The Rani returns this May in a new Doctor Who adventure for Jonathon Carley’s War Doctor in The War Doctor Rises: Fear of the Light, a brand-new audio drama box set from Big Finish. This next volume of the full-cast audio adventures finds the Doctor having to make an uneasy alliance with an old enemy – the Rani, played by Siobhan Redmond.
The renegade Time Lady, the Rani, first appeared in the classic Doctor Who TV series The Mark of the Rani and Time and the Rani, and in the 2025 series. Now she’s back in a story that looks at what she got up to during the terrible Time War, and goes deeper into the character of this morally corrupt and cruel Time Lord scientist.
In this new story by Rochana Patel, the Doctor is in trouble with the Daleks and sends out a distress signal, which is answered by the Rani. The pair of Time Lords have been the staunchest of enemies, but can they set their differences aside and work together to thwart the Daleks’ plans to kill them both and change the future of the universe? Of course, it’s also possible that the Rani has a trick up her sleeve that will save what is most important to her.
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Writer Rochana Patel said: “For this epic three-part story, I wanted to completely re-examine the Rani as a character, revisit that apathetic scientist that we first encountered in Mark of the Rani, her backstory with the Doctor, and explore what makes her into the woman who re-emerges in Wish World and The Reality War. This is very much the missing piece of the Rani’s story… And, perhaps, the Doctor’s too…”
The War Doctor Rises: Fear of the Light is available to pre-order now from the Big Finish website for £19.99 for the download, or £29.99 for the download and limited three-disc collector’s edition CD. There are also bundle offers available with 2026’s second War Doctor Rises box set, set to arrive this December.
