Day 656: Time and the Rani Part 3

There are several problems with this episode that caught my attention. For instance, there's the fact that a deadly disco ball of death releases tiny computer generated blobs which are meant to be deadly insects, which is a laughable effect, and ruins any sense of terror that that scene could have brought. There's also the decision to make the Tetraps stun people with their tongue, which looks more silly than anything else, and one final thing that really irked me for some reason.

In the story, we cut away from the Doctor talking with the native people of Lakertya, the Lakertyans, to a 15 second shot of Mel being trapped in the Tetrap's base. The next scene is outside, where Mel being led by a Tetrap to the Doctor, where an exchange takes place, with the Doctor returning some vital piece of equipment to the Rani, while Mel is returned to the Doctor. But then, as Mel walks towards the Doctor, it is revealed that she is a hologram, and that this has all been a ruse by the Rani to get her equipment back. But this moment of revelation is devoid of any surprise because we have already seen Mel trapped with the Tetraps and therefore we know that something is fishy about her suddenly appearing outside without any explanation as to how this could occur. It sparks of lazy writing, as well as poor direction, and a complete lack of an editor on this project. Funnily enough though, the script editor, Andrew Cartmel, openly admits to having nothing to do with this story as it was commissioned before he arrived on the programme and Pip and Jane Baker didn't really take much input from him as they viewed him as inexperienced. Still, as has been shown here, maybe if they had listened to their editor, then they would have seen their mistake rather than just letting it happen and leaving us with a badly produced Doctor Who story.