8. Kate O'Mara- The Mark Of The Rani/Time And The Rani/Dimensions In Time
"I have the Loyhargil. Nothing can stop me now!" Kate O'Mara's first appearance as The Rani, an amoral Time Lord scientist, was relatively subdued- when you're playing against Colin Baker and Anthony Ainley's moustache twirling Master, you could be wearing all the shoulder pads in the world and still go un-noticed. That wasn't the case second time round. With Sylvester McCoy testing the Doctorial waters in his introductory story, Time and the Rani was O'Mara's for the taking. Re-entering the fray with the immortal line "Leave the girl. It's the man I want", O'Mara might have come straight off the set of Dynasty. In her red power suit and knee length boots, she brings a dash of Thatcherite glamour to an otherwise drab tale (never has a quarry standing in for an alien planet looked more like a quarry and less like an alien planet). Her performance can be read as a surrogate Maggie- this era of Who features a preponderance of female supervillains- although the script, by husband and wife bunglers Pip and Jane Baker, avoids that subtext. Mostly, Kate attempts to dramatically render their convoluted dialogue with the kind of steely scowl that tells us 'she might be a lady, but she means business. Of some kind'. It's not clear what a Loyhargil is (apart from an anagram) but O'Mara goes well over the top playing up to it. The Rani would return once more for Dimensions in Time, the charity Doctor Who/Eastenders crossover, in 3D, that some Whovians regard as slightly less bad than the Nanking Massacre but which does have O'Mara delivering the line "Pickled in time, like gherkins in a jar" with nonsensical conviction. Bring her back now, Steven Moffat.
Most OTT Moment: The Rani spends two episodes dressed up as Mel, The Doctor's dreadful companion, for reasons that are better left unsaid. For a serial that's pretty short on intentional laughs, this is actually pretty funny. O'Mara's performance is a withering parody of Bonnie Langford, from the absurd ginger wig (repurposed from a Christmas tree, perhaps) through to a cattily accurate impersonation of the patronising tone of voice she delivers all of her dialogue in. It's not so much over-acting as just plain bitchiness.