The great Sylvester McCoy hits the ground hobbled in a much-maligned debut outing...

For a Time Lord, oddly The Doctor has never had much luck with stories that include the word Time. Time-Flight. Timelash. Two examples of stories that have received a mauling from the fans, and to add to that list is the first Sylvester McCoy story, Time And The Rani.

Originally, the story was apparently called Strange Matter, which would have made for a far more interesting title. And it also sums up the story a lot better, since Time And The Rani is a very strange beast indeed. Way back in 1987, Doctor Who was still in a bad place. Following the 18-month hiatus, the show had effectively gone on trial with the mammoth wink to the audience called Trial Of A Time Lord. However, while Doctor Who did live to fight another day, it still came at a price. For one thing, Colin Baker was given the boot in unceremonious fashion, and for another, the show's future was still less than assured, given that the feedback from both fans and casual viewers wasn't as good as it could have been. The season received criticism from fans, who complained of convoluted plots and annoying elements like the cop-out of Peri's death or the introduction of Mel. And with poor viewing figures, the writing was still on the wall.

So the first story of the new season needed to prove a lot. It needed to be a strong, memorable tale to both launch the new Doctor and to reassure the fans to keep the faith. Time And The Rani holds no such promise – it's an audacious tale in that it's so staggeringly awful. You'd have thought that JNT had learned his lesson with the previous introductory story, The Twin Dilemma, which was just as bad, but no – Time And The Rani launches the new Doctor with the style of a drunken camel trying to negotiate its way out of a crowded flashmob.

Everything about the story of Time And The Rani is spectacularly wrong. The uninspired plot. The dialogue. The mind-boggling plans of the Rani. Even the title's rubbish, going back to my original point. Time And The Rani – a title so vague that even a question mark would make more sense. OK, so the Rani's trying to build a device called a Time Manipulator, but it's still a stupid name for a story. It's like renaming a classic story Time And Scaroth or Time and Mawdryn. Complete nonsense.

It's telling that the writers behind this whole ridiculous charade can only be Pip and Jane Baker. Interestingly, the husband and wife team had appeared on some discussion show in late 1986, and were forced to face the wrath of a couple of disgruntled fans who hadn't cared much for their scripts - one of whom was a young Chris Chibnall, a man who'd go on to pen magnificent classics such as 42 or the Torchwood stories Cyberwoman and Countrycide.

Sarcasm's the lowest form of wit, don't you agree?

Anyway, you can only imagine Pip and Jane vowing revenge on Chibnall and his Appreciation Society buddies – so what better way of getting your own back than writing a story that makes the second part of The Ultimate Foe resemble the works of Charles Dickens by comparison? Time And The Rani takes all the worst excesses of the Bakers' writing, and fiendishly multiplies them by ten billion. So we now have even more pompous dialogue than ever before – there's no point in me listing precise examples, since virtually every line sounds wooden and unreal. The plot itself is deeply silly – the Rani's back for more, this time, she's been occupying herself by stealing virtually every genius under the sun so that she can build her wretched time manipulator – in order to control all time, in case you hadn't guessed. She does so while hounding a luckless race called Lakertyans, who dance to her every tune in order to avoid painless death.

"A campy cardboard cut-out, the Rani turns out to be one of the least effective villains in Doctor Who ever"

So with the usual unpalatable mix of bad dialogue and hokey plot, the Bakers up the ante by making Time And The Rani the campest old tat that you ever did see. Take the Lakertyans, who resemble an Intergalactic Cyndi Lauper Appreciation Society – all dayglo costumes and OTT frightwigs. The Rani herself has also undergone a transformation into a ridiculously camp Dynasty bitch – appropriate enough, since Kate O'Mara had previously joined the soap a year before. The problem is, Doctor Who isn't and should never be some campy old space opera – but O'Mara (complete with big hair, shoulder pads and OTT make-up) struts, howls and cackles her way through the part like a pantomime dame on drugs.

