Doctor Who's Russell T Davies, Anita Dobson and Alex Sanjiv Pillai on the return of the Rani and "colossal" two-part season finale Wish World and The Reality War
Doctor Who season two's momentous two-part finale Wish World and The Reality War will see the Doctor and the Rani go head-to-head in a monumental battle that will send shockwaves through the Whoniverse.
Originally played by Kate O'Mara, the Rani is a Renegade Time Lord and enemy of the Doctor who first appeared back in the 1985 classic serial The Mark of the Rani. Now, alongside Anita Dobson, the Emmy Award-winning Archie Panjabi joins Doctor Who as the Rani, who has been hiding in secret as Mrs Flood and meticulously waiting for her time to face the Doctor.
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What can we expect when the Time Lords cross paths? Showrunner Russell T Davies, Anita Dobson and director Alex Sanjiv Pillai reveal all...
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Russell T Davies (Showrunner)
Why did you decide to bring back the Rani?
She's a classic enemy of the Doctor. Whenever you introduce any woman into any role on Doctor Who, half the internet seems to conject that she's the Rani. Sometimes, you just have to go with it. I think she's great in two ways. She's a famous classic villain if you know her. At the same time, she's not up there with The Master, the Cybermen or the Daleks, she's just a little bit more niche. That's good. That allows her to become a new character for the newer audience, she's not weighted down in continuity. We don't spend a long time discussing exactly what she was doing in The Mark of The Rani (1985). She's fairly continuity free.
It's one of those things where you think we could have just made a new Time Lord and cast Archie Panjabi. That would have been wonderful. That would have been great. But, naming her the Rani leads us into this conversation about the character. It leads some children to BBC iPlayer, where they'll discover some great old stories with Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy.
For viewers who might not be familiar with the Rani, what can you tell us about their history with the Doctor?
She's one of the Doctor's enemies. She's a bit more interesting than simply being all evil because she was a scientist that was always more amoral than immoral. She'd do anything for science. In this story, we discover she's on her greatest experiment yet on a vast scale. Plus, she's coming back into a universe that's completely changed. There are no Time Lords. The Doctor thinks he's the last. That gives her a much bigger arena to play in. She's rarely operated on such a cosmic scale before, and this gives us a chance to scale her up.
She was played in the old days by Kate O'Mara who was a fine actor, a really fine actor. She was very famous in her day. She left Britain and became part of the Dynasty empire, she played Joan Collins' sister, Caress.
She also very openly and honestly did a lot of television in order to earn money for her own company to put Shakespeare on stage. She was a wonderful woman, and I wish I had known her. We dedicated the readthrough of this episode to Kate O'Mara.
How was it to write for the Rani?
Enormous fun, because I think it's a great character. I love Kate O'Mara's portrayal. But at the same time, it's kind of blank. You can put her into whole new areas. As I said before, she's now in a universe she's never been in before.
In the past, she was a Renegade Time Lord. Now, she's the only Time Lady in existence. So that ups the stakes for everyone. It was enormous fun. And once we knew we had Archie, that was a very big playground that opened up to us.
How did Archie playing the role come about?
It was an immediate offer. I think our director Alex (Pillai) had worked with her before. Also, one of our producers, Phil Collinson, had worked with her before on a BBC One series called Sea of Souls, just before she went to America and did The Good Wife. It's always very helpful when you can approach an agent, but also approach the actor with a text saying 'hello' at the same time.
She was just delightful. It was an immediate 'yes.' We're so lucky that she was free. She lives in America now and has such a lot of work over there, but fortunately our dates fitted. It was a very exciting day when she said 'yes.' It was the only offer we made.
What can fans expect from the two-part finale?
The Rani is famously a scientist, and now she's a scientist walking into a world where a Pantheon of Gods has been awoken, which is magic in the air. She simply finds it fascinating. To her, it's a different form of science, she's not there to reject it. She's a true scientist with a very open mind. True scientists have open imaginations. Saying, 'yes we can go to the moon,' 'yes we can travel in time,' 'yes, there's anti-gravity.'
The problem with her experiments and her ideas is that she doesn't care how many lives she loses along the way. We'll see her running experiments on a massive scale. The very first scene of the two-part finale will really take people by surprise as to what she's up to. And from then on, it never stops. It's a huge extravaganza.
Will Mrs Flood still be involved?
What you get now is the two Ranis working together. Mrs Flood is still calling herself Mrs Flood. As viewers saw at the end of episode six, it's a fantastically servile relationship where she sort of becomes the Igor to the Rani's Frankenstein. I can tell you, those two loved working together so much. It was beyond words. They had such a laugh together. I don't think we have any interviews or behind the scenes footage of them separately because they never left each other's side. They got on so well. It's a delightful partnership. It's really fun, and very powerful. The Doctor is immediately up against two enemies instead of one.
Everyone is coming back for the finale. We've got Ruby (Millie Gibson), Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave), Colonel Ibrahim (Alexander Devrient), Shirley (Ruth Madeley) back, and also Mel (Bonnie Langford) is back. Conrad (Jonah Hauer-King) is back too. The last we saw of Conrad he had been imprisoned, but the prison governor turned out to be Mrs Flood and she was unlocking him from his prison cell. He's now part of this big coalition of evil against the Doctor.
Anita Dobson (Mrs Flood/The Rani)
How hard was it to keep the secret of Mrs Flood's true identity?
