The TARDIS arrives in the CAGE – not a trap, but the College of Advanced Galactic Education, one of the most prestigious academic institutions in colonised space.
Not a trap. Or is it?
The Doctor’s here to receive an honorary degree in Moral Philosophy. But there’s something rotten at the heart of the Medical Facility. Someone is operating on the students. Someone without a conscience. Someone with access to a Sidelian Brain Scanner – a technology that hasn’t been invented yet.
That someone is the ruthless Time Lord scientist known as the Rani – in her new incarnation. But will the Doctor and Peri recognise the Rani’s hand before her trap is sprung?
THE RANI ELITE
After fifteen years of producing Doctor Who audio stories, it’s no surprise that Big Finish has brought back almost every single recurring character from the classic series for repeat performances. Yet, for whatever reason, it took them until now, the final release of 2014, to bring back the Rani – and due to the unfortunate passing of Kate O’Mara, Big Finish was required to recast the part. The result, Justin Richards’ “The Rani Elite” is yet another disappointment with absolutely nothing interesting to offer.
Remember “Time and the Rani,” in which the eponymous Time Lord collected the intelligences of a number of geniuses to create a super brain to operate a “time manipulator?” Well, she’s at it again, except now she’s collecting the intelligences of a bunch of college students in order to… reverse engineer chaos theory, I guess. In true Pip and Jane Baker tradition, Richards comes up with a nonsensical idea and then fails to explain it in any detail, so hooray for tradition. I suppose it’s in keeping for the Rani to be skulking around corridors and conducting experiments, but would it have killed Richards to give her something interesting to do? It’s such generic mad scientist material that Siobhan Redmond does nothing to elevate.
Speaking of which, let’s talk casting – I don’t know if it’s down to the script or the performance or both, but Redmond is absolutely dreadful in this. I’ve seen the performance praised for being “amoral” – thing is, “amoral” doesn’t mean “is a robot.” Her line readings are consistently flat, only exhibiting emotion in moments of brief irritation with the Doctor. There were moments when I thought she sounded like a computerized voice reading out the lines. Was this a deliberate choice, to play against Kate O’Mara’s incredible campiness to emphasize the characteristics of this new incarnation? A couple of briefly interesting moments do nothing to change the utterly boring nature of her performance, so I hope she shows some personality in future appearances.
So with the main hook of a new Rani a failure, does the story have anything else to offer? Sadly not, as the first three episodes consist largely of the characters running up and down corridors and getting captured. Ideas are raised and then forgotten – there’s a moment when a tearful Peri begs the Doctor not to allow her brain to be transferred again, and a desperate Doctor promises he’ll never let that happen. But the Doctor fails, and Peri briefly loses her mind again… and then once it’s put right, it’s never mentioned again. In fact, “it’s never mentioned again” applies to this whole trilogy: this is supposed to be a slightly older Peri who’s not so quick to trust the Doctor, but Richards writes everything like it’s 1985 again and completely disregards any sense of a character arc.
Here’s a serious question: why should I care about plot elements like that when the people producing the stories obviously do not? Time and again, we’re given the beginnings of character arcs that are disregarded so flagrantly it almost seems defiant. This reached its nadir with the final Hex trilogy, in which the *same author* that started an arc ignored it in the conclusion, but it’s almost as bad here. Are we going to do anything with this different take on Peri? Is her relationship with the Doctor going to change in any meaningful way? And it’s not just the characterization: there’s absolutely no imagination in the monthly range, no attempt to do anything different, no attempt to produce anything with even a hint of significance or thematic resonance. It’s telling that the best monthly release of the year was an anthology featuring mostly new authors and no major continuity references – and then right back to more of the same, culminating in the company’s first ever Rani story, which they gave to Justin Richards because of course they gave it to Justin Richards.
Sure, the production is fine, though I wonder how much of Redmond’s performance to blame on Ken Bentley. But the production is always fine. Sure, Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant are good. But Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant are always good. Sure, it’s entertaining enough and it’s not offensive or anything. But most Big Finish is entertaining enough and inoffensive. “The Rani Elite” is yet another in the increasingly long line of bland, boring Doctor Who stories called the Big Finish monthly range. I used to look forward to these.
This isn’t fun anymore.
4/10