Time And The Rani
The TARDIS crash-lands on Lakertya with such force that the Doctor is forced to regenerate. He is promptly removed from the TARDIS by the evil female Time Lord biochemist known as the Rani, who is behind his rough landing. Melanie, also knocked out by the landing, is kidnapped by Ikona, a birdlike Lakertyan whose people are behind forced to cooperate with the Rani’s scheme. In the meantime, the Rani gives the newly-regenerated Doctor a drug-induced bout of amnesia, trying to use him to help her complete her latest experiment – but she doesn’t count on the rebellious nature that the Doctor carries through all of his incarnations.
written by Pip Baker & Jane Baker
directed by Andrew Morgan
music by Keff McCullochCast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Bonnie Langford (Melanie), Kate O’ Mara (The Rani), Mark Greenstreet (Ikona), Donald Pickering (Beyus), Richard Gauntlett (Urak), Wanda Ventham (Faroon), John Segal (Lanisha), Karen Clegg (Sarn), Peter Tuddenham, Jacki Webb (Voices)
Broadcast from September 7 through 28, 1987
LogBook entry & review by Earl Green
Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred, Ian Hogg (Josiah Samuel Smith), Sharon Duce (Control), John Hallam (Light), Carl Forgione (Nimrod), Sylvia Syms (Mrs. Pritchard), Katharine Schlesinger (Gwendoline), Michael Cochrane (Redvers Fenn-Cooper), Frank Windsor (Inspector Mackenzie), John Nettleton (Reverend Matthews), Brenda Kempner (Mrs. Grose)
Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred, Dinsdale Landen (Dr. Judson), Alfred Lynch (Commander Millington), Tomek Bork (Sorin), Joann Kenny (Jean), Joanne Bell (Phyllis), Peter Czajkowski (Sergeant Prozorov), Nicholas Parsons (Reverend Wainwright), Cory Pulman (Kathleen Dudman), Marek Anton (Vershinin), Stevan Rimkus (Captain Bates), Marcus Hutton (Sergeant Leigh), Janet Henfrey (Ms. Hardaker), Anne Reid (Nurse Crane), Mark Conrad (Petrossian), Christien Anholt (Perkins), Aaron Hanley (Baby), Raymond Trickett (Ancient Haemovore), Cy Town (Haemovore)
Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred, Anthony Ainley (The Master), Julian Holloway (Sergeant Paterson), Lisa Bowerman (Karra), Will Barton (Midge), Sakuntala Ramanee (Shreela), David John (Derek), Sean Oliver (Stuart), Gareth Hale (Harvey), Norman Pace (Len), Kate Eaton (Ange), Adele Silva (Squeak), Michelle Martin (Neighbor), Kathleen Bidmead (Woman)
The seventh Doctor is drawn to a jungle world, where he rescues a hapless bystander and discovers an elderly couple nearby. The couple have a unique relationship based on a mutual loathing that seems like it could become murderous at any moment – and they both have very dark secrets to hide. The fifth Doctor, meanwhile, finds himself locked out of the TARDIS, which has materialized aboard a doomed British ship in the North Atlantic. The ship is torpedoed by a German U-boat, and the TARDIS is lost at sea. The Doctor, along with an Irish woman from the British vessel, drifts along with the debris until taken aboard the German sub as a spy. Elsewhere, on the starliner Edifice, the sixth Doctor’s TARDIS arrives, coinciding with an experiment being performed on a time-sensitive creature known as the Temperon. But shortly after the experiment fails, the entire crew – with the exception of its android helmsman and a waitress who appears to have survived through pure luck – is killed, and the Doctor must find out why. Each incarnation of the Doctor is unaware that he is facing the same threat, but in different places and times. And each Doctor has a piece of the puzzle that could save their besieged home planet of Gallifrey.
In the present day, the Doctor and Ace arrive in a London gripped by fear. Terrorists seem to be going to extreme lengths to rid Britain of the ultra-right-wing New Britannia party and its Parliamentary candidate, Sherilyn Harper. The Doctor unceremoniously bursts in on Mick Thompson’s political talk radio show to make contact with a man named Walter who, with an accomplice who is now institutionalized, attempted to assassinate Harper and barely escaped with their lives after being attacked by…something. The Doctor postulates that the deadly entity is a non-corporeal creature which incites fear among its victims – and then feeds off that fear, often leaving the victims traumatized for life. Walter says that he can hear this creature in the voice of Sherilyn Harper, but as the crisis worsens and the streets become even more infested with terrorists – some of whom are not political agitators, but hired guns – it becomes apparent that the Fearmonger could be using anyone as its host… even, as Ace comes to believe, the Doctor himself.
The Doctor and Ace arrive on the rainforest world of Kar-Charrat, where expatriate Time Lord Elgin has become the librarian of the largest storehouse of knowledge in the universe. Elgin eagerly shows the Doctor his latest innovation: a wetworks facility which has assimilated all of this knowledge into a single consciousness. The Doctor is alarmed by this development, as it means that any invading force could take over the facility – and with it, all of the knowledge of the universe. Elgin admits that some races have tried to do exactly that, including the Daleks, but none have been successful. But the Doctor and Ace quickly learn on a first-hand basis that the Daleks haven’t given up – they intend to take over the library of Kar-Charrat and use the wetworks facility to create a new, all-knowing, all-powerful breed of Daleks. But the Daleks don’t achieve the desired results, even when the Doctor is forced to help – and everyone soon discovers that an even greater power than the Daleks exists on Kar-Charrat…a power which, if unleashed to rid the world of the mechanical invaders, could also exact revenge on a Time Lord guilty of enslaving Kar-Charrat’s indigenous creatures.
Pompeii, Italy, 1980 A.D.: A UNIT operative hastily takes charge of an archaeological dig at Pompeii when, in the ruins of the city that died in the eruption of Vesuvius, an inexplicable anachronism is unearthed – a British police telephone box, preserved in the ancient ash. The oddity is removed from the site and put in top security storage by UNIT. The Doctor is summoned to investigate, but – in his fifth incarnation – he chooses not to enter the police box.