The Mark of The Rani is the third serial of the 22nd season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in two weekly parts on BBC1 on 2 and 9 February 1985.
When the Sixth Doctor and Peri arrive in the 19th-century mining town of Killingworth, they encounter a group of rampaging miners attacking people and destroying machinery.
The Doctor and Peri return the stolen brain fluid to prominent local citizens Lord Ravensworth and George Stephenson with instructions to administer it to the affected miners.
John Lewis was originally hired to compose the score, but had only completed the first episode when a sudden onset of illness – which ultimately resulted in his death – prevented him from finishing the work and forced the production team to give the assignment to Gibbs.
Writing for Radio Times, Mark Braxton awarded the serial three stars out of five, describing it as "a refreshing, earthbound delight in an undistinguished era of offworld futurama".
However, he characterized the dialogue as "a mixture of wonderful and woeful", questioned the low-key presence of the historical characters, the "shaky" period grasp and wandering North East accents, and concluded the serial was "a story of considerable interest.
[2] Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping, authors of The Discontinuity Guide, considered the story's dialogue to be overblown, although the concepts were interesting.