Delta and the Bannermen by: Malcolm Kohll and directed by: Chris Clough - A Re-Review

 

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 20^th 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.