R is for... Rani (Chandra)

Rani Chandra moved into Bannerman Road, Ealing, to live opposite Sarah Jane Smith and her son Luke. The Chandras took on the house which had once been home to their friend Maria Jackson. A budding journalist, Rani soon became involved in Sarah's adventures - the first of which involved a sinister clown who was terrorising children. This proved to be the personification of an alien entity, brought to Earth on a meteorite fragment.

Initially Sarah was reluctant to involve another young person in her often dangerous struggles against alien incursions, but quickly came to befriend Rani. So too did Luke's friend Clyde Langer, though he had an issue with the fact that her father, Haresh, was their new headmaster. Her mother, Gita, was a florist.

Rani often struggled to keep her parents from finding out about her new life centred across the street - especially as they usually involved the near neighbourhood or the school itself.

The Chandras had previously lived in the seaside town of Danemouth, where a close friend of Rani had been Samuel Lloyd.

Whilst Sarah was away one weekend, Rani found a pendant at the school which gave its wearers the power to control others. She left it in Sarah's attic, but Clyde allowed his estranged father access to the house and he became possessed by it. Rani, Clyde and Luke called upon Maria - now living in the US - to help track him down.

An entity known as the Trickster - part of the Pantheon of Discord - made repeated attempts to destroy the Doctor through Sarah, and one of these involved tricking her into visiting her home village, when she was still a baby and her parents were still alive. Trapped there, the future was altered - but Rani and Clyde were protected from the changes by one of the Trickster's own devices. In the new timeline, Gita had no daughter.

Gita was later abducted by Mrs Wormwood - really a disguised alien Bane. She was working with a Sontaran renegade to free an ancient power. On this occasion, Rani got to meet and work with Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart.

An encounter with a Judoon officer resulted in Rani and Clyde being punished by being confined to Earth. During this incident, Haresh and Gita were actually confronted by the aliens and questioned by them. Rani pretended to refuse to believe them.

Samuel came back into Rani's life when he contacted her from the children's home he was now living in. He told her about strange activity at the local funfair, which was currently shut down. Having fallen out with Sarah - feeling she treated her like a child - Rani decided to go and investigate on her own. Samuel had tricked her into coming, as an orphan alien named Eve was living in the fairground, protected by its caretaker, Harry. Eve sought only people to play with - controlling their minds to force them into riding the attractions. The others traced her and were able to reunite Eve with her mothership - and she left Earth with Harry and Samuel.

In an alternate future, in 2059, an elderly Rani told this story to a young man. She lived alone in Sarah's old house, a virtual recluse.

The young man turned out to be the son of Eve and Samuel, and the future timeline was restored - with Rani now surrounded by grandchildren.

Rani then got to meet the Doctor himself, nearing the end of his tenth incarnation, when the Trickster used a dying man - Peter Dalton - to ensnare Sarah using an engagement ring capable of hypnotising its wearer. Once married, she would feel compelled to give up her activities. Rani, Luke and Clyde were cut off from Sarah at the wedding venue - trapped in a pocket of time out of synch with the rest of the universe. The Doctor arrived to stop the ceremony.

Rani and her friends got to see inside the TARDIS once the Trickster had been defeated.

After a visit to a haunted house, Rani then encountered the Slitheen and their cousins the Blathereen.

Just before Luke went off to university, he began suffering from nightmares. Soon Rani and the others became part of these dreams. Rani found herself anchoring a TV news broadcast.

After another meeting with Androvax - who had previously escaped from Judoon custody - Rani met the Doctor again, this time in his eleventh incarnation. She had gone with the others to a UNIT base in Snowdonia to attend the Doctor's funeral service. This was all a ploy by a corrupt UNIT officer, in league with the vulture-like Shansheeth, to steal the TARDIS. On this occasion, Rani also got to meet the Doctor's former companion Jo, and her grandson Santiago.

Soon after, Rani and Clyde woke to find themselves apparently the only people left on Earth. They encountered a pair of giant robots who were searching for something. They then came across one other person - a schoolboy named Gavin. It transpired that he was an alien prince, and the robots had been sent to take him home to ascend the throne of his world. After everyone was returned, Sarah told them both that they had not been taken away from Earth due to the Judoon grounding them.

Whilst banned from leaving Earth, Rani could travel in time. A quest from a mysterious shopkeeper sent her to Tudor England, where she found herself a lady-in-waiting to the doomed Lady Jane Grey who had just been crowned Queen of England.

She and Clyde were then duped into changing their allegiance away from Sarah to a new alien-fighter named Ruby. It turned out that she had incapacitated Sarah in order to feed off her, and was an alien herself, recently escaped from a space capsule.

Sarah came to adopt another child - a girl named Sky who had originally been created by an alien race as a weapon of mass destruction.

Clyde then became cursed by an ancient alien artefact, which caused everyone to turn against him - including his own mother and Rani.

Rani and Clyde went undercover as journalists, writing for an over-60's lifestyle magazine, in order to investigate a computer company run by Joseph Serf. They discovered that his miraculous new laptop - the Serfboard - had nothing special about it at all. Serf had actually been killed in an accident and his business manager was using alien slave labour to create a hologram of him - one with hypnotic powers to fool people into thinking the technology was better than it was.

The aliens - Skullions - were freed and taken back home, with the business manager their captive.

As they grew older, Rani and Clyde would come to have romantic feelings towards each other.

Played by Anjli Mohindra, Souad Faress (Older Rani)

Appearances: SJA 2.2 The Day of the Clown (2008) - SJA 5.3 The Man Who Never Was (2011)

• The Chandra family were brought into The Sarah Jane Adventures after the actress playing Maria - Yasmin Paige - decided to leave and concentrate on her education.
• Unlike Luke, and Sarah herself, all of Rani's encounters with the Doctor took place in The Sarah Jane Adventures. She hadn't yet arrived on Bannerman Road during the events of The Stolen Earth.
• Had the series continued, more would have been made of the blossoming romance between Rani and Clyde - nicknamed "Clani" as a couple.
• In spin-off material, the older Rani does become a journalist, and still gets involved with aliens.
• Mohindra later appeared in the Doctor Who story Nikola Tesla's Night Of Terror, under heavy prosthetics as the Skithra Queen.
• She also provided the voice of the Mechonoid leader in the animated Daleks serial, part of the "Time Lord Victorious" multimedia event. 
• In 2025 she married Sacha Dhawan, who played the Master opposite Jodie Whittaker's Doctor.

