Until 2014, the Rani was perhaps the most famous renegade female Time Lord ever to feature in Doctor Who. A scheming villainess, the amoral Rani has enslaved planets and experimented on “lesser” species for her own scientific ends. The Doctor sparred with the Rani during their university days together on Gallifrey, but their quarrels continued for centuries to come. The all-too-brief history of the Rani has rarely been documented. However, here I will attempt to provide a cursory examination of the character created by writers Pip and Jane Baker.

The Mark of the Rani

★★☆☆☆

TX: 2-9/2/1985

Written by Pip & Jane Baker      Directed by Sarah Hellings

The Sixth Doctor and Peri arrive in Killingsworth, Newcastle during the Luddite Riots of the 1820s. They discover that the Doctor’s old frenemies and fellow Time Lords, the Rani and the Master are also both in Killingsworth. As ever, the Master is intent on destroying the Doctor, even though he is bizarrely disguised as a scarecrow (I mean, seriously – why does this happen?).

But the Rani is experimenting on local miners, depriving them of the chemical that promotes sleep and causing them to riot. This leaves a red mark on the victims: the infamous mark of the Rani. The Rani is synthesising these chemicals for use back on Miasimia Goria, a planet she rules and which the Master has visited, where her other diabolical experiments have left the inhabitants without the ability to rest.

After the TARDIS is pushed down a mine shaft by some angry Luddites, the Doctor and Peri are saved by Lord Ravensworth and the inventor George Stephenson, the engineer responsible for the invention of the first steam locomotive, Stephenson’s Rocket. Together, the team learns that the Master intends to use the finest brains of the Industrial Revolution, gathering for a meeting in Killingsworth, to hasten Earth’s development and then use the planet as a power base.

The Rani often leaves booby-traps to ensnare or destroy her enemies, particularly in her own TARDIS. They tend to have a biological effect, such as the land mine that Luke Ward steps on, which turns him into a tree. The Rani defends this by saying that her tree-converting mines substantially improve the lifespan of humans, although presumably not their social life.

Peri utilises her botanical skills to make a sleeping draught for the afflicted miners. The Doctor ultimately manages to trap the Master and the Rani inside the Rani’s TARDIS, which he has sabotaged. In the capsule’s destabilised condition, one of the Rani’s jars containing an embryo Tyrannosaurus starts to grow, affected by the time spillage…

Time and the Rani

★☆☆☆☆

TX: 7-28/9/1987

Written by Pip & Jane Baker      Directed by Andrew Morgan

At the beginning of this adventure, the Doctor’s TARDIS is attacked by the Rani, causing it to crash-land on the planet Lakertya. Resultantly, the Doctor regenerates and is then brought to the Rani’s lair. After being drugged to enhance his post-regenerative amnesia, the Doctor is tricked by the Rani (disguised as his companion Mel) into helping her to construct a giant time manipulator.

The Doctor learns that a missile is being aimed at an asteroid composed of strange matter, passing above Lakertya. The Rani plans to use this to collect the stolen genius of the greatest scientific minds in the universe, including Einstein, by assembling a giant brain. This will allow the Rani to obtain the Loyhargil, a means of controlling time anywhere in the universe, at the expense of all life on Lakertya. Dodging many lethal traps, the enslaved native Lakertyans help the Doctor and Mel to defeat the Rani by sabotaging the launch of the rocket. The Rani escapes, but is captured by her monstrous, bat-like servants, the Tetraps, inside her own TARDIS.

Aside from a brief appearance in the non-canonical 1993 Children in Need special Dimensions in Time, the character of the Rani has to date never returned to television. This disappointed the late, great Kate O’Mara (who I sadly never met), the veteran actress who played her superbly in the series. You can hear her discuss this in the video below, where she has a brief tête-à-Tetrap with organisers of the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Celebration at the Excel Centre in 2013.

In 2012, Steven Moffat publicly ruled out bringing back the Rani, on the basis that she was too obscure a classic villain to be revived for the modern series. And following the 2014 introduction of Missy (a newly regenerated female incarnation of the Master), it seems unlikely that the Rani will ever return to Doctor Who, at least under Moffat’s watch. Since 2014, however, the Rani has been given a new lease of life in the BBC-licensed Big Finish Productions audio range, where actress Siobhan Redmond is brilliantly bringing this oft-overlooked villainess back into the ever-expanding Whoniverse.