Right from the pre-credits sequence when she snarls “Leave the girl, it's the man I want!” the Rani fast catapults her reputation as a formidable villainess into a deep, dark pit. The Rani may pride herself as a revered genius, but in fact, she's deeply stupid. Take her rubbish plan to pass herself off as Mel in order to trick The Doctor. We're not only asked to believe that she has a convenient Mel costume and wig hanging up in her wardrobe, we're also expected to believe that The Doctor is supposed to accept the Rani as the real Mel. Now this is taking credibility to the limit – OK, so The Doctor's undergoing a minor bout of regenerative amnesia, but surely even he can tell the difference between a fresh-faced 20-something with a squeaky voice and a craggy-faced 40-something with a husky voice trying to sound squeaky. It drags down the already terrible first part even further, and matters don't improve with O'Mara bellowing out clichéd threats and inane rants on a seemingly non-stop loop. A campy cardboard cut-out, the Rani turns out to be one of the least effective villains in Doctor Who ever.

"Sylvester McCoy's incarnation was sadly affected by both so-so scripting and events outside his control"

In the middle of all this nonsense is of course, the new Doctor. Like Colin Baker's Doctor, Sylvester McCoy's incarnation was sadly affected by both so-so scripting and events outside his control. Which is a great shame, since I've got a lot of time for McCoy's endearing portrayal of the Time Lord. Doctor Number Seven is a welcome return to the amiable clown with a dark side that made Patrick Troughton's Doctor so successful. And despite being ill-served by some of the scripts, Sylvester does very well, making his Doctor a likeable, more accessible figure than Colin's comparatively pompous, abrasive incarnation. We'll also see an interesting development of this Doctor, too – the light-heartedness of the 24th season slowly gives way to one of the most darkest Doctors – a Doctor who's not afraid to manipulate and deceive, whether he's tricking his enemies into blowing up their home planets or playing psychological mind games with his companion. It's a brave take, but sadly another one that's cut short by the head honchos at the BBC, who will ultimately get their wish of getting rid of the show in 1989.

That said, the new Doctor doesn't get an easy launch. The regeneration's a load of old rubbish for starters – it's blatantly obvious that Colin (understandably) didn't come back for the regeneration scene, and so Sylvester's asked to lie on the floor with a curly blonde wig, before video effects give way to the new model. We're then treated to possibly the worst title sequence and theme arrangement in Doctor Who's 48 years. A load of screwed-up pieces of paper are thrown at a giant revolving Lolo Ball in space, before giving way to a giant, gurning McCoy head which then winks cheesily at the camera – the head then cross fades to a tacky looking new logo which kind of looks like it was devised for a cheapo independent toy shop rather than a flagship sci-fi drama. All of this takes place against the musical backdrop of what sounds like an angry dog eating a ringing cordless telephone. What's worse is that both the title and end credits seem to go on for aeons – even if you fast forward both sets of credits on your DVD player, you're using up about five minutes of your valuable time.

Even after the titles fiasco, the new Doctor is treated as a dippy buffoon – whether he's pratfalling around, playing the spoons, or getting his sayings mixed up, the first impression of Doctor Seven is that of a lightweight goon. Admittedly, there are some interesting aspects lurking among the silliness. The more melancholy aspect of The Doctor is back with a vengeance as he muses on how he's drawn the short plank in the lottery of regeneration. By contrast, he does get the great line: “There's a turn up for the cooks! A rock that talks!” Altogether though, Sylvester overcomes this great big pile of limitations successfully – it's nice to see him blunder through the first part in his predecessor's costume that's clearly too big, and his ultimate choice of clothes is an improvement. “I'll grow on you, Mel,” he promises at the end, but I think that McCoy's casting is actually quite an inspired choice – and with better material, he'll certainly get plenty of opportunities to make an excellent Doctor in the future.