R is for... Rani

A ruthless and amoral Time Lady scientist. She was the same age as the Doctor, so presumably attended the Academy with him.

She left Gallifrey in disgrace after a genetically engineered mouse - part of one of her experiments - bit the Lord President of the High Council.

She eventually found her way to the planet Miasimia Goria, becoming its ruler.

In order to increase productivity amongst its workers, she tampered with their brain chemistry and removed the need for sleep. This had the unfortunate side effect of making them aggressive and unruly. Seeking a compatible humanoid species from which she could extract a chemical to counter this and so calm the populace, she decided on Earth. Its many conflicts could be used to mask her activities.

During Britain's industrial revolution, she set up a base in the northern town of Killingworth - posing as the elderly owner of a bath house serving the local miners.

Once inside, the men were tranquilised with gas and the chemical extracted. The only outward sign was a red mark on the neck - and an increased level of violence and aggression. The area had previously been blighted by Luddite activity, where workers destroyed machinery in the fear that it would take their jobs away from them.

Those who bore the red mark could be killed by her remotely.

The TARDIS was drawn off course to land here - the work of the Master, who sought to interfere with Earth history by disrupting industrial progress.

The Rani found herself caught in the middle of their long-running feud. 

The Master stole the quantity of brain fluid she had already gathered in order to force her into helping him destroy the Doctor. He also helped himself to some chemically impregnated worms which she employed to mentally control people.

The Doctor traced energy signals to the bath house and discovered the Rani's TARDIS there, disguised as a large cabinet.

Posing as a miner, he was gassed and the Rani discovered who he was when she examined his brain.

Later, his companion Peri went into a local wood to find plants for a herbal remedy - unaware that the Rani had planted landmines which transformed their victims into trees.

She was saved by the Doctor, though he almost met the same fate after being captured by miners under the Master's control.

The Rani and Master tried to trap the Doctor in a collapsing mine tunnel. When they tried to leave in her TARDIS, they discovered that the Doctor had sabotaged it. It was sent hurtling forward in time. An embryo T-Rex, kept as a specimen in her ship, began to rapidly grow as centrifugal forces trapped them against the walls...

Some time later, the Rani began working on the planet Lakertya - first enslaving its indolent inhabitants. Their leader, Beyus, and his daughter Sarn were forced to work for her. The Rani was assisted in these activities by the giant bat-like Tetraps, led by Urak.

She had identified an asteroid which orbited the planet as being composed of Strange Matter, which is incredibly dense.

A missile was aimed at this, but she needed a substance strong enough to mount in its warhead - loyhargil. At the same time, she created a huge brain and began kidnapping scientists from across time and space. They would be harnessed to the brain - increasing its intelligence to the point that it would give her the formula for loyhargil. The explosion of the asteroid would not only destroy the planet, but set in motion an elaborate process whereby chronons would form - particles of time. A shell of these would form around Lakertya's remains, and the brain would expand to fill it - becoming a Time Manipulator. The Rani could then use this to interfere in the evolutionary processes of any given planet.

The final scientist she sought, needed to repair her laboratory, was the Doctor. She caused the TARDIS to crashland on the planet, with the fortuitous side-effect of triggering his sixth regeneration. She was able to exploit his post-regeneration trauma - which included amnesia - to get him to work for her. To aid this deception, she impersonated his companion Mel.

The Doctor soon recovered his memories and began to fight against her, aided by a young Lakertyan named Ikona. After being captured, the Doctor's erratic mind almost destroyed the Rani's plan as it confused those already joined with the brain. She was able to get the loyhargil in the end, however.

Eventually, Beyus took a stand against her by sacrificing his life to blow up her base, after the Doctor had meddled with the missile launch sequence - causing it to miss the asteroid.

Urak discovered that the Rani had intended to abandon him and his people when the missile was fired, and so they broke into her TARDIS - now in the form of a low metallic pyramid - and captured her. They planned to take her back to their home planet.

The Rani survived the Time War and the subsequent destruction of the Time Lords by the Master, and soon embarked on a long-term plan to re-establish her race. She arrived on Earth and posed as Mrs Flood - neighbour to the Doctor's companion Ruby Sunday in London's Notting Hill district.

Later, she then moved in next door to his next companion, Belinda Chandra.

She began following them through time and space using a Gallifreyan Time Ring. Seemingly unable to get the TARDIS to land back in London on 24th May 2025, the Doctor used a device he called the Vindicator to take readings at various locations, and these would help guide the ship to the intended date. The Rani then captured these readings herself as part of her ultimate plan. 

After being jettisoned into space during the Interstellar Song Contest, the Rani regenerated. However, this proved to be a bi-generation. 

Mrs Flood remained, whilst a new, younger-looking Rani emerged.

Their relationship was not one of equals, however, as the Mrs Flood incarnation was very much subservient to her new persona.

The Rani travelled to a remote rural area of Bavaria in 1865 and abducted a baby, who was actually the reincarnation of Desiderium - the god of wishes. She turned the child's mother into flower petals, and his father and siblings into animals, using a chemical mouth spray.

Mrs Flood had earlier released from prison a young man named Conrad Clark, who was an enemy of UNIT and the Doctor. He held extreme right-wing views, and wished to see a society which adhered only to his ideology. This world was brought into being as an alternate time-line by the Rani, who used Desiderium to create it.

His world, however, was one specifically designed to collapse under the weight of doubt. When enough people challenged this new reality, the Earth would become inverted - releasing the Underverse.

The Rani was based in the Bone Palace - a huge skeletal structure which straddled London like a spider. She employed Droneguard robots as security, and her equipment was operated by cyborg humanoids who were physically integrated into the systems. There was no sign of her still having a TARDIS.

The Doctor and Belinda had been captured, their memories tampered with so that they would initially believe themselves part of this timeline. The Rani also obtained the Vindicator, which would be used to locate someone within the Underverse - Omega.

