Inspirations - Time and the Rani

One day Colin Baker got a phone call from his producer, offering him some good news, and some bad news. Baker asked for the bad news first, as most of us would - to get it out of the way. JNT informed him that he was not going to be invited back to play the Doctor. The BBC no longer required his services. Stunned, Baker asked what the good news was, to be told that Doctor Who was going to be given another season. ("Tactful" is a word that could never have been applied to Hawaiian shirt wearing JNT). Naturally, Baker couldn't see anything good about this.

The BBC weren't sacking him because the show was being axed. They were simply sacking him.

Rewind a little, and Season 23 had ended with no-one particularly happy. 

The fans were, for the most part, dissatisfied with the Trial season. They weren't happy that it was the shortest season ever; the quality of the writing was poor - especially considering they'd had a whole extra year to prepare because of the hiatus - and the conclusion to what had been an epic 14 episode story was considered rather weak. There was also a lot of disquiet about the casting of Bonnie Langford as companion. 

Eric Saward had quit in very public fashion, with his scathing Starburst magazine interview attacking both JNT and Colin Baker.

JNT was hoping that he could resign from the show and move on to producing something else. His ideal choice would have been something in light entertainment, but he also had a couple of soap ideas. One of these would have been a remake / reboot of Compact, a BBC soap from the early 60's which revolved around a glossy fashion magazine. JNT's new version would have been called "Impact". Later he also proposed "Westenders" - a more upmarket cousin to Eastenders. 

(Believing he would be moving on, he hadn't done anything about replacing the Script Editor. Therefore, there weren't any scripts lined up for Season 24).

He was informed that he would not be offered another job at the BBC, but would be expected to produce another season of Doctor Who. The series could continue only if some changes were made, and this included a change in the leading actor. A new Doctor might reinvigorate interest in the show. Baker would have been in the part for three years anyway, the BBC counting the hiatus 18 months as part of this. 

When JNT realised it would be another year of Doctor Who, or unemployment, he saw he had no other choice but to accept, and the BBC then told him that he should be the one to break the news to Baker, which is where we came in.

At the time, it appeared to fans that Baker was the problem, despite it being the producer's head they were demanding. The programme had reached a peak of popularity, with fans and the wider public, in 1983, with the 20th Anniversary. Yet, in 1985 it was facing cancellation. How could it have fallen so low, so quickly? What had changed? The only change had been Baker's arrival - so it had to be his fault.

If people were unhappy, surely it should have been the producer who should have been replaced. 

The fact is he should have been - but the BBC couldn't find anyone who wanted to take it on at that time.

Baker was asked to return for the first story of Season 24, at the end of which he would regenerate. He declined, asking instead for the whole season before he left. He pointed out that anything less would mean him losing work. No one would employ him if he was still the Doctor, and if he did get offered a long running role on TV or on stage he couldn't afford to lose it just because of a couple of weeks on Doctor Who in the middle of it.

As well as a new Script Editor, JNT had to find himself a new Doctor. To get the script situation moving, the producer turned to Pip and Jane Baker, who had gotten him out of a hole when Saward had withdrawn his script for the penultimate episode of Season 23. They wrote well, as far as he was concerned, and they wrote quickly, with little need for revision. He could leave them to get on with things whilst he went about recruiting for his two key vacant posts.

For the Script Editor post, he selected Andrew Cartmel. Apparently, at his interview, he had said that he would like to use the show to bring down the government. Cartmel had a keen interest in comics like 2000AD, and graphic novels, and he wanted to bring a comic book sensibility to the series, in terms of style and themes.

In his search for a new Doctor, Sylvester McCoy was recommended to JNT by fellow producer Clive Doig, who made programmes aimed at children (especially those with special needs). Doig had previously been a vision mixer on Doctor Who. McCoy had appeared in a number of children's TV shows, after being a member of the Ken Campbell Roadshow, where he had become well known for stunts such as hammering nails up his nose or putting ferrets down his trousers. He did do some more serious work, having featured in some movies (like the 1979 Universal remake of Dracula), and he had done a lot of stage work. Bonnie Langford had worked with him previously on a Gilbert & Sullivan production, and he was appearing as the Pied Piper in a National Theatre production - a part written especially for him - when Doig put his name forward. It was this performance which convinced JNT that he had found his new Doctor, though the BBC insisted that auditions should be carried out.

