The Rani

The Rani, as she appeared in The Mark of the Rani

**Ushas**, better known as **the Rani** and known more formally as **Ushas of Miasimia Goria**, or, in other accounts, as simply **Rani**, was a renegade Time Lady and member of the Deca. A brilliant but cold neurochemist, she knew the Doctor and the Master when all three were young and became an enemy of the former and an unwilling ally of the latter.

## Biography

### Youth and Exile

The Rani was the same age as the Doctor. (TV: *Time and the Rani*)

Some accounts gave the Rani's original name on Gallifrey as "Ushas" (PROSE: *A Brief History of Time Lords*) while another stated that the Scrolls of Gallifrey gave her true name as simply "Rani": unlike the Doctor and the Master, who had already acquired their nicknames at the Academy, she was an exceptionally successful and well-behaved student. (PROSE: *The Legacy of Gallifrey*)

Like all Time Lords, Ushas was taken from her family at the age of eight for the selection process in the Drylands. Staring into the Untempered Schism as part of a Time Lord initiation rite, Ushas was reported by one Time Lord historian to have been driven mad by what she saw in the Schism. (PROSE: *A Brief History of Time Lords*)

One account suggested that at the Academy, Ushas belonged to the Deca, being their most intelligent member. (TV: *Network*) She belonged to the Patrex Chapter. At the Academy, she was "good at everything", but at chemistry especially, (PROSE: *The Legacy of Gallifrey*) with neurochemistry being her specialty. (PROSE: *Time and the Rani*)

The last of the trio she formed with the Doctor and the Master to turn renegade and leave Gallifrey, the Rani was forced into her exile as a consequence of her having conducted an experiment (PROSE: *The Legacy of Gallifrey*) which resulted in some of her lab mice growing to an enormous size. The mice ate the Lord President Pandad IV's pet cat. They also bit the President himself, triggering a regeneration, (TV: *The Mark of the Rani*) and devouring Socra, Pandad's Chancellor, and a CIA agent. (PROSE: *The Legacy of Gallifrey*)

### Life as a renegade

#### Presence in Earth's history

While the Rani certainly did not share the Doctor's fondness for Earth, which she considered a "miserable planet," it was the focus of several of her research projects. She was also disdainful of humans themselves and called them carnivores because they ate animals. At some point, she had visited Earth in the distant past and acquired several tyrannosaur embryos.

When the test subjects on Miasimia Goria, a planet she had enslaved, became violently restless and uncontrollable as a side effect of her experiments on them, the Rani visited Earth at various points in its history to extract chemicals from the brains of select human specimens. Because the chemicals in question enabled the human brain to sleep, and because the absence of these chemicals made her victims as violent and uncontrollable as those from her previous experiments, the Rani deliberately chose periods of social unrest to visit, using the violence to conceal her presence and its consequences. She visited the Trojan War, the Dark Ages, the American Revolutionary War, and finally the Luddite riots in the village of Killingworth during the early 19th century where she used the local bath house as her base, posing as the old woman in charge of the premises.

The Master and, shortly after, the Sixth Doctor, interrupted her work. The Doctor sabotaged the navigational system of the Rani's TARDIS, trapping the Master and the Rani inside as time spillage caused the tyrannosaur embryos to grow at a dangerous rate. (TV: *The Mark of the Rani*)

#### On Lakertya

On the planet Tetrapyriarbus, the Rani made the acquaintance of and decided to employ, the Tetraps, led by Urak. With them, she invaded the peaceful planet Lakertya and put into motion a complex plan. The Rani abducted eleven scientific geniuses from across time and space, including Albert Einstein of Earth. Finally she decided to "collect" the Doctor and attacked his TARDIS. The Doctor was wounded as a result, triggering the regeneration into his seventh incarnation. The Rani channelled the intellects of the geniuses into a giant artificial brain which she believed could find the secret to manipulating strange matter, the key to making the planet of Lakertya into a Time Manipulator in order to correct what she considered to be errors in the universal timeline. Her first target was to be Earth, where she would prevent the extinction of the dinosaurs, creatures whose full potential she felt had never been truly realised. She considered the death of the native Lakertyans a small price to pay.

She used the artificial brain to find the answer as to how to create a lightweight substitute for strange matter since strange matter was incredibly heavy and could only be destroyed by strange matter. When it was devised she sent a missile containing the substance aimed at a strange matter asteroid. However, the Doctor destroyed the brain and redirected the missile. Urak betrayed her, leading the Tetraps against her, and they placed her under house arrest in her TARDIS on Tetrapyriarbus. The Rani was 953 years old when these events took place. (TV: *Time and the Rani*)

#### Back on Earth

While she masqueraded as Vice Chancellor at the University of Advanced Galactic Education a foremost authority of Moral Philosophy, the Rani encountered the Eighth Doctor and Guinevere Hoult, despite her expecting the Seventh Doctor to show up. The Doctor questioned her about her theories in one of her lectures. She tested the students and used the tests to find suitability for her experiments. Some of the students she experimented on were Liz and Rik, and she tried to experiment on Mike. The students were experts in their fields. She was making a biodigital virus dubbed the "Network". She was using a Sidelian Brain Scanner in her techniques, which was moving memories from one brain to another. The Rani then used Guinevere in her experiments, due to Mike being concussed. She hated the Doctor calling her Ushas and reminiscing about the Deca. When the Doctor tricked her she fell down through the floor on the way to her TARDIS, being arrested by Brigadier Bambera and UNIT. (TV: *Network*)

