Wanting to relive the exciting new world of 1987 with the early premiere of the new Doctor...
...Time and the Rani...
What a mixed bag.
Only the third time in the show's history doing a pre-credits sequence, back when these things felt special and not emptily templated, we see the regeneration sans new opening titles. And, for 1987, the titles definitely look state of the art, even if the asteroids look like crumpled up papers. The concept behind the visuals with the big band and TARDIS traveling in a bubble are the most original and innovative since the original howlround, if not slitscan.
The new opening music... great arrangement and use of the middle-8 to pad out the opening to allow less live action filming, but the instruments used were too bleeding-edge for their time and do sound tinny. But the composition is sound. No pun intended.
Interestingly, 7's very first story hints at the Cartmel Masterplan as the Doctor cites how he figured out the principles of time in part four:
MEL: Well, calm down. Let's apply a bit of logic, shall we? What is it that you can contribute that those other geniuses can't?
DOCTOR: A knowledge of time. Oh, a great discovery, I worked that out ages ago!
Now add in season 25 episodes where other bits of dialogue continue to paint a bigger picture and voila... a running arc that feels far less contrived than Iceworld/Silver Nemesis/Fenric regarding Ace being manipulated and how she saw the mum she hated as a baby (for which nobody needed a knowledge of time to realize how obvious and corny that revelation was), and so on.
Seven's mixed maxims are great, but on the verge of being overused and was a trait not often kept afterward, allowing for more qualitative moments than quantitative.
Kate O'Mara excels with what she's got on paper, which is amazing since her character could have been the Master with little rewriting needed. But finding out Bonnie Langford loved the idea of Mel being impersonated was cool - and the idea of impersonating the companion du jour is pretty novel at its core.
There's a lot of genius moments in the script, some of which requires the audience to work out on their own.
Yet the story has a lot of other moments in the script are a travesty. Especially how Tetraps have four eyes yet are moving their necks around half the time or how the Rani can patch Urak's vision into the Doctor's (obsolete) TARDIS console via her control bracelet (the communications port being as old as RS232 for modems, I'd guess and that interface is still used today, albeit not as often.)
And the less said about the campy tone, the better. The show's always been best when it's more serious, and note in occasional and various interviews that McCoy himself wanted to play the role more seriously. He was right. Most DW that has aged the best do tend to be the stories that do take themselves the most seriously.
He was also right in JNT's desire for the question mark pullover was a bit much. The umbrella and, to a lesser extent, the calling card both handled the "? = mystery" motif a lot more subtly, without the high camp, and, let's face it, the umbrella handle is a very clever way to do it. Forget Six's costume being clownish, the pullover - whose patter, ? marks aside, is something that - indeed - an adult Charlie Brown might wear (good grief).
And to top this story off? We have alien insects on the loose, a glass vial containing pre-made bee sting antidote, a bunch of Lakyrtians with zero scientific knowledge, and Ikona just destroys the vial and the liquid evaporates right enough, so how the hell can any of them figure out the chemistry needed - sans sample or bee put in a jar, no less - but that's the easiest of the "We're going to let the audience connect the dots on this bit" moments that the script has more of than you'd think.
Swap the camp and let the Rani not be so emotional (like the Master), and this would have been far higher rated. But all rolled into one, Mrs Malaprop might not be amused. It's a resounding 5/10.
