SPOILERS! Don’t read any further unless you’ve already seen the sixth episode of Doctor Who Season two, The Interstellar Song Contest.
Mrs Flood has finally revealed her true self at the end of the episode and she’s not alone. This is your last spoiler warning.
Mrs Flood is a Time Lord, but not any Time Lord. A bi-generation occurs and the Rani appears in all her full power and arrogance in the form of actress Archie Panjabi.
This bi-generation differs from the Fourteenth/Fifteenth Doctor bi-generation in that the two Ranis are not equals. Archie Panjabi plays The Rani while Anita Dobson plays a subservient minor Rani still called Mrs Flood.
The Rani, also known as Ushas, is a renegade Time Lord — a brilliant but callous, unethical neurochemist formerly played by Kate O’Mara. The Rani first made her appearance in the 1985 Doctor Who episode The Mark of the Rani.
“Let the battle begin,” starts Mrs Flood. The Rani finishes with, “I have a date to arrange. And, as to for the Doctor, oh, I will bring him absolute terror,” reiterating what Mrs Flood promised at the end of the Doctor Who Season One finale Empire of Death.
The battle to save Earth begins as holographic Graham Norton has informed the Doctor and Belinda that, “The history books say that the planet ended on the old Earth date May the 24th, 2025. It is said the planet disintegrated, into rock, dust and ashes.”
The eventful episode also stunned the appearance of Carole Ann Ford reprising her role the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan, yet another Time Lord. She appears as an image and a voice in the Doctor’s mind with warnings and appeals.
Also, what’s going on with Poppy? We find the planet Hellia, once the home of beautiful fields of Hell Poppies, was devastated by Interstellar Song Contest sponsor The Corporation to obtain exclusive rights to the poppy seed which flavours their Poppy Honey.
Poppy is the name of the Space Babies toddler who briefly appeared to Belinda in the previous episode The Story and the Engine. Poppy actress Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps is on the cast list for the next episode, Wish World.
This is a lot to unpack before the first of the two-part series finale Wish World transmits on May 24. Let the battle begin!