The doubt of a Time Lord would be the breaking point for Conrad's world, an event which would trigger the final phase of the Rani's plan. The final destruction of the Earth was repeated each night, until the Doctor was made ready. Once he regained his memories, he warned the Rani that Omega was now a mad god - one whom she would be unable to control. The Time Lords had been rendered sterile after the Master's actions on Gallifrey, and the Rani wanted Omega's pure DNA to help reconstitute the race. On this occasion, the Rani insisted that she never hated the Doctor. In the past she had merely exploited him, or acted against him at the Master's instigation and to prevent him meddling in her work.

The Doctor's warnings proved to be true and, on being released, Omega - now a giant skeletal figure - devoured the Rani. Mrs Flood escaped using the Time Ring, whilst the Doctor used the Vindicator to force Omega back into the Underverse.

Played by Kate O'Mara, Anita Dobson, Archie Panjabi. 

Appearances: Mark of the Rani (1985), Time and the Rani (1987), The Church on Ruby Road (2023), The Legend of Ruby Sunday / The Empire of Death (2024), The Robot Revolution - The Reality War (2025).

• The Rani was created by husband and wife team Pip & Jane Baker. Pip claimed that he had been speaking with a scientist at a party, who pointed out that human beings were simply collections of chemicals - which gave him the idea for a thoroughly amoral scientist.
• Rani means "princess" or "queen" on the Indian subcontinent - the wife of a Raja. It derives from the Sanskrit word rajni.
• The Rani was also employed as the chief villain in the EastEnders / Doctor Who crossover special for Children in Need in 1993 - "Dimensions in Time". In this she was once again played by Kate O'Mara, and the Rani had gained a companion - Cyrian, played by Samuel West (named because JNT had hoped to interest Sir Ian McKellen in the role). The Rani's TARDIS was this time disguised as the Queen Vic pub.
• O'Mara's screen appearances, such as her role in Dynasty, were mainly to fund her theatrical enterprises, specifically works by Shakespeare. 
• She featured in two Hammer Horrors - The Vampire Lovers and Horror of Frankenstein. It was this work which prevented her from taking on the role of Petra Williams in Inferno.
• She was married twice: to Jeremy Young (An Unearthly Child / Mission to the Unknown) and then to Richard Willis (Full Circle). Ian Cullen (Ixta - The Aztecs) was the biological father to one of her children.
• Anita Dobson had already left EastEnders before "Dimensions in Time" was made. She came to fame in the soap playing Angie Watts, landlady of the Queen Vic and wife of "Dirty Den" (Leslie Grantham - Resurrection of the Daleks). She returned for a cameo in the programme's 40th anniversary episode - an hallucination experienced by her daughter.
• She also has a singing career, appearing in a number of stage musicals and had a No.4 hit in the UK in 1986 singing Anyone Can Fall In Love, which was set to the EastEnders theme tune.
• Since 2000, she has been married to Queen's Brian May.
• Archie Panjabi had roles in the British movies East Is East and Bend It Like Beckham, and was later nominated for a number of awards for her performance in the CBS series The Good Wife, which ran from 2009 - 2015.
• Since 2005, nearly every female villain has been rumoured to be the Rani. Steven Moffat teased fans during the filming of Dark Water by having Michelle Gomez declare herself on location at St Paul's to be a Random Access Neural Integrator - or RANI for short. Her real identity was added in dubbing later.
• Scots actress Siobhan Redmond has also played the Rani, on audio.

R is for... Range, Mr

Mr Range was chief science officer on a colony ship which crash-landed on the planet Frontios. This vessel carried survivors from the dying Earth.

Some ten years after the crash, the planet began to be bombarded on a daily basis by meteorites. There were many casualties, and Range took on the additional role of chief medical officer - helping to manage the makeshift infirmary with his daughter Norna. She had been born soon after they arrived here, and her mother was now dead.

Range began to take note of a number of deaths which were unaccountable, keeping this information secret even from his leader, Plantagenet, and Chief of Staff Brazen. The latter was aware of these incidents however, and was keeping the information secret so as not to cause panic. Their society was already fragile, and the slightest spark could trigger anarchy.

Range spoke up for the Doctor after he had helped him tend the injured, and later joined him in an exploration of a cave system beneath the colony - something which Brazen also knew about but suppressed, since he had witnessed the old leader, Captain Revere, apparently swallowed up by the ground here. When the Doctor's companion Turlough suffered a nervous breakdown in the tunnels - the result of contact with creatures named Tractators which his people knew as a race memory - Range helped him back to the surface. Despite being attacked himself by one of the creatures, he went back down when he learned that Norna was in danger there.

Brazen died rescuing Plantagenet from the creatures, but the Doctor rendered them harmless after separating them from their leader, the Gravis. Range was left with his daughter to help Plantagenet re-establish the colony, now safe from the bombardments which had been caused by the Tractators.

Played by William Lucas. Appearances: Frontios (1984)

• Lucas, who died in 2016, had starred as Dr Gordon in the TV series The Adventures of Black Beauty in the early 1970's - a role he returned to in The New Adventures of Black Beauty twenty years later.
• He featured prominently in two science fiction films in 1956 - X the Unknown and The Strange World of Planet X. 1967 saw him appear with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in Night of the Big Heat. He was Inspector Lestrade to Cushing's Sherlock Holmes on TV the following year.
• He made two appearances in The Avengers, including the Terry Nation episode "Invasion of the Earthmen".
• He also starred in ill-fated soap Eldorado - Verity Lambert's only real failure.
• Lucas was called in to play Range after the tragic death of fellow actor Peter Arne, who was murdered shortly after attending a costume fitting for the role.

DWM Legends: Patrick Troughton

New this week from Doctor Who Magazine is the latest Special Edition - Legends: Patrick Troughton.

The cover says it all really, so I won't bother you with the contents - other than to say I've already got my copy and it is highly recommended. Here's some random pages to hopefully whet your appetite:

TARDIS Log: Origins

An Unearthly Child opens with a policeman checking the gates to a junkyard, run by I M Foreman, at 76 Totter's Lane. Satisfied they're locked, he moves on. However, as the camera moves in, the gates creak open and we approach a Police Public Call Box which sits incongruously amidst the bric-a-brac. It emits a strange hum...