#### First Regeneration

The Rani spent months at UNIT facility 236 for her use of the Network. (PROSE: *Evolution*) During this time, she telepathically reached out to a Silurian hibernating beneath the base, and persuaded him to break her out. Upon being broken out, the Rani set up an HQ a few miles away at a warehouse where her TARDIS had been placed, using the Silurian, whom she dubbed 001, to collect technology necessary to help her repair her TARDIS. She created a chemical that heightened the evolutionary drive for survival, and tested it on 001, as well as any UNIT soldiers who were sent to recapture her.

After several weeks, Brigadier Winifred Bambera and scientific advisor Kate Lethbridge-Stewart called the Ninth Doctor and Lena Haigh to help them recapture the Rani. The Rani heard about this, and sent out 001 to capture Lena. However, when he entered the laboratory, he was incapacitated by the Doctor and Bambera after being distracted by the alarm system. When he came to, the Doctor was able to convince him not to trust the Rani. 001 offered to take UNIT to the Rani's HQ, and ultimately went there with the Doctor, Lena and Kate. The group were captured by the UNIT soldiers captured by the Rani, dubbed Aberrants, and the Rani personally hosted the Doctor, 001 and Kate, whilst Lena was escorted to the laboratory. She waxed lyrical about her anger at the Doctor for all he had done against her, and that she intended to leave in her TARDIS after causing the Doctor pain by injecting his companion with the chemical, even directing the group into her laboratory. When the Doctor asked what she intended to do with all the carnage she had caused, the Rani responded that UNIT could work that much out, only for Bambera to arrive with her troops at the HQ and start attacking the Aberrants. 001 managed to escape in the confusion and free Lena, with the Rani taking cover and ordering the Aberrants holding the Doctor and Kate to kill them, though this plan was foiled by Lena. 001 attacked the Rani, and even wrestled the chemical out of her hands. Before she could stop him, he injected her with it, causing her to reel back in pain. She managed to take a gun stolen during one of the raids and kill 001 with it before she felt a regeneration was about to begin, and escaped in her TARDIS.

Setting the console to dematerialise, the Rani cursed the Doctor and the human race for ruining her work yet again, before being overwhelmed by a blue light, screaming as she regenerated into her next incarnation. (TV: *Evolution*)

## Appearance

In her first incarnation, (PROSE: *Time and the Rani*) the Rani was slim, with tanned skin, and big hair that was sometimes curled. She dressed lavishly, wearing knee-high boots, tight leather trousers, and voluminous patterned tunics. With each outfit, she wore colour-coordinated nail varnish and eye shadow, and various rings and bracelets. (TV: *The Mark of the Rani*, *Time and the Rani, Network*) Despite retaining the same typical outfit after being broken out of UNIT by 001, the Rani did not wear nail varnish in her final venture. (TV: *Evolution*)

## Personality

The Rani was a brilliant scientific genius whose villainy came not from the usual variety of lust for power and suchlike, but from a mindset that treated everything (including morality) as secondary to her research. She was highly intelligent but extremely arrogant, narcissistic, ruthless, powerful and intensely cruel. She was known to enslave entire worlds in order to have a ready supply of experimental subjects and a place to carry out her experiments uninterrupted. Her major interest was in altering the biochemistry of other species, (TV: *The Mark of the Rani*) even believing that they should be thankful towards her for her experiments. (TV: *Evolution*) She was also capable of linking a remote control to a TARDIS, something that other Time Lords had not been able to manage themselves.

While she did appear evil, she found the Master to be truly evil and therefore stupid. She also said that his plans were so overcomplicated that if he walked in a straight line he would get dizzy. She didn't have a good impression of either of her old classmates when she encountered the Master and the Sixth Doctor. What evil she did she felt was necessary to her work. When the Doctor tried to convince her not to experiment on humans, she called them carnivores and asked if they ever thought of the lesser species when they sunk their teeth into a lamb chop; she had a conscience of some kind, as she was later willing to destroy her test subjects intending to kill the Doctor. (TV: *The Mark of the Rani*) Despite this, she would put her conscience aside in some circumstances if she felt particularly strongly on a subject, intending to inject Lena Haigh with a chemical in order to provoke grief in the Doctor. (TV: *Evolution*)

According to the Seventh Doctor, the Rani had nothing but contempt for all other Time Lords since her banishment from Gallifrey. However, after hearing this, the Rani laughed and stated that her contempt started long before her banishment. (TV: *Time and the Rani*)

## Behind the Scenes

* It was never made clear on-screen as to whether Kate O'Mara was the first Rani or simply the first one covered by the series. However, Pip and Jane Baker's novelisation of *Time and the Rani* confirms that the Rani is still in her first incarnation.