"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Sunday, August 2, 2015

Favorite Characters: Rani Chandra (The Sarah Jane Adventures)


It took me a little while to get into Rani.  I’d enjoyed Maria, and at first, I couldn’t quite figure out what this new girl was like.  Soon, though, I warmed up to her, and now that I’ve seen her episodes a few times, I fully recognize what a great addition she is to Team Sarah Jane.



Like all teenagers in Sarah Jane’s life who aren’t aliens (or at least made by them,) Rani joins the gang primarily through her own nosiness.  After Maria’s departure, the initial plan is not to expand the little alien-fighting family circle to any new Bannerman Road residents, but Rani has something to say about that.  An intelligent girl with journalistic ambitions, Sarah Jane is on Rani’s radar even before things inevitably go all crazy and alien, and once they do, Rani’s determined curiosity won’t let matters rest.  Despite Luke, Clyde, and Sarah Jane’s efforts to put her off the scent (for her own protection – what they do is, after all, wildly dangerous,) she insists on digging.  And, much like Maria and Clyde, once she’s seen what the universe has to offer, there’s no turning back.



So, what does Rani bring to the team?  You can tell she’ll make a good journalist someday.  In addition to her curiosity, she has an analytical mind fueled by a keen observational sense.  This is a girl with a talent for piecing things together from seemingly-disjointed clues and fragments.  She’s open to fantastical possibilities but still assesses her theories to see if they’re really plausible.  She doesn’t take no for an answer and isn’t afraid of a little legwork or getting her hands dirty.



Additionally, Rani is a loyal friend/daughter who’ll do almost anything on behalf of those she loves.  She looks out for others’ wellbeing, physical and emotional, and she’s good at spotting when something’s up with one of her friends.  While this is of course an excellent quality to have, it’s also one that can get her in trouble.  Rani tends to be one of the more pragmatic members of the group – putting the kibosh on, say, Clyde’s more fools-rush-in approach – but she’s easily at her most reckless when the life of one of her loved ones is at risk, and she’ll put herself in plenty of danger on their behalf.  And this protective instinct doesn’t just extend to those she’s close to.  There are a few occasions (most memorably, in “The Mad Woman in the Attic” and “Lost in Time”) where her drive to take care of a new friend threatens her own safety.



Another trait related to this is Rani’s tendency to believe the best of others.  As with her loyalty/protectiveness, this is a bit of a double-edged sword.  It can put her in perilous positions, because she can be a little too eager to put her faith in people who don’t deserve it.  At the same time, however, the others are so used to battling malevolent aliens that they can sometimes auto-assume that anything extraterrestrial means them harm.  When these assumptions clash with the truth, it’s often Rani who checks them and makes them see that, this time, the alien they’ve met isn’t evil but scared, desperate, or ignorant, and there’s a better way to handle them.



All in all, a great character, and even though the show plays with a sweet will-they-won’t-they dynamic between her and Clyde, she always feels like her own character first.  There’s no sense that her being “the girl” makes her less than Luke and Clyde, or that her storylines are there for Clyde’s sake.  And yet, it’s not a real conscious “girl power” type thing, either – she just is, without anything made of it.  I love that.

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