JNT liked Keff McCulloch's music, though few others seem to. Paradise Towers originally had another score, but it was Wheel in Space minimal, and not used. Think it is on the DVD and hence blu-ray.
Yup, it's on the DVD and I think they kept it for the blu-ray too. The original score is good, if not repetitive. Keff's replacement was done in a hurry and is amazing, all things considered. Keff could be hit or miss with compositions meeting the tone of the story, sometimes it was just too loud. But so can other composers be.
Time and the Rani
Whacky music - way too loud and intrusive. Good use of a quarry - gotta love that classic who staple location. Mel screams too much. McCoy mixes up too many common sayings. I'm glad they toned it down by the time of Delta and the Bannermen. Still wish they would have kept it in at maybe one per serial.
The killer insects at the leisure dome were kind of stupid - why congregate around something that could release them?
Effective imprisonment. It didn't help that the centre of leisure looked largely boring (idea vs presentation, I suspect the original idea may have been rated PG13 or higher), and it was less helpful that the director chose a quarry instead of a forest grove, what with certain dialogue suggesting lush environments and all.
I think the story fell apart in the last 2 episodes. Also, why couldn't the Rani make a rocket with a navigation system? Too many plot holes.
Of all of them, you bring up the easiest to resolve: Some scientific experiments, no pun intended, involve time. Or baking. Some ingredients have to be mixed in at the precise moment or else it won't work due to relative imbalance of the other ingredients. The script overlooks this, or is wanting viewers to guess (how much the latter should is something of an argument as well), but the Rani talks often of needing the solstice as a catalyst for her hypothesis to actually work. The idea of it all culminating into a "time manipulator" is admittedly hokey as far as big epic "I'm going to conquer time itself, moohahahaha!" goes, however, as - if she had accomplished that - all the people that the Doctor was namedropping wouldn't even know. Poor Mrs Malaprop and Elvis (Presley, not Costello - not the Costello related to Abbot either...)
Quotes:
"You don't understand regeneration, Mel. It's a lottery, and I've drawn the short plank."
Yeah, the quotes were laid on thick and a fair reduction was needed, but many were suitably entertaining and I wish they hadn't dialed them as far back as they had as his seasons went on.
"Yes. And I've become more of a fool too, it seems, Mel. Doesn't bode well for my seventh persona, being so completely taken in by the wretched Rani." [Take that, Morbius Doctor believers!
]
Two things:
1. The Doctor had been through a mindwipe and everything pre-Hartnell was erased, so Seven wouldn't know any different because the underlying mindwipe would still be there. That said, the biggest gaffe in all that is "The Three Doctors" where Gallifreyan Time Lords cite his earliest and first incarnation. And, yep, I'm not a fan of TTC in regards to the Doctor coming in from another magical universe where a Gallifreyan did experiments to figure out the DNA and chemical processes needed for regeneration (e.g. the unused plot idea in "The Six Doctors" (1983, Robert Holmes) of which some was reused for "The Two Doctors" (1985). and as regeneration as a biological process requires catalysts to occur at the right times in order for it to work, you wouldn't want to trigger it while sneezing, hehehehe!
2. The producer of the Morbius story, Philip Hinchcliff,e stated that the Morbius incarnations were indeed the Doctor's.