20 years later, Douglas Camfield would criticise this opening sequence, claiming Waris Hussein was mistaken in doing it this way. He was arguing the logic of the scene. The gates are seen to be locked, so how then could they swing open? Who is opening them?

He was a director who was very much into realism, where every shot had to have a logical, narrative purpose - whereas Hussein was simply being practical as well as allowing for some artistic licence. It didn't matter about the gates being locked, or who might have opened them. He was setting up a mystery which had, at its heart, a Police Box, and this was the way he chose to introduce it.

No one person can claim credit for the TARDIS - either as a concept or for its final physical form. Some people can lay claim to certain aspects of it - such as designer Peter Brachacki, who was responsible for the iconic console room.

The story begins with Eric Maschwitz, head of light entertainment at the BBC. He commissioned a report on the feasibility of using science fiction as a basis for TV drama - a piece undertaken by Alice Frick and Donald Bull. Frick was later asked for a follow-up report, which she undertook with John Braybon. They concluded that two types of story merited further attention - those featuring telepaths, and those involving time travel, of which they favoured the latter as a wider range of writers might be interested.

The recommendations would only be put into practice with the arrival in January 1963 of Sydney Newman, as new Head of Drama. He was a keen follower of science fiction, and for ABC had been responsible for four family adventure serials involving space travel. The first was Target Luna, which was followed by the "Pathfinders" series - Pathfinders in Space, Pathfinders to Mars, and Pathfinders to Venus. All revolved around a family of space adventurers, children of a rocket scientist, who undertook interplanetary travels with adult companions. The final serial had also included a shady older man - Harcourt Brown, played by George Coulouris - who frequently placed the others in jeopardy in order to pursue his own scientific obsessions.

One of the first things he noted was a drop-off in viewers on a Saturday evening following the sports compendium Grandstand, before picking up again an hour later with Juke Box Jury. Various drama serials had been used to fill the slot, but Newman wanted a new family-friendly series, aimed especially at children, which might keep the Grandstand audience.

A meeting was held in March, attended by Newman, Frick and Braybon, along with Donald Wilson (Head of Serials) and staff writer Cecil Edwin Webber, known as "Bunny".

Ideas discussed included stories about telepaths and time travel, as the second report had suggested, but also ones involving flying saucers and computers. 

It was the time travel idea which Newman liked the most.

Webber was sent away to develop some character outlines, which included a youngster ("Need a kid to get into trouble") and a pair of young adults who could provide some potential romance, plus an older man with some "character twist". Newman then put together a memo which he passed on to Wilson outlaying the basic premise of the series, with the older man now a mysterious time traveller who was hundreds of years old.

Webber then began work on the opening story, provisionally titled "Nothing At The End Of The Lane", and he suggested that the time machine might be invisible - using electronic inlay techniques to show its entrance - as it was covered in some light resistant material. He also suggested that it disguise itself as an everyday item wherever it went. Another of his ideas was that one of the crew had to remain inside whilst the others went out to explore, in order to anchor it to its location.

Newman dismissed the invisibility notion as he wanted something tangible and visual.

The main character - "Dr Who" - would not be able to steer his ship due to senility, and would be constantly seeking components with which to make repairs.

The time machine itself couldn't be a flying saucer or rocket-like craft as this would be far too big to realise in studio, especially if only going to be seen briefly at the beginning or end of individual storylines. The idea of it disguising itself as an everyday object was agreed upon. It still had to accommodate four people comfortably inside, so the notion of having different dimensions within - bigger on the inside - followed. Objects considered were a Police Box and a workman's hut, and the former was accepted - outlined in May 1963 notes by Webber, before Anthony Coburn came along (who would later lay claim to the idea).

Having the time machine's outward appearance look the same all the time, rather than have it change for every landing site, allowed for a single visual identifier for the programme.

Rex Tucker was brought in to produce the new show, and he brought along former actor and now director Richard Martin to one of the early meetings. Martin came up with the idea that the time machine wasn't a fully physical space, but had some sort of psychological aspect - a mental barrier at its entrance. If you didn't believe in the space within, you simply walked into a normal Police Box. This suggestion wasn't taken up.

Never happy with the assignment, Tucker was allowed to step away from the project and was replaced by Verity Lambert. On her arrival in June she discovered that Webber's draft script - which would have seen the characters reduced to an inch in height and been trapped in a school science lab - had been dropped, and Coburn was now working on an alternative opener - "The Tribe of Gum".

In this, the character Suzanne (who will become Susan) tells her teachers that the time machine was called a Change and Dimensional Selector and Extender.

Despite the story later gaining the title of "100,000 BC", Coburn had it travel back 195,000 years for its encounter with the tribe.

Webber had previously suggested that the time machine and its owner originated in another galaxy in the year 5733, and new Story Editor David Whitaker retained this initially, as there was an idea that it could never travel to any point beyond that year - otherwise the Doctor and Susan would know their own futures.

A draft script from 8th July has the Doctor claim to be 300 years older than Ian, and the time machine responds to verbal commands, spoken by him in an alien language.

It is only in the version dated 12th July that the time machine has been given the name TARDIS - Time And Relative Dimension In Space.

Regarding the exterior, it has been said that an existing Police Box prop was going to be used for the TARDIS, one employed on Dixon of Dock Green, but this proved to be too big to fit into the lifts at Lime Grove Studios - so a smaller one was built specially.

The window surrounds are painted white, and the St John's Ambulance badge can be seen on the right hand door - indicating that the box held First Aid supplies.

On the left hand door is the information panel. Behind this sat the telephone, and the "Pull To Open" instruction refers to this panel, not the whole door.

The info panel and its surround were also white.

In the first version of An Unearthly Child, the Doctor opened the box by shining his pen torch into the lock. This was changed to an ordinary Yale-style key.

Police Public Call Boxes began life as hexagonal cast-iron structures, introduced in Glasgow in 1891. They were red in colour and had a gas lantern on the top. Anyone could use the telephone, which had a direct link to the nearest police control centre.

In 1912, Glasgow began replacing these with rectangular boxes, with an electric light fitting and a telephone which only police officers could now access.

Wooden versions followed in Sunderland in 1923, and in Newcastle in 1925, before spreading to other northern cities including Manchester and Sheffield.

The classic TARDIS version was designed by Gilbert Mackenzie Trench in 1929 and adopted by the Metropolitan Police.

