The Randomizer: Time and the Rani
Jan. 27th, 2015 07:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatThe best that can be said for Time and the Rani is that it probably could have been worse. There are a few nice touches and it is mostly pointless and repetitive rather than embarrassingly bad. But in places it is embarrassingly bad, mostly it is, at best, pointless and repetitive and the science stinks to high heaven.
When I say the science stinks to high heaven, I don't just mean that its word salad level wrong (which it is), but that the science is being used to drive the plot from point A, to point B to point C, but because the science is all technobabble word salad this means the plot amounts to Technobabble A is happening in order to achieve Technobabble B which is wanted to achieve Technobabble C which will cause Technobabble D which, as a side effect will wipe out the planet - but don't worry we can fix it all by blowing it up. Most of the plot revolves around first uncovering Technobabble A and from there deducing this means Technobabble B which means everyone has to find out that this is for Technobabble C - you get the point. Technobabble C, incidentally, is a substance called loyhargil which is an anagram of Holy Grail because Pip and Jane Baker think that kind of thing is clever. But the problem is that the plot basically therefore reduces to solving made-up problem A by using made-up solution B only to discover that now you have made-up problem C. Since the technobabble barely rises to word salad level its not even the case that there is anything particularly linking A to B to C, each just comes out of nowhere and all basically look like excuses to keep the characters running around.
On the plus sides the Lakertyians look surprisingly good (given their predilection for pale pink, orange and yellow) and someone has put some thought into how they should move given they are related to birds/reptiles. The idea of the tetraps having 360 degree vision is interesting although the story's attempts to render this visually are a failure (tame layman only noted the fourth eye in the final episode and had entirely missed the fact that the weird vision effects associated with the tetraps were an attempt to convey a 360 degree view). The Rani impersonating Mel is, at least initially, amusing. The bubble booby traps look good.
I run out of good points around there. Mel is better here than she was in The Ultimate Foe but I'm not sure that's a recommendation. You get the impression that the script writers are still trying to write their perception of Bonnie Langford's public persona, and that they don't like that public persona very much.
I think you could make a plausible argument that this is the nadir of 1980s Who. While there is lots to criticise in Eric Saward's approach to the show it produced a few really excellent episodes and its failures were at least interesting. In Time and the Rani the show seems to be rudderless, incoming script editor Andrew Cartmel's distinctive style is nowhere in evidence (although you can begin to see it in crude form in the next story) and one has to assume that most of the work on this story was done in the gap between Saward abruptly resigning and Cartmel being appointed to replace him. The lack of anyone with editorial oversight is painfully apparent.
It's such a bad story that it hard to draw many conclusions about the Rani from it, but I am inclined to think that she is less successful as the main villain than as the amoral commenter upon the Doctor and the Master's rivalry. The moment she takes central stage, she is just another sociopathic megalomaniac scientist in a long line of the same. Kate O'Mara is working hard to breath life into her but it's a thankless task. Similarly Eric Pickering and Wanda Ventham are working hard to convey dignity in despair but are stuck with the lacklustre script and pedestrian direction that bleeds any sense of urgency or emotion from the story.
It is interesting that both Sylvester McCoy and Jon Pertwee came into the show with a broadly comic background upon which the production teams intended to capitalise. In both cases, of course, their portrayal rapidly took a different direction, Pertwee into the action hero and McCoy into the arch-manipulator. Time and the Rani gives us a glimpse of what the comic seventh Doctor might have been like, with his malapropisms and stagey prat falls. It is notable, perhaps, that all the fight scenes in this episode look very staged and many rely on the actors performing falls and rolls without the finesse of timing needing to make these look convincing.
At the end of the day, it has some interesting features but the bottom line is that it's really not very good.
When I say the science stinks to high heaven, I don't just mean that its word salad level wrong (which it is), but that the science is being used to drive the plot from point A, to point B to point C, but because the science is all technobabble word salad this means the plot amounts to Technobabble A is happening in order to achieve Technobabble B which is wanted to achieve Technobabble C which will cause Technobabble D which, as a side effect will wipe out the planet - but don't worry we can fix it all by blowing it up. Most of the plot revolves around first uncovering Technobabble A and from there deducing this means Technobabble B which means everyone has to find out that this is for Technobabble C - you get the point. Technobabble C, incidentally, is a substance called loyhargil which is an anagram of Holy Grail because Pip and Jane Baker think that kind of thing is clever. But the problem is that the plot basically therefore reduces to solving made-up problem A by using made-up solution B only to discover that now you have made-up problem C. Since the technobabble barely rises to word salad level its not even the case that there is anything particularly linking A to B to C, each just comes out of nowhere and all basically look like excuses to keep the characters running around.
On the plus sides the Lakertyians look surprisingly good (given their predilection for pale pink, orange and yellow) and someone has put some thought into how they should move given they are related to birds/reptiles. The idea of the tetraps having 360 degree vision is interesting although the story's attempts to render this visually are a failure (tame layman only noted the fourth eye in the final episode and had entirely missed the fact that the weird vision effects associated with the tetraps were an attempt to convey a 360 degree view). The Rani impersonating Mel is, at least initially, amusing. The bubble booby traps look good.
I run out of good points around there. Mel is better here than she was in The Ultimate Foe but I'm not sure that's a recommendation. You get the impression that the script writers are still trying to write their perception of Bonnie Langford's public persona, and that they don't like that public persona very much.
I think you could make a plausible argument that this is the nadir of 1980s Who. While there is lots to criticise in Eric Saward's approach to the show it produced a few really excellent episodes and its failures were at least interesting. In Time and the Rani the show seems to be rudderless, incoming script editor Andrew Cartmel's distinctive style is nowhere in evidence (although you can begin to see it in crude form in the next story) and one has to assume that most of the work on this story was done in the gap between Saward abruptly resigning and Cartmel being appointed to replace him. The lack of anyone with editorial oversight is painfully apparent.
It's such a bad story that it hard to draw many conclusions about the Rani from it, but I am inclined to think that she is less successful as the main villain than as the amoral commenter upon the Doctor and the Master's rivalry. The moment she takes central stage, she is just another sociopathic megalomaniac scientist in a long line of the same. Kate O'Mara is working hard to breath life into her but it's a thankless task. Similarly Eric Pickering and Wanda Ventham are working hard to convey dignity in despair but are stuck with the lacklustre script and pedestrian direction that bleeds any sense of urgency or emotion from the story.
It is interesting that both Sylvester McCoy and Jon Pertwee came into the show with a broadly comic background upon which the production teams intended to capitalise. In both cases, of course, their portrayal rapidly took a different direction, Pertwee into the action hero and McCoy into the arch-manipulator. Time and the Rani gives us a glimpse of what the comic seventh Doctor might have been like, with his malapropisms and stagey prat falls. It is notable, perhaps, that all the fight scenes in this episode look very staged and many rely on the actors performing falls and rolls without the finesse of timing needing to make these look convincing.
At the end of the day, it has some interesting features but the bottom line is that it's really not very good.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-28 08:51 pm (UTC)