Episode 6: The Rakshasas of Ranjapur
A mysterious psychic
distress call brings Penelope and Indira to 1856 India, just one year before
the Sepoy Mutiny and the fall of the almighty East India Company. Soon the tide
of history will turn. But first, the Time Lady and her allies must liberate the
small princely state of Ranjapur from a family of demons in disguise… A tale of
colonial greed, hope and destiny.
I’d been thinking about doing an episode set in 19th century British India for quite some time now – something with shades of Fritz Lang's two-part 'Indian epic' and John Huston's The Man Who Would be King and (of course) some suitably Whovian villains… And then, of course, came Beecham House - I only watched one episode but it was enough to unearth and resurrect that old idea. Yes, I definitely had to cook up a story featuring a Rajah's court as its main setting and the East India Company as a major plot or background element.
But I needed to find a good reason for Penelope to get there: since her TARDIS is far more reliable than the Doctor’s blue box, I try to use the old, time-honored “the-TARDIS-just-brings-you-here” excuse as little as possible.
In this particular instance, the character of Indira Kapoor, Penelope’s current travelling companion, provided me with the ideal story hook, being a psychic and temporal sensitive: the “mysterious psychic distress call” mentioned in the blurb above actually originated from one of her own ancestors (who, much to Indira’s surprise, happened to be a princely concubine and who also had some latent psychic ability), bringing Indira face to face with a chapter of her own family history she knew nothing about… This added a very interesting psychological dimension to our story, allowing me to portray the usually cool and collected character of Indira under a far more personal (and somewhat vulnerable) light.
At first, I considered setting my story in the state of Jhansi, so that I could include its illustrious warrior-queen in the cast – but after giving the matter some serious thought, I decided to use a small fictional princely state (‘Ranjapur’) to free my story (and the ultimate fates of its prominent NPCs!) from the constraints of History.
As for the “demons in disguise”, they were (of course?)… Slitheens – or, more properly, Rackateens! Using a family of creepy, greedy and nasty Raxacoricofallapatorians was also something I had wanted to do for years now – but I hadn’t found the proper setting to do them justice.
The idea to link them with colonial India was actually suggested by two different connections: the superficial resemblance of their names (Raxacoricofallapatorius, Rackateen…) with that of the Rakshasas from Indian legends and (perhaps more importantly) the unmissable echoes between the Slitheens’ mix of blood pride, gluttonous profiteering and callous disregard for other species’ lives (as shown in Aliens of London and World War Three) and the so-called ‘entrepreneur adventurers’ and ‘empire builders’ of the East India Company.
And now for some after-play notes…
Colonial India is a fascinating setting – but one with which French people (yours truly included) are obviously less familiar than British or Indian ones (as opposed to, say, the reign of Louis XIV or the Belle Epoque). Of course, the Doctor Who universe often plays fast and loose with history but I wanted to get things as right as possible in terms of atmosphere and, well, ‘feel’, so I did a fair amount of background reading on the East India Company, the Sepoy Mutiny and related subjects.
My main objective was to balance the unavoidably exotic / romantic feel of such a setting with the grittier aspects of imperialism and colonialism, focusing on the theme of destiny – historical as well as individual.
In a way (and I only realized that afterwards), my approach was somewhat similar to the treatment of Picts and Romans in The Eaters of Light (albeit with a far more politically complex backdrop), with the Rackateen as the classic monstrous menace against which humans should stand united, regardless of their own differences or conflicts. In the end, though, Penelope and Indira only found a handful of allies (some Indian, some British – as well as one heroic elephant) brave enough to stand against the Rackateen, making the consequences of the climactic battle even more poignant.
As for the Rackateen themselves, their goal was to seize control of Ranjapur, which happened to have extremely rich underground deposits of uranium – the precious commodity on which our trio of ‘adventurous entrepreneurs’ were planning to plunder, before (of course) taking control of the East India Company and, in the long run, of the entire British Empire itself. Just another typical Raxacoricofallapatorian business venture…
As usual, Sylvie gave us a wonderful, very nuanced performance, playing on Penelope’s usual empathy and making her acutely aware of Indira’s unusual uncertainty and insecurity… as well as of her own somewhat hazy knowledge of that particular chapter of British-Indian history.
And we had a suitably half-epic, half-chaotic final battle, as Penelope and her allies stood against a dozen of enraged Rackateens – complete with a sword-wielding, horse-riding Indian princess, a gallant but somewhat out-of-his-depth British captain, a heroic, self-sacrificing Sepoy sergeant, stalwart Indian guards firing vinegar-coated arrows and, of course, a fearless charging elephant.
The farewell scene acquired a deeper resonance because Penelope and Indira knew what the future had in store for India: the Sepoy Mutiny, aka the First War of Independence, which brought the end of the East India Company’s rule and the birth of its colonial successor, the British Raj per se – an unprecedented of political turmoil, in which the small princely state of Ranjapur and its associated fictional NPCs would eventually disappear, lost in the winds of change and the mists of history.
