Another Time Lord infamously crawls out of the woodwork...

School trips were always like a lottery. On the one hand, you'd strike gold with trips to fairgrounds and theme parks – normally at the end of term. On the other, you'd be led zombie-like around some stuffy museum by some moth-eaten, upper-crust old curator – you know the sort I mean: a bit like the annoying, gap-toothed, bow-tied posho who presents Bargain Hunt. A great cure for insomnia, but a blow to kids who wanted a bit more than a 5-hour lecture on Victoria's and Albert's eating habits.

Actually, today, as a moth-eaten 36-year-old, I don't mind museums so much. It's probably because there's no irritating tour guide to send me into a coma. So with that in mind, I thought that I'd find The Mark Of The Rani marginally more interesting than when I was 10 – but no. Even several amounts of strong black coffee couldn't keep me awake first time around, so I had to suffer the fate of having to sit through this nonsense again. That's the price you pay for being a smart-arse critic with great big delusions of comedy genius.

The Mark Of The Rani is something of an oddity in a season that wallows through the mire of death and decay. By contrast, it's a singularly genteel romp that takes you back in time to 19th century Killingworth. It's the return of the pseudo-historical, as two renegade Time Lords spread fear and havoc throughout the area for their own personal gains. Not only do we have The Master, we now have a brand new pantomime Time Lord villain called The Rani, a chemical genius who's turned to the fabled dark side.

"Let's make no bones about it, The Mark Of The Rani is deeply boring"

That actually sounds like quite a good premise for a story, but let's make no bones about it, The Mark Of The Rani is deeply boring. It's also saddled with some of the most preposterous dialogue ever heard on TV, which can only mean one thing. The debut of Pip and Jane Baker (good friends of Chris Chibnall, apparently).

Pip and Jane have not had an easy ride in Doctor Who land. Their scripts have received mixed reviews, to put it mildly, but their main overriding trait is to force their characters to say complete and utter bilge. Now I'm all for scripts which don't talk down to viewers, and if that means the occasional big word, then so be it. The problem with Pip and Jane scripts is that characters are no longer people, they're walking dictionaries. They spew forth long, clunky sentences which are so ridiculously OTT, they make the stories seem artificial and false as a result. It's like that Blackadder episode 'Ink And Incapability' in which Edmund tries to catch out Dr Johnson with absurdly tricky words that aren't in the first edition of his dictionary. A good example in this story is when The Master should say to The Rani that she's lucky, just like most normal people would. Instead, he says: "Fortuitous would be a more apposite epithet!" Eh? That's not a sentence, that's a Countdown addict's pathology sheet.

Sadly, Mark Of The Rani is crammed full of this verbal diarrhoea, and so comes across as stagy, artificial and pompous. The characters suffer badly, coming across as hammy brainboxes on puppet strings. Take the endless bickering between The Rani and The Master. We don't get any explanation of how The Master survived his cremation in Planet Of Fire – he comes up with a glib explanation of how "I am indestructible, the universe knows that!" It's a shame – Planet Of Fire would have made a fitting last story, especially when The Master is reduced to a laughing stock again in Mark. Here, he's initially making a living as a Worzel Gummidge impersonator. Apparently, The Master can speak Worzeleze backwards, and has a collection of Worzel heads previously unheard of, but this is still a comedown. Worse still, he's forced to be the incompetent second banana to The Rani. She's none too impressed by his "I am the Master and you will obey me" schtick, and effectively passes this off as old hat – something of a damning indictment.

