Been all too long since we sojourned through the benign carnage which comprised the 24th Season of the classic series, this time literally gate-crashing onto Delta and the Bannermen. Although Season 24 didn’t have some grand story arc which defined it in the way that either the ‘Key to Time’ Season (16) did or the previous ‘Trial’ Season (23) did, there was something akin to a through line that can be seen as Andrew Cartmel got to grips with the shambles he had inherited as the new script-editor. Time and the Rani bore none of his influence, Paradise Towers was an experiment in style that showed flashes but is mostly viewed as a failure.
All of which brings us to Delta. Although not as outwardly experimental as Paradise Towers, Delta is such a mish-mash of styles that it is defiantly hard to categorize, part retro-50’s sci-fi, part 50’s tortured teen love story, but goofy as all-get-out and hopefully thrown at the viewer with enough pace and elan that the whole thing just washes over the audience.
In the end Delta feels sort of cobbled together, with a jumble of half-baked ideas pulling in a number of different directions and no clear sense of tone. It is interesting. But it’s also not very good, even at its most generous reading.
Because it had to, Doctor Who was being bent into a new shape in relatively short order, a process which would continue all the way through Season 25. But what about Dragonfire? Would the in-season evolution reach its zenith in the final episode of an all-too-short season? The Tour will get there … soonish. As for now the new HD-elicious caps for Delta and the Bannermen are now online.
