10 Huge Doctor Who Moments Everyone Was Waiting For (That Never Happened)

1. High Profile Actress Is The Rani

Doctor Who The Giggle David Tennant Matt Smith Ncuti Gatwa
BBC Studios

From Sarah Lancashire in Partners in Crime to Indira Varma in Rogue, Doctor Who fans are always expecting high-profile female guest stars to be playing classic Time Lord villain the Rani.

As if that's the only possible villain character an actress can play.

Series 8 had two potential Rani appearances when Keeley Hawes was cast in Time Heist, and Michelle Gomez first appeared in Deep Breath.

Gomez's reveal as the Master in Dark Water was a brilliant bit of misdirection by Steven Moffat, not least because everyone was expecting her to be the Rani! The usual suspects were even annoyed when Gomez was revealed as the Master because Moffat had apparently "ruined" a classic character when a perfectly good female Time Lord villain is right there.

Except, she isn't. The Rani was the creation of Pip and Jane Baker, and so the use of the character has to be cleared by their estate.

While that doesn't mean it could never happen, it makes things much more complicated, and it's telling that the character has barely appeared in expanded media stories over the last 20 years, let alone in the main show!

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Citizen of the Universe, Film Programmer, Writer, Podcaster, Doctor Who fan and a gentleman to boot. As passionate about Chinese social-realist epics as I am about dumb popcorn movies.