Only one box survives in London, outside Earl's Court tube station, but several can still be seen in Glasgow - though not always painted blue. Some are employed as coffee kiosks.

Generally, only the doors of Metropolitan Police Boxes were wood, the main structure being concrete.

The Glasgow Police Boxes remained red, until a certain TV sci-fi show prompted the police to paint them blue in the 1960's...

As the date for production drew closer - the new series supposed to launch in September - Lambert grew increasingly irritated by the lack of development on the TARDIS interior design. This had been assigned to Brachacki, and in interviews she would claim that he had little interest in the work. It wasn't quite the case, as seen in origins drama An Adventure In Space And Time, that he simply threw it together on a whim from objects on his desk, but a lot of pressure did have to be put on him to come up with the final design. William Hartnell himself was keen to see "his" time machine.

As I've said, the result is iconic, but it isn't exactly as Brachacki had envisioned it, due to budget constraints. £500 had been allocated, and the cost of the TARDIS would actually cause the entire programme to be put at risk...

The first console room set measured 40 feet by 35 feet, taking up the majority of Lime Grove Studio D.

The six-sided central console was built by Shawcraft Models of Uxbridge, and each panel was removable. Brachacki intended for each panel to have handles for this purpose, and he also hoped that microphones could be installed inside these. 

The controls themselves were supposed to be specially moulded to fit the Doctor's hands, but instead various standard switches and buttons were used. The central column was 30 inches in diameter, made of perspex and fitted inside with lights supplied by a firm named Clark-Smith). The column rose and fell initially by use of a car foot-pump.

According to the designer, the column was supposed to rise when the TARDIS first took off, and would then rotate. The column would fall again only on landing. It was supposed to be a form of 3-D navigation system, from which the Doctor could see their location. It was never intended to keep going up and down.

The lights on the console were powered via an electrical cable, which can occasionally be glimpsed.

The studio floor was painted blue, and around the base of the console were set hexagonal metal plates.

Another hexagonal shape was suspended above - supposed to represent the power source.

This would quickly be discarded as it was unwieldy and interfered with the positioning of microphone booms.

The scanner was a TV monitor mounted on a frame which could be wheeled around. Brachacki intended that it should lower itself down from the ceiling when needed.

He wanted to use fibreglass for the walls, but this was too costly so they were made of wood, inset with PVC roundels. These were to have been translucent, and pulse with light when the ship was operated.

Two of the walls were photographic blow-ups - one of drilled holes to match the roundels and one of electronic components. The latter would be replaced for the broadcast version of the opening episode.

The designer had intended that the roundels could be removable to allow various camera angles to be achieved, but this was never taken up.

The doors, which caused so much trouble on the pilot episode, were mounted on a metal frame on another wooden wall. They were operated by stagehands and were difficult to balance, resulting in them swinging open or banging when being closed.

It was originally intended that the exterior would not be seen directly through these doors. They would lead to the reverse of the Police Box doors, held closed with a simple latch.

Walls, doors and console were all painted a pale green, which would appear white on screen.

The set was dressed with various items of furniture and furnishings, including high-backed and canvas-backed chairs, a brass clock, a tall candelabra affair, an eagle lectern, a bird cage, a sculptural group mounted on birds, and a low table. The suggestion was that this eclectic mix arose from the Doctor's travels - but he could equally have obtained them from the junkyard outside or from visits to London antique shops.

As the series commences, there is nothing yet to say that the TARDIS hasn't come directly to Totter's Lane from the Doctor's homeworld...

In terms of the soundscape, this was entirely the work of Brian Hodgson of the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop. Famously, his idea for the TARDIS dematerialisation effect was the notion of the "ripping of the fabric of time" - achieved by drawing his house key along the wires of an exposed piano frame, then slowing down and processing the resulting sound. He had used a similar process for the sound of a ship scraping against rocks on a radio production.

In all, Hodgson came up with 8 items for the TARDIS, under the collective title of "Dr Who - Beyond the Sun", which could act as library pieces for the series.

Next time, we'll look at the very first story, and what we learn of the TARDIS in story terms there...

Episode 216: The Mind Robber (2)

Synopsis:

The TARDIS has broken apart, with Zoe and Jamie left clinging to the console. She screams as they see the Doctor drifting away into the darkness, before they descend into a strange mist...

Jamie finds himself alone in a dark forest. As he searches for the others he hears Zoe calling his name, but is suddenly confronted by a Redcoat soldier. The man fires his rifle at him - and he is transformed into a cardboard cut-out.

Zoe comes across a bare stone wall and, when she turns, there is another one trapping her. She sees a door and passes through it into a pitch-black room - only to find herself falling...

These events are being relayed to a monitor in a futuristic control room. A man seated there gives instructions for the Doctor to be found.

He is elsewhere in the forest, being taunted by the calls of his companions coming from different directions. As Jamie sounds the nearest, he orders him to start counting aloud to guide him.

Complaining out loud of how dark it is here, the forest is suddenly illuminated and the Doctor realises that someone must be spying on him.

He hears a strange mechanical sound and the march of heavy boots approach, so takes cover in the fold of a tree. A patrol of life-size clockwork soldiers passes by.

He emerges from hiding - only to be confronted by a man in 18th Century costume, aiming a flintlock pistol at him. His language is strange at first, but he begins speaking English once he hears the Doctor speaks this. The man claims to have sailed from Bristol in the Spring of 1699. He also claims that he knows nothing of this place, save that the Master is in charge and that the Doctor is a wanted man. The figure then vanishes when the Doctor glances away.

He hears a female voice and thinks it may be Zoe - but it proves to be a girl in late Victorian dress. Other children then appear, six in all, of various ages. They begin challenging him with a series of riddles.

The last of these is "What can you make of a sword?", and the eldest boy places one at his throat.

He realises it is an anagram of "words". The children cheer and the boy throws the sword into the air. The Doctor instead catches a large book - a dictionary - as the children run off.

He hears Jamie's voice, close by, and soon finds him - only to see that he is just a cardboard cut-out. Nearby are a safe - locked - and a wishing well. He throws the book into the well, and hears a sinister laugh. An image then appears before him of a mist, with the letters "M" and "T" crossed out. Another image then materialises, of a palmist's hand with the letter "H" crossed out.