The audition piece, written by Cartmel, saw each actor play a scene against a female villain, based on Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Ex-companion Janet Fielding came back for this. Coincidentally, she had also been part of the Ken Campbell Roadshow.

McCoy had little time to prepare himself for how he was going to play the Doctor - nor did JNT or Cartmel - which is reflected in his uncertain performance in his first story.

Time and the Rani had been presented to Cartmel as a fait accompli, and he had had very little input in its development. What changes he had asked for had met with resistance from the Bakers, and he had made them feel that he did not like their style of work very much. Both sides came away thinking the other didn't like them very much, and indeed they never worked together again. Cartmel had his new vision for the show, which would be more Halo Jones than sci-fi versions of old ITC style series.

As speed was essential, and because the writers and the producer liked the character, it was decided to bring back the female Time Lord villain the Rani. Luckily this coincided with Kate O'Mara writing to JNT asking for another role, as she was keen to get back to working in England after time in the States. JNT knew that her return would generate press interest, to accompany the arrival of a new Doctor who was nowhere near as well known as Davison and Baker had been.

Thanks to a bitter Colin Baker refusing to return to the programme, even briefly, the regeneration could have simply taken place off camera, with the new Doctor already in mid travels. This had just been used to introduce the latest companion. However, it was felt that a new Doctor had to be properly introduced from the start, and a regeneration had to be seen. We therefore get McCoy, in Baker's costume and wearing a blond curly wig, lying face down on the TARDIS floor, after the ship has been fired upon by the Rani. She is working on a scheme which requires the harnessed brain power if several of the universe's great genii, and he is to be one of them. She's also suffered a setback in her plans and needs him to carry out some repairs to her equipment. It's lucky, then, that het attack does trigger a regeneration, after which some Time Lords seem to suffer a form of amnesia. When the Doctor's prone body is turned over we see the features blotted out by light, which fades to reveal McCoy. Unfortunately, we see enough before the change to spot his features and that he is wearing a wig.

With the exercise bike lying next to him, it appears the Sixth Doctor "died" by falling off it. Despite spin-off media giving him a less ignoble end, the falling-off-his-bike demise was accepted by the official Doctor Who annual in 2017.

The idea of a villain using the captured minds of scientific genii to create a weapon of sorts had almost been seen in the programme before - almost, because it was the background to Skagra's plan in the aborted story Shada. 

The Rani is seeking a substance called loyhargil, which is as dense as Strange Matter but not as heavy. Loyhargil is an anagram of 'holy grail'. Strange Matter - the working title for this story - was first discovered in 1984. The Bakers clearly read scientific publications, as this story is packed full of real scientific terms. The problem is that they often appear to be there just to make the characters sound like they know what they are talking about, not necessarily using them in the proper context to which they belong. You'll recall that Pip Baker's brother was a scientist, as he mentioned in every interview he ever gave.

The Rani is using a bat-like race as her servants. They are the Tetraps. Tetra- is a prefix referring to four, from the Greek. The Tetraps have four eyes and four ears.

Their leader is named Urak, and he fawns over the Rani. The name derives from the obsequious Uriah Heep, from Dickens' David Copperfield. 

The Rani and her bat-like servants were inspired by the Wicked Witch of the West and her flying monkey creatures in the 1939 movie of The Wizard of Oz.

The name of the race who live on this planet derives from "lacertian", from the Latin lacerta, meaning lizard.

One of the things the Rani plans to do is to change Earth history by meddling with evolution, so that the dinosaurs get a chance to develop into the dominant species. This comes from a Doctor Who 'Make Your Own Adventure' book the Bakers had recently written called Race Against Time.

A quarry is used as the filming location for the planet Lakertya, though the Bakers wrote it as a forest world.

Time and the Rani is a play on the title of the 1937 J B Priestley play Time and the Conways.

This story was a reunion of sorts for some of the cast of The Faceless Ones, as it features both Wanda Ventham and Donald Pickering.

The new Doctor tries on a number of older Doctor costumes before settling on his 1920's ensemble. Everyone apart from Hartnell is referenced. In this first story, McCoy reminds the audience of his ancestry as he wears a tartan scarf (as if his accent wasn't a big enough giveaway), but this will be replaced from the next story by an equally Scottish design - a Paisley pattern one.

Next time: Everyone is taken to the cleaners. Blakey from On The Buses meets J G Ballard, as Cartmel begins to make his presence felt...