Rani (Doctor Who)

The Rani is a fictional character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. She was played by Kate O'Mara. The word "Rani" means "queen" in the Hindi language, and "The Rani" follows the naming convention for other renegade Time Lords, such as "The Doctor," "The Monk," "The War Chief," and "The Master."

The Rani is a renegade Time Lady, an evil scientific genius whose villainy comes not from the usual variety of lust for power and suchlike, but from a mindset that treats everything (including morality) as secondary to her research; she has been known to enslave entire planets such as Miasimia Goria in order to have a ready supply of experimental subjects and a place to carry out her experiments uninterrupted. Her major interest is in tinkering with other species' biochemistry — she was exiled from Gallifrey after some of her lab mice, as a result of an experiment, grew to enormous size and ate the President's pet cat, and according to The Master, "took a chunk out of him too". A past relationship between the Rani and the Doctor is hinted at but was never elaborated upon, although it is established they are the same age.

The Rani was, like the Master, intended as a recurring foe of the Doctor, but only appeared in two serials, The Mark of the Rani and Time and the Rani, before Doctor Who went off the air in 1989. The Rani also appeared as the principal villain in Dimensions in Time, a Doctor Who charity special created for Children in Need. She was intended to appear in another serial entitled Yellow Fever and How To Cure It but the show was put on hiatus and the serial was cancelled.

Television episodes
The Rani appears in two Doctor Who classic series serials, The Mark of the Rani (1985) and Time and the Rani (1987), portrayed both times by Kate O'Mara.

The Mark of the Rani
In The Mark of the Rani, the Sixth Doctor whilst attempting to visit Kew Gardens the TARDIS is drawn off course and instead lands in Killingworth during the time of the Industrial Revolution.

The Rani is ruling the planet Miasimia Goria where she has removed the need for sleep from the alien subjects. This causes the planet to collapse into chaos, as without sleep the aliens turned violent. To restore order and continue her experiments, she begins stealing the chemical that allows sleep from human brains, carrying this out in violent periods of Earth's history so her experiment's after-effects would go unnoticed. When carrying this out during the Luddite rebellion, her operation is co-opted into the Master's attempt at hijacking the Industrial Revolution and killing the Sixth Doctor. The Doctor (Colin Baker) and his companion, Peri (Nicola Bryant) are shocked, as they believed the Master to have been destroyed. Eventually, the Doctor traps the Rani and the Master in the Rani's TARDIS, where an embryo of a Tyrannosaurus rex  starts to grow as the result of a time spillage. Her operation is thwarted.

This is Anthony Ainley's first appearance since Planet of Fire (Peter Davison's penultimate serial in 1984).

Time and the Rani
In Time and the Rani, the Rani uses a time funnel to trap the Doctor's TARDIS. The ferocity and resulting turbulence have devastating effect, forcing him to regenerate into the Seventh Doctor. When the Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) wakes up, he figures out what the Rani is doing, and a Tetrap (from the planet Tetrapyriarbus) knocks him out when he threatens to smash a piece of machinery. The Rani then injects the Doctor with an amnesia drug, and disguises herself as the Doctor's companion, Mel (Bonnie Langford); she later uses a hologram of Mel to get the Doctor to return a vital piece of machinery.

The Rani manages to escape in her TARDIS; however, the Tetraps are also in there, and have her take them back to Tetrapyriarbus to help them with their larger tasks.

In the novelisation written by Pip and Jane Barker, it is revealed that the Rani, and the Master, escaped the growing T-Rex due to the same time spillage that made it mature; it grew so rapidly that it broke its spine on the ceiling of the Rani's TARDIS.

Dimensions in Time
Kate O'Mara reprised her role as the Rani in Dimensions in Time, which was broadcast over two nights as part of Children in Need for the 30th anniversary of Doctor Who. In this story, the Rani attempts to trap the first seven incarnations of the Doctor in a time loop. She was also seen to be travelling with a companion called Cyrian.

Other appearances
Pip and Jane Baker wrote the Rani as the lead in the BBV audio drama The Rani Reaps the Whirlwind, following on from Time and the Rani, and also wrote her as the villain in a Choose Your Own Adventure-style children's game book entitled Race Against Time.

The Rani appears in the Virgin Missing Adventures spin-off novel State of Change by Christopher Bulis. Here, the Master escaped the Rani's TARDIS in The Mark of the Rani by splitting the console room from the rest of it, leaving the Rani adrift in a space-time bubble until she encountered a benign entity that created a distorted pocket reality where the Egyptians possessed 20th-century technology due to their access to the databanks of a duplicate of the Doctor's TARDIS console. The Rani tried her hand at political machinations in this reality before the intervention of the Doctor breaks her control over the entity, at which point she escaped in her repaired TARDIS.

The Rani is mentioned in BBC Books' Eighth Doctor Adventure The Ancestor Cell, by Peter Anghelides and Stephen Cole. The Eighth Doctor's former companion, Fitz, now Father Kreiner of Faction Paradox, claims to have killed the Rani as well as the Master (during the "Second War in Heaven" described in Lawrence Miles' EDA: Interference: Book One), and now displays their skulls as trophies. (Although the authenticity of the latter is in doubt).

The Past Doctor Adventure Divided Loyalties, by Gary Russell, states that the Rani was one of a group of promising young Time Lords called "the Deca" which included many future renegades, including the Doctor and the Master. The novel also gives her given name (or at least its first syllables) as Ushas (a reference to the Vedic goddess of that name).

The Rani briefly appears in an artificially created parallel universe in the Past Doctor Adventures novel The Quantum Archangel. In this reality she, the Master, the Meddling Monk, and Drax are posing as a group of German scientists.

The short story "Rescue", by David Roden (who also wrote Dimensions in Time), reveals how the Rani rescued Cyrian from a Cyberman invasion of his home planet. It was published in the Doctor Who Yearbook 1995.

The Rani's TARDIS
Unlike the Doctor's TARDIS, the Rani's TARDIS has a fully functional chameleon circuit, and can still disguise itself wherever it lands. It can, however, be opened with the Doctor's TARDIS key.

In Mark of the Rani, the Rani hides her TARDIS (disguised as a cabinet) behind a screen, and has managed to link it to, as the Doctor says, a Stattenheim remote control, which he describes as "genius". It is in this TARDIS that she and the Master get trapped with a gradually growing Tyrannosaurus rex embryo.

In Time and the Rani, her TARDIS appears as a reflective pyramid. She is eventually trapped by the Tetraps in her TARDIS.

Television episodes

 * The Mark of the Rani by Pip & Jane Baker
 * Time and the Rani by Pip & Jane Baker
 * Dimensions in Time by John Nathan-Turner and David Roden (charity episode, non-canon)

Audio plays

 * The Rani Reaps the Whirlwind by Pip and Jane Baker

Novels

 * State of Change by Christopher Bulis (Virgin Missing Adventures)
 * Divided Loyalties (appears in flashbacks) by Gary Russell (BBC Past Doctor Adventures)
 * Race Against Time by Pip & Jane Baker (Find Your Fate)

Annual

 * Rescue by David Roden (Doctor Who Yearbook 1995)