Doctor Who: 10 Things You Didn't Know About The Rani

Much like other Doctor Who stalwarts like the Daleks and the Brigadier, the Rani never actually belonged to the BBC. As creators Pip and Jane Baker weren't staff writers, the BBC and other companies had to approach them directly for use of the character.

Dylan Rees' book Downtime: The Lost Years of Doctor Who revealed that in the early days of Big Finish, the Bakers had declined to work with the company. Interviewed in the book, BBV Productions' Bill Baggs claims that Jane Baker was acting out of loyalty to him, due to a dispute with Big Finish's founders that's far too long and complicated to get into here.

It's therefore interesting to note that in 2014, shortly after Jane Baker's death, Big Finish released the first of two new Rani audios. In 2021, a year after the death of Pip Baker, Nicholas Briggs told the Big Finish podcast that there was a "complication" in obtaining the rights to the Rani from the estate.

It's possible that rights issues prevented the Rani from returning to TV earlier too, though whatever problems there may or may not have been have clearly been smoothed over by the time of Season 2!