Dr. Who: Time and The Rani

Doctor Who
No 9 in a 2nd series of 18
Time and The Rani
1996

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Time and the Rani is the first serial of the 24th season in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 7 September to 28 September 1987. (Doctor Who first appeared on BBC television on 23 November 1963.)

This story was the first to feature Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor. It also features the last appearance of the Sixth Doctor, also portrayed by McCoy for this episode only. The Sixth Doctor was originally portrayed by Colin Baker, who refused to return for this episode.

(on a side note:  Sylvester McCoy also played the wizard Radagast the Brown in Peter Jackson's film adaptations of The Hobbit.)

Plot:
While in flight, the TARDIS (a police box time machine and spacecraft) is attacked by the evil Rani, (played by Kate O'Mara) a renegade Time Lady. The TARDIS crash-lands on the planet Lakertya. On the floor of the console room, the Doctor begins his sixth regeneration. In his post-regenerative confusion the Doctor is separated from his young companion Mel Bush and tricked into assisting the Rani in her megalomaniac scheme to construct a giant time manipulator. Lost on the barren surface of the planet, Mel has to avoid the Rani's ingenious traps and her monstrous, bat-like servants, the Tetraps. She joins forces with a rebel faction among the Lakertyans, desperate to end the Rani's control of their planet. The Doctor must recover his wits in time to avoid becoming a permanent part of the Rani's plan to collect the genius of the greatest scientific minds in the universe, of which she has captured many including Einstein, in order that she can create a time manipulator, which would allow the Rani to control time anywhere in the universe, at the expense of all life on Lakertya. The Doctor manages to foil her plan and free the Lakertyans of her evil control. The Rani escapes in her TARDIS, but it has been commandeered by the Tetraps, who take her prisoner. The Doctor takes all the captured geniuses on board his TARDIS so that he can return them home.