Season 24: Too Silly? (Again)

With Colin Baker's sacking and Eric Saward jumping ship. Doctor Who lived to die another day after Season 23 and with that, Sylvester McCoy and Andrew Cartmel came in to fill in the respective roles of Doctor and Script Editor respectively.

Season 24 is yet again regarded by fandom as another one of the most infamous seasons of the original series with its even more lighter tone and lower production values as well as the sudden introduction of a new Doctor. But what do you make of it?

On a side note, is everyone okay with these threads? (they aren't annoying or stale?)

My ratings

Time And The Rani: 2/5
Paradise Towers: 3/5
Delta And The Bannerman: 3/5
Dragonfire: 2.5/5

F̶u̶c̶k̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶f̶u̶c̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶s̶h̶i̶t̶t̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶r̶e̶a̶d̶s̶,̶ ̶a̶s̶s̶w̶i̶p̶e̶!̶ I don't agree.

"Season 24 is yet again regarded by fandom as another one of the most infamous seasons of the original series"

What a surprise! Does the majority of fandom actually like anything?


This season rules. Fresh, energetic and exciting! That's what Doctor Who should be like.

Time And The Rani: 3/10

Paradise Towers: 6/10

Delta And The Bannerman: 1/10

Dragonfire: 2/10

Time and the Rani 10/10

Paradise Towers 9/10

Delta and the Bannermen 10/10

Dragonfire 5/10

The threads are great. I’m enjoying them, at least. Though I’ve not really had the time to respond to them all substantially due to how many you’ve made in such a short time!

I’ll resolve this issue through just giving ratings out of 10, as with a few other members:
Time and the Rani: 2/10
Paradise Towers: 4/10
Delta and the Bannermen: 5/10 (I recognise that it’s a template for RTD’s era with its coerced sentimentality, caricatures and pantomime tone, but it’s a guilty pleasure of mine).
Dragonfire: 4/10

Ok I enjoy this season a lot time and the rani i enjoy the chemistry Sylvester,bonnie and Kate o mara share on screen the tetraps are cool looking I give it a 9 out of 10. Paradise towers love the cleaners 9 out of 10. Delta a good story 9 out of 10. Dragonfire glitz and ace appear in this one of my favorite seasons again not a popular opinion.

It was good to see the back of Saward and Levine at last, but otherwise this season is just insipid, inane, patronising pantomime crap.

it's saving grace is that at least it's not mean-spirited in the way the last three seasons have been.

Pepsi Maxil wrote:"Season 24 is yet again regarded by fandom as another one of the most infamous seasons of the original series"

What a surprise! Does the majority of fandom actually like anything?

Of course they do.

The fact they hate or dislike some stories is crucial to their capacity to love others with some degree of passion. You can't have positive feelings without negative feelings too.

If they 'liked' everything like they were 'supposed' to, for the sake of being 'good fans', they'd probably only like it all in a very insipid, neutral and passionless way. And what'd be the point of that?

I generally like it, especially the last two stories.
Better than 99/9% of New Who.

And Trial.

It's shit, and it killed Dr Who.

Time And The Rani: 0/10
Paradise Towers: 0/10
Delta And The Bannerman: 0/10
Dragonfire: 3/10

Ronnie wrote:It's shit, and it killed Dr Who.

Time And The Rani: 0/10
Paradise Towers: 0/10
Delta And The Bannerman: 0/10
Dragonfire: 3/10

Shit! I've found someone who hates Season 24 more than I do!

Cunnus Maximus wrote:

Ronnie wrote:It's shit, and it killed Dr Who.

Time And The Rani: 0/10
Paradise Towers: 0/10
Delta And The Bannerman: 0/10
Dragonfire: 3/10

 Shit! I've found someone who hates Season 24 more than I do!

It's the nadir of classic Who. A body blow from which it never recovered.

I must say it has pretty much none of the qualities I watch Doctor Who for. It just feels condescending and absent of any real stakes or nuance.

Time and the Rani: 3/10
The only real good stuff here is McCoy, who's performance perfectly encapsulates the fact he has no idea what his Doctor's character is and is also very funny. Some of the effects are good but most a pretty bad, such as the 3D tardis landing, the netgun who's net is clearly dropped from of screen and the swarm of killer insects consisting of about three small green blobs on the screen. The aliens actually don't look too bad, yes even the giant, four eye, bat people. The real clincher though is the Rani, who has now gone from cool and rather sexy older women, to a sexy older women with a plan so stupide you'd think it came from NuPoo.

Paradise Tower: 6/10
I was totally surprised with how much I ended up liking this one. While not perfect, and I think Kroagnon was an unneeded addition to the story, it premise as a microcosm of societal break down and the social groups that were created as a result thougrally captivated me. I also really like the Cleaner's designs. It even got me to hunt down the book that inspired the story, High-Rise.

Delta and the Bannermen: 2/10
I read the novel of this first and found it boring. The actual thing was even worse. While there are some funny bits and McCoy & Henderson give great performances, as a whole it just didn't work for me. It felt like the production issues had finally caught up with the show and they had to produce zero budget episodes (even by Who standards) with an awful script.

Dragonfire 6/10
This was just a solid fun story. Kane is a great villain and begins an ongoing trend in Seven's era were stories would include dark reflections of the Doctor & Companion relationship. Glitz brings in some good humour and of course it's the introduction of Ace, a character who is wrongly seen as the prototype of modern companions when they are clearly bastardizations of her. The fact the Dragon is a Xenomorph homage/ripoff gets it an extra point from me.

Oh look hello seventh doctor we have two of us lol

Hello. Indeed, a very pleasant surprise.

Ludders wrote:

It's the nadir of classic Who. A body blow from which it never recovered.

It amuses me how desperately you cling onto the same age-old lie whenever you talk about Season 24.

The show lasted for two more years after the season aired.

A lot of the ratings were very respectable considering the show was being broadcast on a Monday evening at the exact same time Coronation Street was on. Season 23 was broadcast early on a Saturday evening and didn't even get above 4 million some weeks.

Season 24 wasn't the "slow poison" that killed the show or a "body blow." It was a vast improvement over the previous season. It also started a creative renaissance. A biased BBC document isn't going to change my mind.

Indeed. Season 24 had far better ratings than season 23. Season 25 actually had better ratings than anything since season 22 and in both cases did so in a time-slot that would make Pisstaker run and hide while pissing herself with fear. A smart corporation would have placed the following season in a better slot and then promoted the hell out of it.
But the BBC has never been smart. That's what happens in any corporation when soulless executives make decisions instead of creatives.

iank wrote:Indeed. Season 24 had far better ratings than season 23. Season 25 actually had better ratings than anything since season 22 and in both cases did so in a time-slot that would make Pisstaker run and hide while pissing herself with fear.

Exactly. I'd rather take hard facts over outdated lies that fans love to spout.

iank wrote:It's almost like confirmation bias or something.

Suck it up panto loving tag team.

I've worked out that over 64 million people watched Season 24 in 1987. Hardly disastrous figures.

Pepsi Maxil Foley wrote:I've worked out that over 64 million people watched Season 24 in 1987. Hardly disastrous figures.

You should work for DWP mate.

Ludders wrote:

Pepsi Maxil Foley wrote:I've worked out that over 64 million people watched Season 24 in 1987. Hardly disastrous figures.

You should work for DWP mate.

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