Poor old Mel gets a similarly raw deal with this story, as she seems to spend her time screaming. Yes that's right – screaming. She actually holds the world record for screaming the longest in Who – of that, I'm sure. At the reprise of part one's cliffhanger, she's shrieking and yelling for what seems like eternity at the thought of being blown to smithereens in one of the Rani's silly booby-traps – a giant bouncing ball. Did Bonnie Langford get a brand new voicebox as part of her contract, I wonder – on the evidence of all the ear-bursting screeching that she does in this story, you'd certainly hope so. And likewise, I'd like a new pair of ears, given that mine have been worn down to paté by Langford's incessant din.

Beyond these returning regulars are of course, the Lakertyans – yer bog standard Star Trek alien race of quaking weeds who are bullied into submission by the baddie of the week. Despite their horrible dress sense, some of the Lakertyans actually come across quite well – in particular, Beyus and Faroon, although that's to do with the excellent performances from Donald Pickering and Wanda Ventham, who are staging their mini 20th anniversary reunion of The Faceless Ones. There's also baby-faced Sarn, who functions purely as cannon fodder. Ironically, there's more life in her smoking skeleton than Karen Clegg's rather iffy performance – although the biggest dunce in the Lakertyan ranks is easily Ikona. Ikona's a sneering, foolhardy so-called rebel, although his so-called rebellious streak can rightly be misconstrued as behaving like an obstinate arse. Tell Ikona to do something and he'll take the advice on board for a fleeting nano-second, before crushing it beneath his shoe with a nonchalant sneer and a grumpy remark. This foolishness reaches some sort of pinnacle when he inexplicably pours away the vital antidote for the deadly killer insects. He proudly announces that he and his race will find their own cure, but instead of sounding all heroic and noble, he just comes across as a bit of a prick. Put it this way, if you gave Ikona a cheque for a million pounds to pay off all his debts, he'd probably rip it up and say something sarcastic in your face instead, the ungrateful half-wit.

And what's up with Urak, the giant, ugly cuddly bear thing that follows the Rani around like a bad smell? He's ridiculous, a fawning, snivelling creep, who's forever singing his mistress' praises even worse than the Gatherer did with The Collector in The Sun Makers. Mind you, at least he does have a change of heart in the end, as he manages to capture the Rani and hold her prisoner in her own TARDIS in a no-way-a-cop-out scene at the end.

"Time And The Rani suffers dreadfully from a childish, unimaginative script"

Amazingly though, Time And The Rani does have excellent production values on its side. Andrew Morgan apparently won the Polish A Turd award in 1987, and his efforts to make the best from a very bad situation does work in this story's favour. The special effects are very good, including the aforementioned bubble traps – the dreaded bangles of death are pretty good too, both reducing their hapless victims to smoking skeletons. The interior designs are also superb from Geoff Powell (especially for the large-scale Centre Of Leisure), and the OB filming on Lakertya takes an otherwise ordinary quarry and turns it into a suitably alien locale. The only misfire production-wise is the awful incidental score from Keff McCulloch. Actually, this is one of his better attempts, which kind of says it all – instead of inappropriately bad music, here it's just bad music – sounding a bit like unused Genesis demos in their Lamb Lies Down On Broadway era, as performed on a kazoo. Altogether though, judging by his sterling work on Time And The Rani, Andrew Morgan would get his reward by having another crack at Doctor Who with a far superior story in the next season.

Even with such flashy visuals though, Time And The Rani suffers dreadfully from a childish, unimaginative script. Sylvester's Doctor desperately needed a story that made a great first impression, but Time And The Rani's turgid plot gets a new era off to a less than auspicious start. Things would gradually improve in the late '80s with an increasingly confident production team, but in this instance, as the Fourth Doctor once claimed “Good looks are no substitute for a sound character”. Or in the case of Time And The Rani, any character would do.

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, The Ultimate Foe

See also:

Interview: Sylvester McCoy on Hobbit, Minister Of Chance, Who

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