Season 22, Episode 3 | 2 parts | First broadcast: 2–9 February 1985 | Writers: Pip and Jane Baker | Director: Sarah Hellings
Cast
- Colin Baker as the Doctor
- Nicola Bryant as Peri Brown
- Anthony Ainley as the Master
- Kate O’Mara as the Rani
- Terence Alexander as Lord Ravensworth
Summary
Landing amid the Luddite uprisings of Industrial Revolution England, the Doctor and Peri discover that ordinary miners are being transformed into mindless, violent brutes by mysterious means. The culprit turns out to be a fellow renegade Time Lord, the ruthlessly scientific Rani, whose experiments on the local populace intersect with a scheme by the Doctor’s old adversary the Master, drawing all three into a dangerous confrontation amid the era’s social unrest.
Interesting Facts
- This story introduces the Rani, played by Kate O’Mara, a coldly amoral fellow Time Lord who would go on to become a recurring adversary.
- It marks a rare team-up of two of the Doctor’s most prominent rivals, the Rani and the Master, working at cross purposes within the same plot.
- The serial was written by the husband-and-wife team Pip and Jane Baker, who would go on to contribute several more scripts to the era.
- Location filming took place at Ironbridge Gorge Museum in Shropshire, using its preserved industrial-era buildings to evoke the historical setting.
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