Realising that this is a picture puzzle, he works it out as "Jamie. Is. Safe. And. Well". As he says it, however, the cut-out's face disappears.

On a stand are photographs of different facial features, and he must recreate those of his companion from these like a photo-fit. Unfortunately he gets this wrong - and Jamie is reconstituted with a new face. The Doctor produces a hand mirror to show him.

At first he is not sure if this is the real Jamie, until he tells him of what happened in the TARDIS. He is alarmed to learn that the ship broke up.

They then hear Zoe calling for help and are lead to the door in the stone wall. It turns out not to be a real opening, which prompts the Doctor to recall the old riddle of "When is a door not a door? - When it's ajar...".

The wall vanishes and they find Zoe trapped inside a huge glass jar. They release her, and she is shocked to see Jamie's new features.

They determine to get out of this forest, but it seems to go on for miles. Jamie suggests climbing one of the trees to get a better view and see if there is a way out.

On climbing up, he reports that the trees are actually shaped like letters of the alphabet, spelling out well known phrases and sayings.

He has seen the edge of the forest, however, and starts to guide them towards it when the stranger reappears. As they talk, the Doctor hears the clockwork soldiers approach once more. 

They take refuge in the hollows of the tree letters, urging the man not to give them away.

However he does not seem to register the soldiers' presence, and so unwittingly allows them to be found - to the delight of the observer in the control room.

The soldiers shepherd the Doctor and his companions into a black void at the edge of the forest then withdraw. They hear the whinnying of a horse, and Jamie has a flashback to his recent nightmare in the TARDIS. 

They see a unicorn, which thunders towards them...

Data:

Written by Peter Ling 

Recorded: Friday 28th June 1968 - Television Centre Studio TC3

First broadcast: 5.20pm, Saturday 21st September 1968.

Ratings: 6.5 million / AI 49

VFX: Jack Kine and Bernard Wilkie 

Designer: Evan Hercules 

Director: David Maloney

Guest cast: Emrys Jones (The Master), Hamish Wilson (Jamie), Bernard Horsfall (Stranger), Barbara Loft, Sylvestra Le Touzel, Timothy Horton, Christopher Reynalds, David Reynalds, Martin Langley (Children), Philip Ryan (Redcoat), Paul Alexander, Ian Hines, Richard Ireson (Clockwork Soldiers) 

Critique:

As we pointed out last time, other than the magnetic storm business, this episode pretty much follows the outline of Peter Ling's original draft for his opening instalment. There's the forest of words where the Doctor first finds himself, the meeting with the stranger, a set of riddles to solve, a cardboard cut-out Jamie, the rescue of Zoe from a jar, and the cliffhanger with the unicorn. 

Sherwin suggested replacing the riddle-setters with children, and Ling based these roughly on the Bastable children from Edith Nesbit's 1899 novel The History of the Treasure Seekers - Dora, Oswald, Dicky, Alice, Noel and Horace Octavius. He also suggested that it should be a soldier who held the sword to the Doctor's throat.

This particular puzzle was only added during rewrites in May 1968.

Ling had followed Sherwin's advice about making the faceless creatures in the forest soldiers instead, deciding on wind-up clockwork ones. 

It was specified that only their legs and feet, or their shako hats, with built-in lamp, should be seen until late in the episode, when their true nature would be revealed.

In his original draft, the stranger in 18th Century costume was to have said he was born in 1726. This was the date of publication of Gulliver's Travels. Despite using made up language which many might recognise from the book, the stranger's identity would not be revealed until the following episode.

You'll note that Jamie was always going to end up a cardboard cut-out in this episode - and it was a stroke of luck that this incident was included in the script, and that the Doctor and his companions were in a fantasy realm where anything could happen...

The main filming for this episode took place on the evening of Sunday 9th June, at Kenley Aerodrome in Surrey, not far from Croydon. This was for the sequence involving the unicorn.

A white pony had been requested, and the director was dismayed to find that he had been sent a light brown one instead. Perhaps the name 'Goldy' was a bit of a giveaway... Too late to get a replacement or to defer the filming, the only recourse was to make up the pony to appear white. All the make-up they had failed to complete the job, so they had to resort to a visit to a nearby RAF base to borrow some "Blanco", which was used to whiten parts of the dress uniform such as the belt.

A fake horn was attached to Goldy's forehead using a harness hidden by its mane. Due to the lengthy set-up, the actual filming didn't get underway until 2am.

Further filming took place at Ealing on Thursday 13th June, for the sequence with Zoe trapped in the glass jar.

After providing voice work only for the opening instalment, Emrys Jones joined the cast this week - even though we wouldn't see the Master clearly until the third episode. He used two tones of voice - a version of his own for when the Master is himself, and a staccato version when under mental control.

At first he took his assignment very seriously - until he saw how much fun Troughton and Hines had in rehearsals.

Also joining rehearsals were a group of children from various stage schools. Originally Barbara Loft was to have worn an older style of Victorian dress, but this was replaced with an outfit which Jenny Agutter had worn earlier in the year for a TV adaptation of The Railway Children. Just two weeks before getting the role, her mother had written to the BBC to complain about how unsuitable Doctor Who was for children...

Frazer Hines was taken ill early in the week, and sent home by the BBC doctor. By the Wednesday, it was confirmed that he had contracted chicken pox from his young nephews who had been staying with him. He would therefore be unavailable for Friday's recording session. That same day, actor Hamish Wilson was contacted at the office where he was working, asked to join rehearsals the following day. He had worked extensively in Scotland and was a fan of the programme, especially enjoying The Highlanders due to its setting.

Sherwin was forced to adapt the script to accommodate the change of actor - helped enormously by the cardboard cut-out idea. He simply had to add the business of the photo-fit facial reconstruction to what was already there. The alternative would have been to have to omit Jamie all together and try to reassign his role in proceedings, which would have meant a major overhaul. It was agreed with Hines that he could film a new opening to the episode during the recording of the fifth episode.

During the afternoon of the recording day, a photocall was staged for the Clockwork Soldiers and for Emrys Jones, in only partial costume and make-up, on the forest set.

Wilson and Wendy Padbury also recorded voice tracks, to be played in later as they called out to the Doctor.

