THE TWO RANIS

Mrs Flood’s identity has finally been revealed! Anita Dobson talks to Richard Atkinson about turning up “in the oddest of places”…

ANITA DOBSON

I t was a secret hidden in plain sight. No sooner had the mercurial Mrs Flood turned to the camera at the end of 2023’s Christmas Special and said, “Never seen a TARDIS before?” people cried: “She’s the Rani!” And then instantly dismissed it out of hand and started to pursue other lines of enquiry. It seemed – what? – too simple? Too geeky? Back then, it seemed more likely that Mrs Flood was embroiled in the mystery of Ruby Sunday’s missing mum. Since then, she’s been keeping tabs on the Doctor, popping up throughout time and space. Now we know. She is the Rani after all.

This is something that many fans have been hoping for ever since the series returned in 2005. Having waited this long, now two turn up at once. As you will now know, a scene crashes into the closing credits of The Interstellar Song Contest in which, following the example of the Doctor himself, Mrs Flood bi-generates… splitting in two and spawning a new version of the Rani played by Archie Panjabi.

A scant few of you may be asking “Who’s the Rani?” Well, she’s one of a handful of other rogue Time Lords who have shown up over the years, described by the Doctor as “a brilliant chemist” among other less-flattering observations. Unlike the Master, she’s not intent on villainy; her misdeeds are usually a byproduct of her unethical experiments on other lifeforms who she regards as beneath her. Perhaps what was clever was that Anita Dobson, who has gone on to dazzle us with a brilliant performance as the elusive Mrs Flood, didn’t seem to have quite the same motives as the original Rani played by Kate O’Mara back in the eighties and nineties.