The Rani (Doctor Who)

The Rani is a fictional character in the British BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who, portrayed by Kate O'Mara. She is a renegade Time Lord, and a nemesis of the series' title character, a Time Lord known as the Doctor. The Rani is an amoral biochemist who experiments on humans and other species, and considers everything secondary to her research. The character appeared in two classic serials, The Mark of the Rani (1985) and Time and the Rani (1987), before the original run of Doctor Who went off the air in 1989. The Rani later appeared as the principal villain in Dimensions in Time, a 1993 Doctor Who charity television special for BBC Children in Need. The character has since been featured in multiple Doctor Who audio dramas and novels.

Description
The Rani is a renegade Time Lord and amoral scientist who engages in unscrupulous biological experimentation on humans and other species. She is a nemesis of the series' title character, the Doctor, another Time Lord who is technically a renegade as well. Time Lords are an ancient race of extraterrestrials from the planet Gallifrey who possess the ability to regenerate into a new form when mortally wounded or killed, and who utilize time travel technology in the form of spacecraft called TARDISes. In the Rani's backstory, she is banished from Gallifrey as a result of her radical experiments. She is a contemporary of both the Doctor and his longtime enemy, the Master, the three having attended the Time Lord Academy together in their youth.

Radio Times described the Rani as "the renegade Time Lady who is as evil as the Doctor is good" and the Doctor's "archest of villains". Harry Beckett wrote for Doctor Who TV that "her Machiavellian personality and sheer doggedness in achieving scientific results made her a formidable foe and a person who you would not want to cross paths with." Caroline Frost of HuffPost UK called the Rani "one of the few characters to match the irrepressible [Doctor] for wit, power and supernatural abilities." The Rani's television portrayer, Kate O'Mara, described the character as "power-crazed" and "ruthless", noting that "one assumes that a creature such as the Rani, who is a scientist, is totally amoral and prepared to sacrifice all in the cause of science." Nur Hussein of SCIFI.radio called the Rani "iconic", writing that "Unlike the power-hungry villain archetype of the Master, the Rani was a ruthless evil scientist who wasn't interested in ruling the universe as much as she wanted to understand it, no matter the cost ... her amoral pursuit of science was an interesting foil for the Doctor." Doctor Who TV designated the character "an absolutely wonderful Doctor Who villain because her motivation is purely for scientific results." Mark Donaldson of Screen Rant noted, "The Rani didn't have the Master's obsession with the Doctor. She was never particularly interested in the Doctor and the Master's games." The character has also been described as glamorous, rapacious, cunning and evil, powerful and dynamic, dastardly and possessing fiendish cleverness.

While the Doctor's time traveling TARDIS is stuck with the exterior form of a 1963 police telephone call box due to an irreparable "chameleon circuit", the Rani's TARDIS is unbroken and retains its ability to disguise itself. Like the Doctor's, the Rani's TARDIS is paradoxically "bigger on the inside", with a similar console.

The Mark of the Rani (1985)
The Rani, portrayed by Kate O'Mara, first appears in the 1985 classic Doctor Who serial The Mark of the Rani, written by Pip and Jane Baker and starring Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor. When cast as the Rani, O'Mara was known as a prolific theatre actress with extensive credits on film and television. She had previously co-starred with Baker as business adversaries Jane Maxwell and Paul Merroney on the hit drama series The Brothers from 1975 to 1976. In 2013, O'Mara noted that the Rani had been specifically written for her.

In The Mark of the Rani, the Sixth Doctor's TARDIS is thrown off course and arrives in a 19th century English mining town during the Industrial Revolution. He and his human companion, Peri Brown (Nicola Bryant), encounter the Rani, a Time Lord and old acquaintance of the Doctor's who rules the planet Miasimia Goria. Her biological experimentation on the enslaved populace has heightened their awareness but inadvertently compromised their ability to sleep, turning them violent and plunging the planet into chaos. To restore order, the Rani has been harvesting the neuro-chemical that promotes sleep from human brains, carrying this out in violent periods of Earth's history so the resulting aggression and sleeplessness go unnoticed. The Doctor's longtime nemesis, the Master (Anthony Ainley), is also present, with his own plan to speed up Earth's development and use the planet as a power base. The Doctor eventually foils the Rani and the Master and the villains escape in the Rani's TARDIS, but the Doctor has sabotaged the navigational system and velocity regulator. As the ship spins out of control, one of the Rani's specimen jars containing a Tyrannosaurus rex embryo falls to the floor and begins to grow rapidly, leaving the Rani and the Master trapped by the creature.

