Delta and the Bannermen
stars Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor and Bonnie Langford as Melanie with Belinda
Mayne as Delta, Don Henderson as Gavrok, and Sara Griffiths as Ray. It was written by: Malcolm Kholl and directed
by: Chris Clough with Andrew Cartmel as Script Editor and John Nathan-Turner as
Producer. It was originally broadcast on
Mondays from 2 to 16 November 1987 on BBC1.
Since these reviews generally open with a little information
on the production of these serials and the source I am using claims that
originally Alan Moore was approached for a potential slot in Season 24, heavily
implying it would have been this slot but he was too busy writing Batman:
The Killing Joke. He never even got a
story submitted but to think there was an iota of a chance for Alan Moore to
write a story for Sylvester McCoy and I am very sad that Delta and the
Bannermen came to be. Andrew Cartmel
instead approached Malcolm Kohll who proposed several stories until Cartmel and
John Nathan-Turner allocated Kohll three episodes when the final six episodes
of the season were split into two stories, one shot on location and one in
studio. Looking into the production is
fascinating since it doesn’t actually seem as if Kohll had any idea as to what
he should have written until Nathan-Turner gave the brief involving a 20th
century recent historical setting, the location shooting requirements, and South
Wales.
Kohll would submit Flight of the Chimeron including
ideas of rock and roll, bees, motorcycles, alien/human romance, and a space
princess escaping the genocide of her people.
This last piece is essentially the thrust of the plot, though that plot
is incredibly messy and doesn’t actually spend any time to explain things. The title would change to Delta and the
Bannermen just before casting for the serial began and director Chris
Clough began casting including the character of Ray who would be a potential
companion. Now this is a serial I have
actually reviewed about seven years ago and greatly dislike. I was genuinely hopeful going into the
rewatch for a re-review that there might be something that clicks this time
around and sadly it didn’t. Delta and
the Bannermen is a story that is incomprehensible outside of its basic
setup, mainly because there’s only the skeleton of a story present. That doesn’t mean this is like Ghost Light
where editing on episodes that overran caused a very dense script to lose most
of its breathing room which had to be restored in an extended edition: the
extended edition of Delta and the Bannermen certainly exists but it only
restores about eight minutes of footage, most of that in the first episode, and
after viewing that there isn’t much information that is lost in the cuts that
were made.
The skeleton of the plot sees Chimeron queen Delta,
played by Belinda Mayne, escaping from the Bannermen led by Gavrok, played by
Don Henderson, who have just performed genocide on her people. She finds herself with a bunch of other
aliens going on holiday to Earth in the 1950s, a Soviet satellite diverting
them to Wales. She falls in love with a
human Billy, the Bannermen invade, and are promptly defeated. The main subplot of the serial are two American
agents, played by Stubby Kaye and Morgan Deare, trying to find the satellite. Honestly, there could be a great story here
if you actually gave time to explore any of these characters, or even gave any
motivation to any of these people. The romance
of Delta and Billy, played by David Kinder, happens with a look and suddenly they’re
both in love enough for Billy to magically change his species to be a father to
Delta’s child because the Chimeron are alien bees that look like humans. Sadly, we don’t ever actually find out why
the Chimeron were under attack, who the Bannermen actually are, or even who
Gavrok is in the end. The rest of the
alien tourists are also background players so the characters are stuck in Wales
in the 1950s and so the Doctor doesn’t just take Delta away in the TARDIS which
would end the story immediately. That’s
made even worse by the fact that the Doctor and Mel don’t actually have a lot
to do. Sure, there are scenes, but since
Ray, played by Sara Griffiths, doesn’t become a companion any character work there,
already ancillary to the plot, doesn’t have a resolution since the Doctor and
Mel just go off as normal at the end.
Each episode is padded with scenes that should be building character for
the supporting cast but they don’t. This
entire serial just moves from point A to point B as the plot requires.
Overall, Delta and the Bannerman is a
skeleton. Chris Clough is doing the best
he can with generally uninspiring location footage, it’s a holiday camp after
all. Bonnie Langford doesn’t have much
to do except stand around and listen to dialogue while Sylvester McCoy as the
Doctor has the serial’s one genuinely great scene near the end of Part Two where
he confronts Gavrok under a white flag of truce, undercut in the way that it
ends with the Doctor walking away without the direction or script really
indicating the clear idea that the Doctor’s presence was enough to scare them
off. Gavrok and the Bannermen are
uninteresting, there isn’t a romance, all of the characters are either bland or
just lack motivation. It also plays everything
as a comedy despite opening with the genocide of the Chimeron people and
includes the execution of a character played by British comic legend Ken Dodd. Tonally inconsistent, lacking in any stakes,
and especially not saying anything that aligns with Cartmel’s view for Doctor
Who, Delta and the Bannermen is in my mind the worst that the original
run of the show ever got for a single serial and coupled with the lackluster Time
and the Rani has given Season 24 its terrible reputation. 1/10.
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