Doctor Who star Ncuti Gatwa has shared that he personally asked showrunner Russell T Davies to bring back the classic villain, The Rani. In Season 2, both Archie Panjabi and Anita Dobson portrayed different versions of the rogue Time Lady.
The BBC series has slowly dropped hints over the last two seasons that Dobson’s character, the enigmatic Mrs. Flood, possessed deep knowledge of Time Lord lore. It was finally confirmed in the episode “The Interstellar Song Contest” that she was, in fact, The Rani in disguise. Now, the two Ranis have joined forces with conspiracy theorist Conrad (played by Jonah Hauer-King) to trap The Doctor inside an alternate reality shaped entirely by Conrad’s warped imagination.
In the latest episode of Doctor Who Unleashed, Ncuti Gatwa revealed to host Steffan Powell that The Rani was a classic villain he’d been eager to see return.
That was a villain that I really wanted to face and I’d asked Russell, [The Rani] is so fabulous and I wanted to face off with her, Time Lord v. Time Lord. How cool!
he confirmed
Showrunner Russell T Davies shared that he was more than happy to fulfill Gatwa’s request, as he’d also been considering The Rani’s return for some time.
I’ve always liked The Rani and I’ve always thought I’d bring her back somehow, but when your lead actor requests something, I am here to obey,
he joked
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In her latest plot, The Rani abducted a mystical child from 1865 Bavaria—believed to have reality-warping powers as the “seventh son of a seventh son.” Teaming up with Mrs. Flood, she used the child’s abilities to construct a “Wish World,” an alternate reality shaped entirely by their ally Conrad’s conspiracy theories. As a result, The Doctor and his companion Belinda were trapped inside this distorted universe. Within the “Wish World,” The Doctor believed he was a human named John Smith, married to Belinda, and even the father of a daughter named Poppy.
| Doctor Who Stars Who Have Played The Rani in Live Action | |
|---|---|
| Actor | Appearances |
| Kate O’Mara | “Mark of the Rani” (1985), “Time and the Rani” (1987), “Dimensions in Time” (1993) |
| Anita Dobson | “The Church on Ruby Road”, Season 1 (2024) and Season 2 (2025) |
| Archie Panjabi | Season 2 (2025) |
However, this unstable alternate reality was merely a trap devised by The Rani, who intended for The Doctor to eventually see through the illusion. Once The Doctor regained his true identity, he quickly realized he had played right into The Rani’s hands. By breaking through the fabricated world, he unintentionally gave The Rani access to the “Underverse”—the dimension where Omega, the long-exiled creator of the Time Lords, had been banished by The Doctor back in the 1983 serial Arc of Infinity.
“Wish World” ended on a dramatic cliffhanger, with The Rani casting The Doctor into the Underverse while she set her ultimate plan in motion: resurrecting Omega. Originally introduced in Doctor Who’s 10th anniversary special The Three Doctors in 1973, Omega was a brilliant solar engineer who founded the Time Lords but was later banished to an antimatter universe due to his dangerous ambitions. The character returned for the show’s 20th anniversary in 1983 during Arc of Infinity, where he attempted to steal the Fifth Doctor’s body during an encounter in Amsterdam. The Doctor ultimately thwarted Omega’s plans once more, exiling him again to the antimatter realm.
Doctor Who fans will discover if Omega makes his return to the physical world in the Season 2 finale, The Reality War, airing this Saturday (May 31) on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in the U.K.
Source: Doctor Who Unleashed