Mark Braxton of Radio Times praised the scenes between the Rani, the Doctor and the Master, and called O'Mara's performance "spirited". The Discontinuity Guide by Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping noted that "the concept of the Rani mocking the ridiculous Master/Doctor rivalry is wonderful." O'Mara called The Mark of the Rani her favorite of the episodes she performed in the series. In her 2003 autobiography Vamp Until Ready, she said that while shooting The Mark of the Rani, she was treated much differently by crew members who did not recognize her while made up as an old crone, versus when she was transformed by flashy wardrobe, hair and "my most glamorous make-up." O'Mara credited Dynasty Joan Collins, whose sister O'Mara played on the series in 1987, for making "being an 'older woman' acceptable" in television and film.

Time and the Rani (1987)
O'Mara returned as the Rani in the 1987 classic Doctor Who serial Time and the Rani, again written by Pip and Jane Baker but this time starring Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor. The Rani is the only returning "arch-enemy" of the Doctor in the serial, and at the beginning of the story her attack forces the Doctor to regenerate from Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor into McCoy's seventh incarnation. Time Lord regeneration is a device used by the series since 1966 to accommodate the recasting of prominent characters like the Doctor. The 1987 novelisation of Time and the Rani explains that after the events of The Mark of the Rani, the Rani and the Master escaped the Tyrannosaurus rex because it broke its spine on the ceiling of the Rani's TARDIS due to its rapid growth. The end of Time and the Rani required O'Mara to be hung upside down like a bat, but after some blood vessels in her eyes burst, the studio nurse forbade filming her in that manner to continue. Shooting continued by turning the camera upside down and employing a wind machine to make O'Mara's hair fly upwards.

In Time and the Rani, the Rani forces the Doctor's TARDIS to crash on the planet Lakertya and triggers the Doctor to regenerate. Aided by bat-like alien Tetraps, the Rani has taken control of the planet and its peaceful inhabitants. She has created a giant "time brain", using intelligence drawn from geniuses across time and space, which she intends to use to make the calculations necessary to turn Lakertya into a Time Manipulator that would allow her to manipulate evolution on a cosmic scale. The Rani injects the Doctor with an amnesia drug, and disguises herself as his companion, Mel Bush (Bonnie Langford). She extracts information from his brain without taking into account his erratic nature, and he and Mel are eventually able to thwart the Rani's plans and free the Lakertyans. The Rani escapes in her TARDIS but it has been commandeered by the Tetraps, who take the Rani as their prisoner, having realized that she planned to let them die in the conversion of Lakertya.

Patrick Mulkern of Radio Times wrote that O'Mara's "arch delivery was the saving grace of Time and the Rani." Doctor Who: The Television Companion also praised the actress: "Another highlight is Kate O'Mara's performance as the Rani which, although undeniably camp and over the top, perfectly suits the mood of the piece and is never less than entertaining. She almost steals the show, in fact, and her impersonation of Bonnie Langford in the amusing sequence where the Rani fools the disorientated and drugged Doctor into believing that she is Mel is wickedly perceptive."

Dimensions in Time (1993)
The original run of Doctor Who went off the air in 1989. The Rani later appeared as the principal villain in Dimensions in Time, a 1993 Doctor Who charity television special written by John Nathan-Turner and David Roden, and supporting BBC Children in Need. The two-part special was a crossover between Doctor Who and the long-running BBC soap opera EastEnders, in celebration of Doctor Who 30th anniversary. Needing a returning villain for the special, Nathan-Turner chose the Rani because she was popular with fans.

In Dimensions in Time, the Rani attempts to trap the first seven incarnations of the Doctor in a time loop in Walford, the fictional setting of EastEnders. She has opened a hole in time, allowing her access to the Doctor's timeline and cycle through his lives, causing him and his companions to jump back and forth between past and present incarnations. The Rani has been collecting specimens of every creature in the universe to create a supercomputer, and at one point unleashes her "menagerie", including a Cyberman, a Sea Devil and an Ogron, to attack the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison). Her plan fails when the Seventh Doctor and his companion Ace (Sophie Aldred) overload her computer, sending the Rani, her companion Cyrian (Samuel West) and her TARDIS into the time tunnel.