With a new showrunner just around the corner, who knows? Perhaps we may see the return of the wretched Rani in the not-too-distant future.

The Interstellar Song Contest

★★★★☆

TX: 17/05/2025

Written by Juno Dawson   Directed by Ben A Williams

The Fifteenth Doctor and Belinda arrive at the 803rd Interstellar Song Contest, an intergalactic version of the Eurovision Song Contest. Years ago, an Icelandic friend of mine competed in the Eurovision Song Contest. Her and the rest of the Icelandic Eurovision team staged a pro-Palestine protest during the competition. The Doctor and Belinda are amazed by the spectacle of the many galaxies competing in the competition. Mrs Flood is also in attendance. However, two horned alien terrorists called Hellions sabotage the competition by opening the roof of the space station, sucking all of the guests into the vacuum of space. This is one of the darkest and saddest episodes of Doctor Who to date! Belinda survives but she assumes that the Doctor is dead. Belinda makes contact with the other survivors and one of them tells her that she used to be a horned alien too. The Doctor sees a vision of his granddaughter Susan and this helps him to regain consciousness and use a confetti cannon to propel him back to the arena. The Hellions intend to use a delta wave (Kinda, The Parting of the Ways) to be sent through the broadcast and kill three trillion people watching the contest. The Doctor confronts the Hellions in the control room, who are both bitter that the Corporation destroyed their homeworld and they have vowed revenge. In a moment of rage, the Doctor begins torturing the male Hellion called Kid, but Belinda arrives and stops him. Two of the survivors are engineers, and they are able to use a tractor beam on the station to teleport down all of the competition guests floating in space (who were actually kept in suspended animation), including Rylan Clark. The Doctor and Belinda are about to leave in the TARDIS when a hologram of Graham Norton informs them that the Earth has been destroyed on 24th May 2025, the day Belinda left. Inside the TARDIS, the cloister bell rings and the TARDIS turns red. The TARDIS doors explode upon landing back on Earth on that date. Meanwhile back at the contest, the engineers beam down Mrs Flood who reveals herself to be the Rani (The Mark of the Rani, Time and the Rani) and she bi-generates (The Giggle). Now there are two Ranis that the Fifteenth Doctor will have to deal with! The reveal of Mrs Flood as the Rani before she bi-generates into a younger incarnation echoes the reveal of Professor Yana as the Master (who also regenerates soon after into a younger version) in Utopia. The new Rani paraphrases the Fourth Doctor in Robot when she says that she is “the definite article” so to speak.

Wish World/The Reality War

★★★★★

TX: 24-31/05/2025

Written by Russell T Davies   Directed by Alex Sanjiv Pillai

On a fantasy world, a young man called John Smith lives an ordinary life with his wife Belinda Chandra and their young daughter (Human Nature/The Family of Blood). The couple are so wrapped up in their idyllic lives that they barely notice mugs falling through their kitchen table. John Smith works in finance at the old U.N.I.T base. However, a mysterious young woman called Ruby turns up on John and Belinda’s doorstep, saying that she knows him but can’t remember why. No explanation can be given either by their neighbour Melanie Bush. The group live in an Orwellian world where doubts about society are illegal (Last of the Time Lords, Day of the Moon, The Lie of the Land) and gigantic skeletal creatures roam the landscape. This is all a diabolical experiment by the two Ranis, who have teamed up with Conrad from Lucky Day to create a Wish World of their own. The Rani has also kidnapped the seventh son of a seventh son in 19th Century Bavaria (and he has a familiar cackle). To do this, the Rani turned a whole family into violets, ducks and an owl, which is similar to how she turned innocent people into trees in The Mark of the Rani. Conrad reads stories of Doctor Who on daily broadcasts (Sherlock: The Reichenbach Fall). Ruby reunites with Shirley from U.N.I.T, who now lives in an outcast society of other homeless disabled people (The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Curse of Clyde Langer). John Smith aka the Doctor expresses doubts about their society after he sees his old lover Rogue on the TV who points out to him that mugs fall through the table, which is physically impossible. Belinda reports John Smith aka the Doctor to the police, but Mrs Flood arrives to take them both back to the Rani’s lair. The Rani reveals herself to the Doctor, whose memories have now been restored. The Fifteenth Doctor’s amnesia echoes the Seventh Doctor’s loss of memory in Time and the Rani. The Rani is about to conduct her greatest experiment yet! By creating a world based on doubt (including the doubts of a Time Lord like the Doctor), the Rani has shattered the surface of this dimension on 24th May 2025. This will allow the Rani to release the legendary Time Lord Omega from underneath. As London and the rest of the world collapses around them, it looks like it could all be over for the Doctor and his friends!

