Day 654: Time and the Rani Part 1

Oh dear. Everything was going so well, and then it all went downhill so quickly. Time and the Rani is not a very well written story. There were constraints, I suppose, that necessitated these problems, such as the fact that there was no script editor, nor an actor to play the Doctor, given that Colin Baker was fired from the programme after The Trial of a Time Lord. That said, there's still no excuse that Pip and Jane Baker, the story's writers, could manage to fail to deliver anything remotely good.

A lot of this comes down to the writing style, which feels overly simplistic and a little bit childish. For instance, we get a clunky scene at the beginning where it's revealed that the Rani has captured Einstein, which is revealed through dialogue as the Rani barks orders at her slaves, where a simple visual could have sufficed of her slave labelling the cell where Einstein is kept (which actually happens within the story as well, further questioning why this scene needs to happen). There's other scenes like this throughout the story that feel like they could have been better written, or directed, or acted, or just better in general. Still, unlike Arc of Infinity, I am at least finding some things to enjoy within this story, and I might mention some of them next time, as this story continues.