The opening episode caption rolled over a reprise of the filmed ending to the previous instalment, to which a new insert of Troughton was added. Voices were echoed on the forest set, and reuse was made of the "Thal wind" sound effect, first heard in The Dead Planet.

Bernard Horsfall staged his disappearance entirely in studio, without the need for any recording break, by swiftly (no pun intended) moving out of shot as the camera looked the other way.

The throwing up of the sword and the catching of the dictionary were also achieved live in studio, without recourse to a break.

Padbury simply dropped down out of camera view when falling inside the darkened building.

For the sequence where she is first seen in the jar, an image of the wall was faded out, to be replaced by the footage from Ealing of her within the vessel. The filmed jar does not match with the studio prop, as it is too short.

One recording break allowed for Richard Hallifax to be seen to climb up the inside of one of the trees. He had been hired as Frazer Hines' double, a role he had previously undertaken on location for The Enemy of the World. This allowed for Wilson to get ready standing on top of one of the letters - viewing a model of the forest of words. Unfortunately the model fails to match with the set, as the letters are far too wide and shallow.

The Master's control room featured three television monitors which were fed shots from other sets.

Emrys Jones was only seen sitting with his back to the camera as he watched these.

An earlier recording break had allowed Wilson to take the place of the cardboard cut-out.

Only three of the faces which make up the photo-fit board are known - Hines, Wilson and David Maloney. The fourth may be another member of the production team, or one of the actors playing the soldiers.

The picture puzzles were achieved through the superimposition of captions, of the letters "M" and "T" crossed out over looped footage of fog, and the palmistry hand with the "H" crossed through.

The final recording break allowed the cast to move from the forest set to a black void area, to be confronted by the unicorn. To save on having to reuse this set, the first three scenes of Episode 3 were also recorded, using a cardboard cut-out of Goldy.

There was also time to record the opening titles to all the remaining episodes.

Episode 1 was always going to be a hard act to follow, and here we get to see Peter Ling's story as it was originally intended to start.

We are now properly in the Land of Fiction, which is populated by living versions of characters from literature as well as figures from the nursery, like toy soldiers.

The Doctor quickly realises that this is a world of words. The forest is made of them and he has to use them to work out the puzzles he is set, both by the Master and by the children. A sword is literally transformed into a book of them.

Life-size living dolls have always been a creepy image, and the forest setting is a suitably sinister one - a simple set which is used effectively.

Zoe barely features, so it's left very much to Troughton to carry the episode until rejoined by Jamie.

This is chiefly what this episode is remembered for - the replacement of Hines with Wilson.

As mentioned, the fantastical nature of this story meant that the idea of Jamie being saddled with a different face for a week or so could easily be accommodated by the narrative, saving the script editor any major headaches. That he came up with this solution in probably less than a day - judging from when Hines' illness was confirmed to Wilson being brought in - is to be applauded.

Considering that he only had one rehearsal day before having to go into studio, and essay a part which already existed, Wilson does a splendid job. It is obviously noticeable that it isn't only Jamie's face that has changed. Hines was Yorkshire born and his Scots accent came from listening to relatives, whilst Wilson was Glaswegian.

We haven't said much about him but, as the arguments over The Dominators show, Sherwin was quite a controversial character in the history of the series. He will work wonders patching up problems with the sixth season - but often they were problems of his own making. He had exacting standards, and caused several stories to be abandoned, sometimes late in the day. This was combined with an almost combative nature. He was very blunt-speaking and seems to have had little time for tact and diplomacy. Watching him interviewed for some of the Troughton DVD extras, he can come across as arrogant - though he does tend to give credit where it's due. He was basically a no-nonsense, honest and up-front sort of man.

Around this time, the line between producer and script editor was becoming blurred as Peter Bryant took more of a back seat and Sherwin took on more of his responsibilities. Bryant was looking for an exit, as was Sherwin - who had only taken on his role as a temporary measure, hence his employing Terrance Dicks as an assistant who could be groomed to replace him. Bryant and Sherwin were nicknamed "Bryant and May", after the popular brand of safety matches, due to Sherwin becoming co-producer on the series to all intents and purposes.

Several writers and directors have claimed that if you wanted any work out of the pair, it was best to get it done before lunchtime as - like most of the BBC at the time - lunches tended to be liquid, and prolonged.

Sherwin will, of course, go on to become the producer of Doctor Who - though the one with the shortest tenure, with only two stories / 14 episodes to his credit.

Peter Ling novelised his story for Target, and elected to add more literary fantasy. He had already separated the story from the ongoing narrative of the season by having the TARDIS escape an unspecified eruption of Vesuvius, rather than use the televised version. In this episode, Zoe was to have initially found herself dressed like Alice in Wonderland, and it was down the rabbit hole she fell. Later, the clockwork soldiers were to have formed a firing squad on the Master's orders, before leaving the Doctor and his companions to face the unicorn.

Trivia:

• The ratings remain stable this week, but the appreciation figure drops below the 50 mark.
• At only 21' 39", this is still the longest episode of this story.
• This is the first of four roles in the series for Bernard Horsfall, all directed by David Maloney. He will be back later this season as a Time Lord jurist in The War Games. Later, he will play the Thal leader Taron in Planet of the Daleks, before portraying another Time Lord - Chancellor Goth - in The Deadly Assassin. Or is it the same Time Lord...?
• An early TV role for Hamish Wilson was an episode of The Vital Spark, a comedy about the crew of an old Clyde Puffer. Remade twice, his is the only episode to survive from the original B&W series.
• Sylvestra Le Touzel had her name misspelt as "Le Tozel" on the credits, whilst the Reynald brothers had theirs spelt as "Reynolds".
• Le Touzel will go on to enjoy a successful acting career in TV, film and stage, her first really big role being in the BBC's 1983 adaptation of Mansfield Park. She is married to Owen Teale, who appeared in Vengeance on Varos and the Torchwood episode Countrycide.
• Richard Ireson will be back in a couple of months, playing Axus in The Krotons.
• Ian Hines is the brother of Frazer Hines. For many years fandom got very confused about him - claiming him to be his cousin - or that Wilson was his cousin.
• Confronted by the Redcoat, Jamie is heard once again to give his battle cry of "Craig an Tuirc" - which translates as "The Boar's Rock", a rallying point for the Clan MacLaren, situated above Loch Voil.
• As all the characters are fictional, the Redcoat is presumably from Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped - a copy of which we will see later in the Master's book room.
• One of the puzzles is "Where was Moses when the lights went out?". This owes its origins to a music hall joke, with the answer being simply "In the dark!" - though one version ran "Down in the cellar eating sauerkraut!". Mark Twain used the "In the dark" version in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
• The "Adam and Eve and Pinch-Me..." riddle is an old playground joke, deriving from a nursery rhyme - intended to trap someone who hasn't heard it before into being pinched. It was used as the title of a 1921 novel, and later by thriller writer Ruth Rendell.

