The 3rd serial of the 22nd season is The Mark Of The Rani. It's the 140th serial and it's 2 45 minute episodes first aired February 2-9 1985. Colin Baker is still the 6th Doctor and Nicola Bryant is the companion Peri Brown. The script is by Pip and Jane Baker and directed by Sarah Hellings. The Tardis is pulled off course and winds up in England in the 19th century. They are near the town of Killingworth where Lord Ravensworth is planning a conference of men of science. The local luddites are attacking the mine and the machinery. That mine and machinery are part of a large group of museums and historic sites called the Ironbridge Gorge Museums. They were important in the Industrial Revolution. George Stevenson is the scientist who works for Lord Ravensworth. Both men are based on the real people.
There are two villains this story. The Master (Anthony Ainley) has managed to escape the fire from his previous appearance. He's managed to pull the Doctor's Tardis to him. Unfortunately the other villain, a banished Time Lord called the Rani (Kate O'Mara), has a evil plan going on. It's not evil to her of course, she's just a heartless scientist who has some work to do. She's removing a chemical from people's brains and that turns them into raving lunitics. Not a problem to the Rani, she doesn't care one way or another.
The Doctor and Peri run about a bit, get caught a bit, escape a bit and then put things back nearly right. At the end of the episode the Master and the Rani wind up in her Tardis (below) which the Doctor has fiddled with. They blast off through space and time at an enormous rate with a growing T-Rex in their control room. I know they will be back, they mention it on the commentary. The Doc and Peri leave in their Tardis. It was a fairly entertaining program that might have been better with just one villain. It's what Anthony Ainley would say later on. Colin Baker and Kate O'Mara discuss that on the commentary.
I enjoyed the commentary with Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant and Kate O'Mara. There's a making of with the cast and crew of the serial, some continuity announcements from the broadcast hidden in an Easter Egg, a Now and Then look at the locations, a short bit on the creation of the music, some deleted scenes, the info track, a clip with Colin and Nicola on Saturday Superstore, a segment on the Ironbridge Gorge museums from an episode of Blue Peter, pdfs of the 1985 Doctor Who Annual and the Radio Times listing.
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