This is naive.Considering he needed to get the underlying tech tested (for imports and all), and he was still going to have Zoey backstory, the only thing a lack of the Interlude would have resulted in would have been no update for anything whatsoever at all this entire time, because that same "boring" story content would have been worked into the rest of the stuff anyway.
Don't be angry about the interlude, this lengthy delay was always going to happen. Be angry that DPC obviously lied about pushing for smaller, faster episodes than what he'd done prior to the bloat of episode 8.
The moment the Interlude was going to be a standalone release, it was obviously fleshed out to fit that choice. Had it just been 'part' of Episode 9, it would have been much shorter and less detailed.