Unproduced serial
In late 1984, Nathan-Turner engaged Robert Holmes to write a three-part story, later called Yellow Fever and How to Cure It, for season 23 of Doctor Who. The serial was to feature the Sixth Doctor, Peri and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) facing off against the newly-introduced Rani, the Master and the Autons, and would be shot in Singapore, where episodes of the BBC drama Tenko had been filmed. Once rights to the Rani were secured, all three episodes were commissioned together on 6 February 1985. However on 27 February 1985, BBC One announced that production of Doctor Who would take an extended hiatus, citing a decline in ratings and audiences' growing concerns over violence on television. While season 22 had consisted of 13 episodes, each with a runtime of 45 minutes, in the intervening months a new season 23 was conceived that would consist of 14 episodes at 25 minutes each. Holmes was asked to continue with the story but as six 25-minute episodes, this version seeing the removal of the Master. He completed a story outline, but ultimately Yellow Fever and How to Cure It and other planned serials were set aside in favor of a season-spanning arc called The Trial of a Time Lord. Thanks to fan uproar, Doctor Who returned after just 18 months, with the new season 23 airing in September 1986.

In the planned story for Yellow Fever and How to Cure It, the Sixth Doctor and Peri arrive in Singapore to find the Rani allied with the Nestene Consciousness to create Autons with bullets that can shoot around corners and hands that can melt the face of the adversary. The Master is also in Singapore, jealous of the Rani's arrangement with the Nestene and intent on interfering with it.

Revival
The original run of Doctor Who was broadcast from 1963 to 1989, and the series was revived in 2005. Doctor Who fandom has frequently asked for the return of the Rani, considered a popular fan-favorite thanks to O'Mara's standout performance. New casting announcements for female adversaries of the Doctor are typically met with fan speculation that a new incarnation of the Rani has been cast, as was the case with Sarah Lancashire in 2008, Keeley Hawes and Michelle Gomez in 2014, and Barbara Flynn in 2021.

In 2012, then-executive producer and showrunner Steven Moffat said, "People always ask me, 'Do you want to bring back the Rani?' No one knows who the Rani is. They all know who the Master is, they know Daleks, they probably know who Davros is, but they don't know who the Rani is, so there's no point in bringing her back." The following year, Harry Beckett of Doctor Who TV voiced his desire for the Rani to return, and noted that despite Moffat's comments, the producer had indeed brought back other lesser known old characters to the series. In late 2013, O'Mara said she would love to reprise the role, and that her age would be "an idea to be exploited." She explained, “To have a much older woman as your adversary, there's something interesting about that. She's learned so much over the centuries—it would be like in the fairy stories, where it's always the old woman who is the most frightening." O'Mara died in March 2014.

After being cast as the Fifteenth Doctor in 2022, Ncuti Gatwa voiced his desire to have his Sex Education co-star, Gillian Anderson, play a villain opposite him on Doctor Who. This renewed buzz about the Rani's potential return portrayed by Anderson, who had been discussed in association with the role as far back as the 2010 debut of Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor.

Audio dramas
The Rani, voiced by O'Mara, is the lead character of the 2000 BBV Productions audio drama The Rani Reaps the Whirlwind, written by Pip and Jane Baker. The story takes place directly following the events of Time and the Rani, with the Rani as the prisoner of the Tetraps. Condemned to death, she plots her escape while being forced to use her scientific knowledge to help her captors replenish their dwindling food supply: blood. The title of the audio drama was originally announced as Resurrection of the Rani.

At the time of her death in 2014, O'Mara was in negotiations with Big Finish Productions to reprise the Rani in a new Doctor Who audio drama. Producer David Richardson said: "The Rani's return was very much prompted by Kate ... Her agent contacted me and said that she would love to reprise the role with us, and when I mentioned this to executive producer Nicholas Briggs and script editor Alan Barnes they leapt at the opportunity ... Justin [Richards] wrote The Rani Elite for us, and we were just a few weeks away from recording when the terrible news reached us that Kate had passed away. At first, we were not sure what to do—until Kate's agent again got in touch again, and said that it had been Kate’s wish that we proceed with a new incarnation of the Rani."

Scottish actress Siobhan Redmond was subsequently cast as a new incarnation of the Rani, first appearing in the 2014 audio drama The Rani Elite, written by Justin Richards. In this Sixth Doctor audio adventure, the Rani attempts to reverse engineer chaos theory using the collective minds of the academic elite attending the College of Advanced Galactic Education.