"Forever proclaiming her own self-brilliance and genius, The Rani is really no more than a She-Master, a kind of one-woman outer space Dynasty cast"

Mind you, The Rani's a fine one to talk. Forever proclaiming her own self-brilliance and genius, The Rani is really no more than a She-Master, a kind of one-woman outer space Dynasty cast. Again, it's pure pantomime villainy, although having said that, Kate O'Mara's performance is positively subdued when compared with her jaw-droppingly shocking turn in Time And The Rani. At least The Rani does have some motivation for her actions – she's collecting brain fluid from a gaggle of grunting pit workers which she can take to Miasimia Goria's population who can't rest – although really all she has to do is show them this story in its entirety and they'd be out for the count in minutes. And The Rani's motives are at least more believable than The Master, who's just hellbent on creating a powerbase on Earth with an artificially advanced society of Industrial Revolution big brains. Still, the non-stop bickering between the two gets tiresome very easily, and drags down an already weak storyline. In fact, compared to these two, the usually squabbling Doctor and Peri seem like best friends.

Talking of which, at least The Doctor and Peri do get some good material. The bombastic dialogue is tailor-made for the larger than life 6th Doctor, and Colin Baker's evidently relishing the opportunity. His stunt for part one's Down T'Pit cliffhanger is also one hell of an achievement. Peri at least isn't so much the complaining damsel in distress of her recent stories, and it's nice that she actually gets to put her botanical skills into practice, as she plans to concoct a sleeping draught for the affected miners. There's even an amusing line when they are both asked what they get up to in the TARDIS: "Argue mostly," says The Doctor, simply.

The rest of the characters are largely undistinguished. Lord Ravensworth is about the best of the bunch, played with gusto by Terence Alexander (better known as Charlie Hungerford from Bergerac). Peter Childs is also good as Ward Snr, as is Gawn Grainger as Stephenson, although oddly, for a historical legend, he isn't featured as heavily as he would be nowadays. If they were to make Mark Of The Rani today, more would be made of Stephenson and his achievements, but interestingly, he gets quite low-key treatment in the finished product.

Another interesting thing about this is that season 22, from now on, tends to feature at least one genius. Dastari. Herbert Wells. Stengos. For a season that's so steeped in blood, it incongruously looks at the treatment of brilliant minds. More often than not, we see how the talents of these high brains are misused – Dastari and Stengos are the obvious candidates. In Mark Of The Rani though, the difference is that Stephenson is allowed to carry on his good work – time isn't rewritten with an untimely end – he's instead revered as a pioneer in his field. Stephenson is the only genius in the season to be portrayed in a sympathetic light – he's not used as a human guinea pig for experimentation, coerced into evil or portrayed as a comedy buffoon – and this at least works to the story's advantage.

"You can have the best production values in the world, but they don't mean a thing when the story's not up to scratch"

Sarah Hellings makes her lone directorial contribution to Doctor Who. Like most one-off Who directors, she proves to be very good at her job, and helms Mark Of The Rani with great confidence. In fact, while the story and script are seriously lacking, the production is quite impressive. The location filming is authentically bleak, the costume design is equally well-studied, while Paul Trerise's interiors are excellent – the interior of the Rani's TARDIS is a good example, with that cool new central console.

It's just a shame that this production crew couldn't have been assembled for a better story. The Mark Of The Rani does its level best to sound all grown up and intelligent, but by contrast, it includes some deeply silly ideas which wouldn't look out of place in an episode of Rentaghost. The most infamous example is the 'death' of bland robot boy Luke Ward, who's turned into a tree by one of The Rani's dastardly mines. Worse still, the Luke tree still gets to waggle its branches about – which is just about as silly as you can get in Doctor Who. And at the end, The Master and The Rani are terrorised by a giant muppet dinosaur, which looks equally naff.

Stupid ideas and a dull plot. You can have the best production values in the world, but they don't mean a thing when the story's not up to scratch. The Mark Of The Rani is at least a gentle diversion from the relentless violence and horror of season 22, but it's just a shame that the story couldn't have been more interesting. As it is, I feel like I've just been bored into submission by the Doctor Who equivalent of a crusty old museum curator - full of his own self-importance, but with nothing really substantial to say.

John Bensalhia limbered up for this mammoth task with a full four-series review of Blake's 7, and writes professionally and recreationally all over the web. Check out his portfolio of work at Wordprofectors.

Check out John's previous Doctor Who review, Vengeance On Varos

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