Ah, Season 24. Doctor Who's utter nadir. Even at it's most mind-boggling awful, NuWho rarely reaches the heights of terribleness that 1987's season manages with utter ease (despite all three head writer's best efforts otherwise). The first Season 24 story we come across happily comes from the slightly better second half of the season, although I should stress that mainly comes from Dragonfire being one of the most enjoyably bad stories Doctor Who has to offer (as we'll see fairly shortly), rather than this story, which is just a complete mess.
This story is more baffling than downright unpleasant, offensive, ridiculous or dull than the two that precedes it though. There's enough superfluous plot elements to make Black Orchid look tight and focused, the main centre of the piece, Chimeron Queen Delta, is about as interesting as a particularly dull sideboard, the Bannermen are pretty pathetic villains, the special effects are uniformly awful (again, don't watch Classic Who for the effects, but given the half decent stuff that was achieved in the season before and the two that followed, I think it's a fair critique here) and there's a whole set of baffling weird scenes and ideas.
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| proud mummy xxx |
First of all, the delightful Chimeron child as seen above is one of the most ridiculous things ever seen in Doctor Who. The prop you see there is bad enough, but after just one scene she's replaced by a set of children in exceptionally unconvincing makeup. On a script level, we're told next to nothing about the Chimerons, why they're fighting and why we should sympathise with them in any way, except for the fact that the Bannermen are such arseholes, which is just not enough. At the very most, all it would do is make me dislike the Bannermen, while still not giving a shit about the Chimerons. I don't, of course, dislike the Bannermen (within the confines of the story of course, in terms of my critical opinion of them I fucking hate them), because they're such cartoonish villains it's very difficult to take them seriously, especially when they get bested by the Seventh Doctor during his 'cartoonish oaf' phase, two fat Americans and a bunch of Welshmen. Clearly a great power we should be very afraid of.
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| Their talent in subjugating goats, however, in unmatched across the cosmos |
The aforementioned Americans are completely useless to the plot, while most of the other characters range from ok but underdeveloped (Ray), annoying (the old Welsh guy who runs the holiday camp) to bizarre (the other old Welsh guy who owns bees.) Also, why are bees a major plot point? Still not quite sure about that.
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| "Excuse me, do you have Prince Albert in a can?" |
As I mentioned when I did Battlefield, the cheesy eighties music really does not sit well with me, and it is at it's worst here. Hearing it over useless scene after useless scene began to drive me a bit mad. The rest of my complaints about this story are more minor, but for reasons I'll go into at the end, I'm running out of things to say, so here's a quick breakdown
- The stuff with the space bus is bizarre, doesn't have much impact on the story being told and gets very annoying very quickly.
- The fact that dozens on people on board the bus died when the Chimeron blew it up is completely ignored for the rest of the story.
- Mel is Mel. That's all that needs to be said.
- The late fifties is actually quite an interesting setting for a story, but it's completely wasted, except for some period music being occasionally played and some motorbikes, because I clearly watch Doctor Who for the motorbikes.
- Did I mention Delta is boring? Oh, yeah I did
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| If you can think of a funny caption here, please let me know, because I've got nothing. |
So why is this story not quite as dreadful as the two that preceded it? Well, it's mainly because of how thin it is. Despite being shorter than most stories at three episodes, it still feels hopelessly padded with useless fluff. Usually this would be a bad thing, but if it means less of the actual story and characters, then that's perfectly fine with me. You can just completely tune yourself out for about a quarter of this story and miss absolutely nothing. The length means it's mercifully short, and it's so utterly lightweight it doesn't really need much brain power. This is probably the definition of damning with faint praise, but I'd rather have three boring and lightweight episodes than four episodes of straight-up torture like Paradise Towers. That's why I ran out of things to say - there's just not really much to talk about. Make fun of the special effects, talk about the shit characters, complain about the crappy music, point out that Mel (TV series version) is the worst thing ever, bash NuWho, and that's all. No need for any more than that I don't think.
So, the final verdict on Delta and the Bannermen is 'terrible but so superfluous and lightweight it doesn't really inspire the kind of hatred that a lot of other bad stories do.' Compared to the two stories that came before it, that's pretty much The Caves of Androzani right there.
Final Score: 2/10. Nothing more than a waste of time, with a boring story, terrible characters, irrelevant fluff at every corner and enough bizarre shit to fill a tanker. Saved from a 1 by being easy to ignore while watching because of how irrelevant large chunks of the story are, not that I'd recommend ever watching it of course.
Next Episode: Destiny of the Daleks
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