Redmond's incarnation of the Rani returns in the 2015 audio drama Planet of the Rani, having been imprisoned for 90 years and escaping to seek her revenge against the Doctor. She arrives on the planet Miasimia Goria, a world she once ruled over, where the current leader, Raj Kahnu, regards her as his mother whilst also harbouring deep contempt for her. Kahnu, a genetically engineered humanoid who resides inside the body of a mechanical cockroach, later allows the Rani to leave the planet in a TARDIS survival pod that her previous incarnation had left there.

Literature
A novelisation of The Mark of the Rani, written by Pip and Jane Baker, was published by Target Books in January 1986. The Rani is the villain in Race Against Time, a 1986 Choose Your Own Adventure-style children's gamebook, also written by the Bakers, which is part of the Make Your Own Adventure with Doctor Who series. In the story, the Sixth Doctor recruits the reader to help him defeat the Rani and her dangerous Time Destabilizer. In December 1987, Target Books published a novelisation of Time and the Rani, written by Pip and Jane Baker.

The Rani appears in the Virgin Missing Adventures spin-off novel State of Change (1994) by Christopher Bulis, set after The Mark of the Rani. The Master has escaped the Rani's sabotaged TARDIS, but left her adrift in a space-time bubble until she encounters a benign entity that creates a distorted pocket reality where the Egyptians possess 20th-century technology, due to their access to the databanks of a duplicate of the Doctor's TARDIS console. The Rani tries her hand at political machinations in this reality before the intervention of the Doctor breaks her control over the entity, at which point she escapes in her repaired TARDIS.

The Rani is mentioned in BBC Books' Eighth Doctor Adventure novel The Ancestor Cell (2000) by Peter Anghelides and Stephen Cole. The Eighth Doctor's former companion, Fitz Kreiner, claims to have killed the Rani and the Master and now displays their skulls as trophies. The Past Doctor Adventure novel Divided Loyalties (1999) by Gary Russell features a dream sequence where the Rani is one of a group of promising young Time Lords called "the Deca" which include many future renegades, including the Doctor, the War Chief, the Meddling Monk and the Master. The Rani briefly appears in an artificially created parallel universe in the Past Doctor Adventures novel The Quantum Archangel (2001). In this reality she, the Master, the Monk and Drax pose as a group of German scientists.

The short story "Rescue", written by David Roden and published in the Doctor Who Yearbook 1995, features the Rani rescuing Cyrian from a Cyberman invasion of his home planet DV Acrol 8, and establishing him as her companion before the events of Dimensions in Time. The Rani returns in the 50th anniversary Sixth Doctor Puffin Books digital short story "Something Borrowed" (2013) by Richelle Mead. In this story, she poses as the fiancée of a Koturian nobleman to learn more about the species' unique form of regeneration, but is foiled by the Doctor and Peri.

Merchandising
The Danbury Mint released a Doctor Who Chess Set in 1992, featuring a pewter figurine of O'Mara's Rani as the Black Queen. Eaglemoss Collections produced a Doctor Who Time Lords figurine set featuring the Rani and the Inquisitor in 2018. Multiple collectible trading cards of the Rani have been produced:
 * 1994 Cornerstone Doctor Who Trading Cards: Series 1 Base Card #98 - The Rani
 * 2013 Topps Doctor Who Alien Attax Collectible Card Game - The Rani #206
 * 2015 Topps Doctor Who Trading Cards: Base Card #17 - The Rani

Reception
O'Mara's performance as the Rani has been widely praised, with her portrayal deemed both memorable and definitive. Nur Hussein of SCIFI.radio described the performance as "delightfully over-the-top", and Harry Beckett of Doctor Who TV noted, "She looked exactly how an evil Time Lady should appear ... O'Mara had a prepossessing sense of evil about her, a seductive look that could be both a sneer and a flirtatious smile." Dan Wilson of Metro wrote, "Kate O'Mara played the part to perfection. Powerful and dynamic, with more than a hint of dominatrix glam, she really made the part her own ... O'Mara soars above the bad writing ... If the Rani is to return, then the actor who takes the role would do well to take the best of what Kate O'Mara gave." The Rani has become a favorite among both fans and critics, who have clamored for her return to the series for decades.