Though a largely overlooked and forgotten story today, it apparently "blew up" in 2001-2002 with massive online viewing figures by that time's Internet (the slow modems) standard and not without reasons it seems.
This almost 3-hour story has a really epic feel to it. Massive location jump across cosmos with a real sense of scale, using montage juxtaposing in parallel grand yet brutal military battlegrounds with serene locations with beautiful stars, mythical caves and mountains, barren desert of Anima Persis, forests and falls along the way to the Luria camp....done mostly through sheer imagination, yet the hints from the pictures, though rudimentary as hell, provide key imagery to the overarching naturalistic authenticity of these scenes. Mixing action sequences with poetic moments, using one to reflect the other multiple times in the story strikes me as rather clever even though it's not something terribly inventive.
As for the story itself goes, it's ambitiously genre mashing. At one time a murder-mystery police procedural with comedic touch, it's proper blockbuster level confrontation of might in another, and occasionally treading into mysterious, even scary territory (Ace's illusion on Anima Persis, though it's probably better served with a caption or a transcript at hand). And the whole Casmus-Ace mentoring subplot is so full of poetic meditative quality.
The story goes out of its way to establish an arc for Minister of Chance (the real protagonist, in a way, though with not much of a conclusion understandably) during its run time and quite successful in my opinion. Now not every character is fleshed out like him and some are, yes just cartoonishly villainous, but the Minister character alone make the story fares well against, I dare to say, most classic tv serials in terms of characterization (let's just say, characterization is not a strong suit of classic series). Not surprising the effort is being put there considering it's intended to be the starting point of the Minster spinoff.
It maintains a mythical sense throughout, with characters like mysterious blue-eyed woman scientist, Nessican the vampire, a down-to-earth somewhat comedic police bloke who turned out to be Lieutenant-Colonel, not to mention Casmus and Kingmaker. Hell, even the origin of never-heard-before companion Antimony.
The Minister's arc almost feels like a direct inspiration to Time Lord Victorious, in which the rule about "treading the fine line" is becoming more and more questionable to our protagonists. The moral conundrum about holding back and not saving people to the greatest extent in order to maintain "the fabric of the universe" (thus the greater good). It's an old trope, yes (in fact Neverland, or rather...the whole web of time arc, or even...Genesis of the Daleks? pretty much touches on similar grounds), but when written well, is tragically sympathetic and touching, like Time Lord Victorious, or the moral dilemma 10th faces over and over again.
Lastly, the point about this being the infamous continuity/canon poison pill. You can guess my opinion on this matter. I don't care. To me Timeless Children is shit not because it shatters the lore but because it's poorly written, delivered in the most boring way possible. This story is anything but boring. Now if there's ever an era that you can wiggle in some mind-scratching continuity poison pill but in service of a great story, that's the 7th and Ace era. Hell, it's not like all other stories from all media on this era can fit together well at all, without some heavy-duty mental gymnastics, right?
After all, did 7th really die in this story? No body is found mind you. Did we really establish, explicitly, that all time lords have this super power that can kill with thoughts? Or maybe it's only for certain incarnation of a few chosen ones, and only in their certain stage of life after all? (now come to think of it, mind control is nothing new in Doctor Who and one such time lord, the Master, does use it from time to time, doesn't he? And also remember the War Lords?) Do we even know what stage of the time lord civilization did this take place? Well, does it even make sense to sort out a timeline regarding past and future for a species that literally engineers time itself?
On the other hand, Ace did go through training to become a timelord; 7th did become "more mysterious" than any other incarnations. 7th is funny and slightly cunning ("I told you don't bite me") at the same time. So that's that.
Shout out to Jon Culshaw's wonderful portrayal of Bush, as he always does. And how prescient it is to watch a clueless reaction to a hostile terrorist attack from an idiotic American President, several months before it actually happened. Life imitates art, they say.
Oh and Nev Fountain, considered one of the best BF writers, was the script editor of the story. All his later great works started from here. So that's a legacy right there.
