Doctor Who “The Mark Of The Rani Part 2”

Well, the Doctor is about to be dropped down a deep mineshaft where some Luddites dropped the TARDIS.  Somehow, I think that will go less well for the Doctor.

Fortunately, he’s saved by a friendly scientist.  George Stephenson grabs the Doctor and he hustles the Doctor and Peri off to his lab, where things are safe I guess because Luddites can’t use doorknobs or something.

Now, one thing I liked about Part One was that the Rani didn’t much care to have anything to do with either the Master or the Doctor’s machinations.  But that doesn’t explain why the Master is here.  True, the Master’s own TARDIS diverted the Doctor’s and that’s why the Doctor is here, but it doesn’t explain why the Master is here.

Well, the Master has a plan, and he gets the Rani to help him out because if the Master’s plan succeeds, he’ll let the Rani come back to Earth whenever she wants to continue her experiments.  Considering her TARDIS has dinosaur embryos in them, she’s been doing experiments on Earth for a very long time as it is.

So, the Master’s plan is…to wait until Stephenson and his landlord have a big meeting of all the greatest minds of the Industrial Revolution and then enslave them to his will so he can make Earth a techno-utopia powerbase for himself.

That seems…a bit ambitious.

The Rani goes along with this, but she has other plans.

Those plans prove to be too much for the Master.

Yes.  Too much for the Master.

Ho boy.

So, let’s skip ahead a bit.  The Doctor and Peri look around the Rani’s lab after she left, and the Doctor even sneaks into her TARDIS at one point, hiding when she summons it using a remote control.  There’s some back and forth.  The Doctor takes the other two prisoner, then they capture him when he goes to help Peri since Peri was wandering the nearby forest near the Rani’s master plan, her big experiment.

The Rani…set landmines in the forest that turn humans into trees.

Wow.

Fortunately, or not, the only victims are Stephenson’s assistant, who was under the Master’s mind control, and a couple of the Luddites carrying the Doctor away to execute.  The Doctor manages to get to safety just as the Master and the Rani make a run for it in her TARDIS.

Which the Doctor sabotaged to send them to a far off point in the galaxy, keeping them both out of everyone’s hair for the foreseeable future.  Or longer when one of her T-Rex embryos starts maturing to adulthood during the messy time stuff going on in her TARDIS as it spins out of control.

So, I am assuming the Doctor got all the other mines, Stephenson’s landlord gets the TARDIS out of the mine, and the Doctor hands over the Rani’s chemical extractions to treat the remaining Luddites for their sleepless mania.  All things being equal, a neat way to wrap things up.

And next up, the return and final appearances (on the show at least to date) of two of my favorite past characters.