What's Wrong With... Rose

And so we come to the revived series, which we might have to call something else as and when the programme returns in two / five / ten (delete as applicable) years.

I was very much in two minds whether or not to continue this thread after the TV Movie, as I felt there's a lot less to mention in brisk 45 minute stories, but we'll carry on for now.

One of the concerns people had about Rose back in the day was that too much emphasis was going to be placed on the companion, and not enough on the Doctor himself. This grew out of the way in which Ace had been developed back in the last two seasons of the classic era (a name we definitely won't have to reconsider in two / five / ten years...).

The biggest problem here is the Nestene plan. They've previously tried to take over the planet using Auton shop window dummies, and it failed, so why attempt it again - especially if you're going to activate them in the middle of the night when the streets aren't going to be as busy as, say, a Saturday afternoon.

Previously, the dummies had merely been used as a diversion, to throw London into a panic whilst the real weapons - the life-like facsimiles did the actual work. Here, they only copy one real person to locate the Doctor - and then do it really badly. Surely their techniques should have improved with time, rather than gotten worse. How Rose could fail to notice that Auton-Mickey wasn't the real thing is anyone's guess.

On their two earlier invasion attempts, they had to use a human(oid) agent to establish a bridgehead, and take control of a factory before they were in any position to begin their main plan. There's no sign of anyone here carrying out the Master / Hibbert role.

How did the Nestene set up its base and manufacture its Autons without the help of some human agency?

Why did it previously go to the bother of creating a body for itself if it could simply inhabit a vat of plastic?

A question that goes back to the Pertwee Nestene stories - is Nestene plastic specially made, and only it can be manipulated by them, or can the Nestene weaponise any existing forms of plastic? It definitely looked like the former in the two earlier stories and, if that's the case, how could they possibly have created and installed their wheelie-bin outside Clive's house in such a short space of time - especially with Mickey sitting in the car in sight of it? The suggestion is that they have taken over a normal bin and used it as a weapon - which goes against the "special Nestene plastic" business.

We live on an increasingly polluted planet - but the Nestene could get the same chemicals they're after, naturally occurring, from lots of uninhabited worlds with little or no risk.

Going back to the beginning of the episode, setting aside the fact that if the sun is reaching New York then it can't possibly be 7.30am in London in March, we have the business in the department store basement. The Autons have powerful guns in their hands, so why do they wake up so slowly - giving Rose plenty of warning? Why not simply chop her down or shoot her?

Likewise, why do they fail to shoot her and the Doctor instead of chasing them out of the building.

If they've activated because of the presence of the Doctor in the building, why don't they know he's planted a bomb? If instead they've activated because of Rose's presence, then why not for the Doctor - who they know all about?

If a bomb goes off on a street such as this one, which we'll assume to be Oxford or Regent Street (relatively narrow with tall buildings either side), the blast would shatter windows for miles around - certainly the ones opposite where Rose is standing. She'd have been blown off her feet and through one of those windows.

A big shop blows up in the centre of London, and prompts little response from the authorities next day? Hardly likely.

The Doctor traces the plastic arm to Rose's flat the following morning, presumably because it still poses a danger - so why did he let her walk off with it in the first place?

She gets the arm in the West End, and lives in the Camberwell area, so why did she wait to get all the way home before binning it?

For the N159 bus to be running it has to be after midnight, which is a very odd time to do late night shopping. I know this as I used to use it at least once a month. As it's 10.30pm when they begin their run across Westminster Bridge (as clearly seen on Big Ben), then it must take them at least 90 minutes to get across.

It's not a huge difference, but going to the Golden Jubilee footbridge at Embankment rather than to Westminster Bridge to cross the river would have saved some time, if you're in a hurry to save the planet.

Presumably the footbridge is the route the Autons used, for the TARDIS to already be in the base before the Doctor and Rose got there?

In the UK, late night shopping usually refers to up to 8pm, or 10pm at the very latest, and even then numbers of shoppers are low. Not as busy as the scenes we see here.

How fortuitous that the Thames happens to be so low at this time for them to spot the secret entrance to the base. Low tides at the end of March usually come around 10pm and then again after 3am, so they're too early for the first, and a long time must pass between arriving on the South Bank and spotting the entrance.

Everything suggests that "anti-plastic" is supposed to work like a toxin or virus. Why then does it cause the base to explode?

And surely the collapse of a huge chamber beneath the London Eye would have some impact on the surface.

We'll later hear that the authorities know all about the Doctor and the TARDIS - enough for the words "blue box" to trigger an alarm. With CCTV covering the West End, and all along both the Embankment and the South Bank - sites of several major tourist locations - then they ought to have seen the TARDIS and its occupants.

This ought to have gotten the attention of UNIT. (This will be even sillier once Torchwood comes into play).

It also makes a nonsense of the business about Mickey being suspected of murdering Rose. They would have seen a woman matching her description with the Doctor during these events.

Then there's Clive. I can imagine noting a figure standing on the grassy knoll watching the JFK assassination might pique some interest for a conspiracy theorist, but was he really so equally interested in the eruption of Krakatoa and the sinking of the Titanic to have spotted the same figure in different images relating to those events? Everything in his shed seems to point towards a specific interest in astronomy and UFO's, rather than general conspiracy theories or famous disasters.

It is suggested that these events all took place before this episode - yet the Doctor's only just now noting his appearance in a mirror, as though only recently regenerated? I doubt very much he would have gotten dressed up as an Edwardian gentleman without seeing himself in a mirror.