Time and the Rani [TV/1987.9.7 ~ 9.28]

★★★★☆

  Season 24, alongside Season 17, is a quintessential comfort season for me because it's simply so much fun. Sunshine in a bottle, that's what I've always said, and Time and the Rani starts the season by being just that. What's that you say? This is a "good example of how not to do Dr. Who?" Well, count me out of that evaluation because I think this is exactly how Dr. Who should be done -- with reckless abandon, a heap of imagination and an even bigger heap of pure, undiluted fun. 

  The Rani dresses up as Mel, even attempts to talk like her and everything (except Kate O'Mara later admitted that she couldn't dance as well as Bonnie Langford), and has a giant brain in the back of her science lab/lair to upload the minds of all the intellectuals of the universe she kidnapped in -- whyever not? No reason she shouldn't, no reason she shouldn't have a bit of fun. The Seventh Doctor jumps into our screens and proceeds to be the silliest sod in the history of television -- whyever not? He's massively entertaining mixing up sayings, tripping over and doing the spoons. Mel gets to scream a whole lot -- okay, that one gets grating after a bit, but at least Bonnie Langford seems to have a fun time and immediately gels with Sylvester McCoy. They're having a fun time, even though by all accounts this was a very haphazard production, and you can tell they're making the best out of a bad situation.

  Really, your enjoyment of Time and the Rani depends on how unseriously you can take Dr. Who. Normally, like many other Dr. Who fans, you'd slag off this serial and call it an incredibly poor farce. I think different; it's pantomime of the highest order, where nothing is off the cards and everything is possible. The Tetraps are growling simps of the Rani. There are killer bees that kill people lounging around in a resort room. The Doctor is characterised in a way he will never again be, and McCoy is simply glorious as he acts out these incredibly silly and chaotic moments with the 'I just got here and I already have nothing to lose' mentality. I can watch Time and the Rani an unhealthy number of times; I truly cannot get enough of it. It's pure imagination and insanity from top to bottom, like a children's strip cartoon made with genuine care and fun, and I am in love with it.