Relationship Spotlight: Rani Chandra & Clyde Langer (The Sarah Jane Adventures)

I love all of the Sarah Jane gang – each of the characters is so great in their own right, and there are oodles of wonderful interactions between them, both various pairs/trios and the group as a whole.  But for me, my favorite duo is the one-two punch of Clyde and Rani.  Always fun and always rootable.

Although the show is about a group of young teens (I think the kids are about 15 when Rani joins the show in series 2,) romance has always been handled with a fairly light touch.  Clyde’s first instinct upon meeting Rani is to good-naturedly flirt with her, and there’s an undercurrent of their growing attraction to one another throughout the show, but the shippy scenes between them are infrequent, mostly confined to small moments.  Rani kissing Clyde on the cheek middle of a big alien crisis, prompting him to observe that he should be heroic more often.  Shots of hand-holding during scary scenes, Luke teasing them (in Morse code, no less!) with the shipper name he made up for them, “Clani.”

But foremost, they’re always friends and alien hunters, and I like that, especially on the latter front.  It can annoy me on genre shows when significant others want to hash out their relationship issues while the literal fate of the world is at stake, or otherwise suggest that the fate of the world is small potatoes compared to their boy-/girlfriend.  With Clyde and Rani?  Yeah, they like each other – albeit rather understatedly – but they have bigger stuff to worry about it, and at the end of the day, they’re always about doing what needs to be done.  Stopping alien threats comes before everything; dating can wait.  (On a side note, I also like that, while either is obviously worried whenever the other is in danger, there’s not an appreciable difference to the tone of their fear when it’s Luke or Sarah Jane, or later Sky, in trouble.  They mean a great deal to one another, but their more platonic friends are just as important.)

Really, they’re just fun together.  Rani’s practicality balances out nicely with Clyde’s recklessness – she knows when to pull him back from doing something stupid, just as he knows when to push her to take a risk.  Both bounce ideas off one another well, and both are good at teasing each other.  Clyde appreciates Rani’s smarts, and she gets a kick out of his jokes.  (Actually, looking at them that way, they’re maybe a tiny bit Ron and Hermione, but their relationship is always tighter, more chill, and less contentious than with those two – I root for Clyde and Rani hardcore, while I’m a little indifferent to Hermione/Ron.)

And, not for nothing, I like that they’re two people of color, of different ethnicities, who often share screentime together without the white cast members present.  The Sarah Jane Adventures doesn’t often address race specifically, usually preferring to simply and unspokenly highlight diversity and make the characters of color equal members of the gang.  Sarah Jane is the main protagonist, of course, but Clyde and Rani are both important, distinct, and valued characters on the show, and letting them be on their own onscreen is significant precisely in how casually the show presents it.  I don’t think there are too many shows without mostly-PoC casts that would feature a story like “The Empty Planet,” where Rani and Clyde are the only main cast members onscreen for the majority of the time.

Top Five Big Damn Hero Moments: Rani Chandra (The Sarah Jane Adventures)

Oh, how I love to watch Whoniverse characters being smart and being brave.  Here are five scenes I adore from my girl Rani.

Investigating Odd Bob (Series 2, Episode 3 – “The Day of the Clown:  Part 1”)

Upon seeing a strange clown that pops out of nowhere and seemingly disappears at will, what does Rani do?  Investigate, of course!  She doesn’t try to rationalize it or fret that she’s going crazy.  Alien-wise, she hits the ground running, poking into the peculiar and searching for answers, no matter how bizarre they may be.

Stopping the Nanoforms (Series 3, Episode 2 – “Prisoner of the Judoon:  Part 2”)

This one’s a tag-team with Clyde, but who doesn’t love a weaponized fire extinguisher?  Trapped a lab with the nanoforms closing in, Clyde bemoans the fact that they’re without Luke, who normally does the science stuff, but Rani isn’t ready to throw in the towel.  She urges him to keep his head in the game, and when he remembers that they don’t react well to cold temperatures, Rani’s ready to lock and load.

Taking on Androvax (Series 4, Episode 4 – “Vault of Secrets:  Part 2”)

I think all the non-Smith kids on the show feel guilty from time to time about keeping their parents in the dark about what they do, but when those parents are in trouble, the kids will do anything to keep them safe.  Here, Rani confronts an alien convicted of multiple counts of genocide who’s stolen her mother’s body and is using it to hide from the authorities.  Rani both risks the danger of confronting Androvax and offers her own body up for possession instead, getting him out of her mom.  Now that’s love – better than breakfast in bed any day!

Staying with Jane (Series 4, Episode 10 – “Lost in Time:  Part 2”)

Pretty much everyone is great throughout this entire story, and Rani is no exception.  Not only does she successfully navigate social mores in the 16^th century and thwart an assassination attempt on Jane Grey, I love that she also stays to help Jane face her impending arrest at the hands of Queen Mary.  Rani knows she has to let history play out the way it’s supposed to, so she can’t save Jane, but she’s there as a friend, offering Jane comfort during her final hours of freedom.  Really lovely.

Sneaking into Serf Systems (Series 5, Episode 6 – “The Man Who Never Was:  Part 2”)

Rani is so great here.  After her (adorable) insistence that she and Clyde take “precautions” before investigating the SerfBoard, she manages to get them on site for the big launch, making press passes for her and Clyde after figuring out which reporters from the list of invitees aren’t coming.  Nice work on her part, and the result of her and Clyde passing themselves off as a pair of (married) journalists from Twilight Years Magazine is one of my favorite “undercover” scenarios on the show.

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.