The Doctor is falling to his death when at the last moment, a portal to the Time Hotel opens and Anita rescues him. Anita has been working at the Time Hotel since the Doctor last saw her (Joy to the World) and she has been watching the Doctor’s adventures through the doors (The Wedding of River Song, Day of the Daleks, Rogue). The world keeps ending on 24th May 2025, which is affecting the future at the Time Hotel. The Doctor and Anita return to the present day via the Time Hotel rooms and they arrive at U.N.I.T HQ. Their arrival starts to break the wish and Kate Stewart and the other members of U.N.I.T begin to realise what is happening. Ruby and Belinda show up, having woken up in their respective homes and having been summoned to U.N.I.T via a tracking device implant. The Doctor assembles the U.N.I.T team together and tells them that they are facing an evil Time Lord called the Rani, whom Mel remembers from Time and the Rani. The Rani appears and reveals that she survived the Time War thanks to a Time Ring (Genesis of the Daleks, Revenge of the Cybermen). Mrs Flood also appears and she reveals to Ruby and Belinda that she is also the Rani and that she spied on them as part of her plan to trap the Doctor. The Rani offers the Doctor to share the universe with her or stay down on Earth with The Beasts Below. The Rani declares battle on U.N.I.T and she sends the bone beasts to attack the U.N.I.T tower, although U.N.I.T return fire with their cannons (The Giggle). Ruby uses Project Indigo to teleport to the Rani’s lair and confront Conrad. Project Indigo is a Sontaran-based experimental teleportation system that was previously used by U.N.I.T member Martha Jones in The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End. Belinda and her daughter Poppy are sealed inside an artificial Zero Room by Susan Triad for their protection (Castrovalva). Meanwhile, the Doctor uses the Rani’s hoverbike to navigate past the bone beasts and crash into the Rani’s lair. The two Ranis tempt him as a fellow Time Lord to help them find Omega. The Rani opens a portal to the underworld and Omega emerges. However, Omega has now devolved into a husk and is a simple beast (Gridlock) that wants to feed on other Time Lords (The Three Doctors, Arc of Infinity). Omega eats the Rani, but Mrs Flood escapes using the Time Ring. The Doctor manages to defeat Omega by using the Vindicator. Ruby rescues the baby and wishes Conrad to be happy and he vanishes. The Rani’s lair begins to collapse, but the Doctor makes it back to the safety of the TARDIS, where he reunites with Ruby. The pair return to U.N.I.T HQ where they are reunited with Belinda and Poppy. Later inside the TARDIS, the Doctor and Belinda are planning to go travelling together again. However, Ruby notices that Poppy vanishes and only she can remember her. After returning to U.N.I.T, the Doctor, Belinda and Ruby discover that a few things changed after the Wish World ended. Ruby says that she remembers the Doctor and Belinda’s daughter Poppy and eventually the Doctor believes her. The Doctor flies off in the TARDIS to try and find her. The Doctor starts regenerating, but before that he is visited by the Thirteenth Doctor, who gives him some words of encouragement. The Fifteenth Doctor begins his regeneration. But he wakes up in Belinda’s garden and discovers that she had a daughter called Poppy all along and she had a normal life back on Earth with her mother. Content that he finally got Belinda home, the Doctor returns to the TARDIS. The Fifteenth Doctor opens the TARDIS doors in space as he looks out to the star called Joy (Joy to the World). The Fifteenth Doctor regenerates into the face of his former companion Rose Tyler. It is unclear as to whether Billie Piper is playing the Sixteenth Doctor or if she is playing an unnumbered “caretaker” Doctor who will only be in a few specials.