Who Review: Delta and the Bannermen
The Doctor and Mel arrive at a space tollport where the tollmaster informs them that, as the ten billionth people to pass through, they have won a trip to Disneyland on Earth in 1959. They will be joining a party of Navarinos, adopting human form so they don’t frighten the natives, on a fun excursion to the rock ‘n’ roll era. Mel boards the ship, which is disguised as an old holiday bus, while the Doctor follows along in the TARDIS. Before departure, however, the rock-and-roll party is joined by a VIP guest: a runaway from a war-torn planet, carrying a precious cargo. She is a Chimeron, the last of her kind, escaping from a band of mercenaries determined to wipe out her species. In mid-flight, the bus collides with an Earth satellite, knocking it off course. Instead of Disneyland, they end up in South Wales, at the Shangri-la holiday camp. To make matters worse, the mercenary Bannermen have tracked their quarry to the holiday camp, and intend to fulfill their mission, putting the lives of everyone there in danger–including the Doctor and Mel…
SPOILER ALERT!! My comments may (and likely will) contain spoilers for those that haven’t seen this serial. If you want to stay spoiler-free, please watch the story before you continue reading!
Part of the agreement under which Doctor Who returned for last season’s “Trial of a Time Lord” was that the number of episodes be reduced to fourteen. In light of this, script editor Andrew Cartmel planned each season to have two four-part stories, and two three-part stories. “Delta” was the first three-parter of season 24, and the first three part story (with each episode about 25 minutes long) since “Planet of Giants” in 1964.
The three-part format works for this story. Another episode and it would have been too long. For his first Doctor Who, writer Malcolm Kohll paced it just right. And while “Delta” is often liked as a “fun romp” but not taken too seriously, I actually think it’s a good story (though I agree some of the production choices detract from its quality). It’s well thought-out with every character playing a part in moving the plot forward. There’s no fluff, no padding, just good, solid storytelling. At the beginning we have three apparently unconnected plot threads: Delta’s fight with the Bannermen, the Doctor and friends on the “bus” to a holiday camp, and the U.S. launch of a satellite from Cape Canaveral. The threads come together when Delta boards the bus, and the satellite crashes into the bus’s navigation system sending it off-course. On Earth, even the two American CIA agents, sent to track the progress of the satellite, get involved. It’s nice to note that at least one of the actors is actually American!
One of the subplots to the story is the relationship between Billy and Ray, a childhood friendship that Ray was hoping she could encourage along a more romantic line. But then Delta arrives on the scene and Billy is smitten to the point where he steals the Chimeron food intended for the hatchling, and eats it himself, hoping to become one of her race. It’s a bit of a stretch to think he would do something as drastic as this for an alien he’s only just met, and virtually ignore his life-long friend. But it does answer the question: if Delta’s the last of her species, won’t they die out without a male? Well, it sort-of answers it since Billy is still human, so the next generation of Chimerons will by Chimeron-human hybrids–if such a thing can exist. But it’s a sweet idea and given narrative support by comparing their situation with the life-cycle of bees, something the beekeeper, Goronwy, tells us about toward the end of the story.
As I said, there’s no fluff in this story. Billy’s skill with wiring is put to use to rig up the sound system that will finally deal with the Bannermen. The beekeeper gives shelter to the Doctor and his friends, while his bees and their honey help stall the Bannermen, aiding our heroes in their escape. And when the hatchling screeches her song through the holiday camp speakers, everyone but the Bannermen has beeswax in their ears.
Ray makes a good “almost-companion” for the Doctor. She’s very “can-do” and relatively unphased by the strange things going on around her. She has mechanical knowledge learned from Billy but she’s not an anachronistic feminist. And she doesn’t scream. In fact, it seems the production team were considering her as Mel’s replacement since Bonnie Langford was planning on leaving after this story. Even though the companion gig didn’t work out, she’s still a good addition to the team for this story.
I didn’t like the fact they used “The Devil’s Galop” (aka, the Dick Barton theme) as the “chase” music. The association with that old-time radio drama undermined the seriousness of the threat and made it seem a bit tongue-in-cheek. I’m sure that wasn’t the intention; they were simply using music that was popular in the UK at that time. They used re-recordings of classic rock-n-roll songs (copyright costs prohibited the use of the originals) in the holiday camp to lend period atmosphere in a similar way. I think it was a bad choice of music at that point.
The Doctor is back to misquoting popular sayings, having taken a break from it in the last story. However, unlike the “Time and the Rani,” where these misquotes were almost every other line, they are scattered around making them much more tolerable.
“Delta and the Bannermen” is good Who. Not without fault, and not Must-See, but good nonetheless. Worth watching.