It was very hard. Very hard indeed. You start to say a sentence and you think, 'No, I can't go down that road'. You have to do exactly what Russell (T Davies) does which is switch and take the conversation somewhere else. It was over quite a long period of time that I kept the secret, so it was hard. It was so exciting, though. I also had to keep my return to EastEnders quiet for a long time. So, I am getting really good at keeping secrets now [laugh].
How was it to film the bi-generation scene with Archie Panjabi?
It was so much fun. I saw the one they did with Ncuti [Gatwa] and David [Tennant] when Ncuti took over as the Doctor. I thought, 'wow, how did they do that?' When I got told it was going to happen to me and Archie, I was blown away. It was actually more difficult than you'd think, but it was great fun. It looked amazing. I have to say, Archie is a dream to work with.
How did you react to the news of who Mrs Flood really was?
I had a few suspicions of my own along the way. Throughout the series, my makeup artist and I used to discuss it, we'd say 'She's that… oh no, she can't be'. Another day, she'd say 'I know, she's this person', and I'd say, 'No, I don't think so'. I really wasn't sure. Once I found out, I had to be even more careful not to drop any secrets or give anything away.
The Rani is such an iconic character in the history of Doctor Who. What can you tell us about her?
She is a bit like the Doctor. She is the last Time Lady. I had thought for a while, 'am I the Rani?' A couple of other people asked me to, and I thought it would be exciting. When Archie came on board, I didn't quite understand it all until I learned we would be doing the split (bi-generation). Then I got it, we're part of the same thing. We are one, except she plays the bossy one, I sit quietly and make notes. It was quite an exciting alliance. It was good fun to play.
Archie and I clicked on the first day which is brilliant. That's what you hope for, this sympathy and connection between each other. We had a lot of fun. We worked on a big set for the most part of the finale, and it was mind blowing. I loved my costumes so much. I couldn't believe the stuff I was getting to wear. It was all so lovely.
What can you tell us about this two-part finale?
When I went in to do some audio dubbing, I was really looking at the episode thinking how fantastic it is. I asked if I could watch a little bit further on as I hadn't watched all my parts back before, I literally gasped out loud. They said 'I hope you don't mind but we filmed your reaction because it was so truthful and so amazing'. That's how exciting it is.
Can you describe the finale in one word or phrase, what would it be?
Fantastic! It's completely unexpected, very exciting and I am very, very proud to be part of it.
Alex Sanjiv Pillai (Director)
What's it like to come back and direct the two-part finale of season two of Doctor Who?
Russell (T Davies) asked me to come back while I was filming the Christmas episode (Joy to the World - 2024). I was overjoyed to be able to stay with the Doctor Who family. I finished the editing of the Christmas special, had a couple of weeks off, and then I was straight back into it. It really felt like I had never left.
What would you say the tonal differences are between the Christmas episode and the finale?
There are huge differences. The Christmas episode is a broad family episode. We wanted it to be warm and give us a sense of family and belonging, with an emotional understanding of the people that we love and may have lost. It includes all those emotions that Christmas really evokes. Like a warm cup of a tea.
For season two, the idea was to have a punchier, more dramatic, more tense, scary even, set of stories. The two-part finale, Wish World and The Reality War, is a culmination of all those things. We want to thrill, we want to shock, we want to absolutely terrify.
What can you tease us about the sets and the costumes that we'll be seeing in this episode?
At the heart of it is the Rani, who is played by the incredible, Emmy award-winning Archie Panjabi.
Her costume was a subject of many meetings with our incredible costume designer, Pam Downe. The idea was to make something that made her look powerful. One of the executive producers was talking about the original eighties look of the Rani and suggested giving it a bit of a punky spin. This developed into the spiky leather look for Archie, and it fitted her like a glove. She swaggers about in the costume like a woman in-charge of the entire universe, which is of course what she is.
We give her one of the largest sets I've worked on. The unusual thing about the set is that it has a ceiling. Phil Simms, our production designer, created a huge dome above, very much like you're walking onto a James Bond set. At one point we had four cameras on the set, one on a crane, as there was room for it, and that's important because the action in there is huge. We're talking about universe-spanning cosmos-defining action between the Doctor and the Rani, and we really had to show the scale.
What was it like to work with Ncuti, Varada and Millie?
They all have a really great chemistry. There's a close dynamic between Ncuti, Varada and Millie. I've got to say that's the secret of the Doctor and the companions, they have to really bounce off each other in real life and on set. They enjoy being around each other, and I think the camera shows that.
This episode will go down in history with the re-introduction of the Rani. What was it like keeping this secret?
It's easy to keep secrets on Doctor Who, because we know how much it means. I don't want to let anyone down on the creative side or on the fan side by giving away story points.
I've been a Doctor Who fan all of my life and I'm very privileged to be part of that team, and it's therefore very easy to know the importance of the story material.
I was thrilled to know that the Rani was coming back. I was more thrilled when Archie came on board. I've known her for a number of years, and I've worked with her before. And wow, she embodies the part.
What can you tell us about Archie Panjabi and Anita Dobson's dynamic?
It was like they had known each other all their lives! Anita Dobson, like Archie, is the most fabulous, interesting, pleasant and kind person. They spent their time between shots nattering away in the corner. They became great friends.
Mrs Flood and the Rani are two parts of the same character. Anita plays subservient to the more dominant side of the Rani which is played by Archie. So, on-screen a great dramatic dynamic created by Russell, and off-screen, a barrel of laughs.
If you could describe the episode in one word or phrase, what would it be?
Colossal.
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