianLoquaciousness: Another Evil Time Lord thing. We're well aware of the Master's penchant for abusing the thesaurus, but the Rani gets in on the act, too. Of course, this story ''was'' written by Creator/PipAndJaneBaker.
85	** Maybe just a Time Lord thing in general - the Doctor does this a lot too.
86	* ShipperOnDeck: You just know that the Rani ships the Doctor and The Master. She wants the two of them to go get a room and just leave her to her experiments.
87	* ShoutOut:
88	** The Doctor quotes ''Theatre/JuliusCaesar''
89	--->"Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once".
90	** Then he paraphrases ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'':
91	--->"Now perhaps you'll accept there are more things in heaven and earth than are ever dreamed of in your barren philosophy".
92	** Peri misquotes ''Theatre/HenryIV'': "Discretion is the better part of valour". The actual line is "The better part of valour is discretion," but Peri's is the more popular version.
93	* TeethClenchedTeamwork: The Rani would rather the Master piss off and leave her alone to her science, but he steals the brain fluid which took weeks to harvest to make her assist him in his latest overlabyrinthine plan.
94	* TitleDrop: See PunctuatedForEmphasis above. The Master does it every other scene.
95	* {{Transflormation}}: The Rani has mines that transform anyone who steps on them into a tree.
96	* {{Ubermensch}}: The Rani may be an amoral scientist, but even the Doctor admits she's a genius -- shame he can't stand her.
97	* UnexplainedRecovery: The Master, conspicuously fails to explain how he managed to escape certain death [[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E5PlanetOfFire the last time we saw him]]. This came about from the script editor's desire to avoid a VoodooShark explanation of the Master's survival.
98	-->'''The Master:''' You jest, of course. I'm indestructible, the whole universe knows that!\
99	'''The Rani''': Is that so?
100	* UnwittingPawn: The Rani and the Master. She blames him (see GroinAttack).
101	* WeaponForIntimidation: Deconstructed when Lord Ravensworth scares off the Luddites by firing his gun into the air. Once they've scurried off he points out if they'd not been so out of it they'd have realised he had to reload, and could've just kept on with what they were doing.
102	* XanatosSpeedChess: Six, of all people.
103	* TheXOfY
104	* YoureInsane: This rather hilarious understatement:
105	-->'''The Master:''' You underestimate me. Certainly I want to destroy him, see him suffer, but that is just an exquisite first step. [[BlatantLies I have a greater concept]], one that will encompass the whole human race!
106	--> '''The Rani:''' You're unbalanced. No wonder the Doctor always outwits you.

Context Recap / DoctorWhoS22E3TheMarkOfTheRani