Delta and the Bannermen Part One

The one where the Doctor wins a holiday to Disneyland in 1959...

The story gets off to an explosive, action-packed start with a battle in a quarry on an alien planet, where a beautiful princess and her froggy friend are fighting a bunch of black-clad baddies called Bannermen. The episode really does start full-throttle, with a mad dash across a rocky landscape as the princess decides to steal her enemy Gavrok's ship. Sadly, her faithful green friend Chima is shot by Gavrok, but he manages to shoot back at his assailant before he dies proper, allowing his princess to escape.

The model work and special effects in this episode are really impressive, whether it's the Bannerman ship taking off, the moon in the alien sky, the US satellite in orbit, or the TARDIS rescuing the Nostalgia Trips space bus. It might not stand up to today's CGI wizardry, but for the BBC in 1987, it's pretty good (the effects came on in leaps and bounds in the show's final four years).

After that brief introduction to what the story's going to be about, we join the Doctor and Mel as the TARDIS materialises at a toll port in space, where the Doctor learns he is the 10,000,000,000th customer! Presenting them with their prize is none other than Liverpudlian comedian Ken Dodd as the intensely camp Tollmaster, dressed in lilac and holding a party blower. It's unexpected casting to say the least - Dodd was not known as an actor, and didn't pretend to be one either - but he fits this role, and plays it perfectly well. It's a cameo, a fun cameo, and that's all there is to it. It might not be so passable if the Tollmaster was in the whole story, but it's no different to having the Beatles in The Chase or John Cleese in City of Death (in fact, as Dodd plays an actual character, it's more integrated).

The Doctor has won a week in Disneyland on Earth in 1959, travelling with the Navarinos' 1950s Club on a Nostalgia Trips space bus. And this is where things get really wacky! As the Doctor correctly identifies, the Navarinos are "squat, wrinkly, purply creatures" who look like the underside of a Zygon (but, erm, purple). We don't see much of them in their true form before they pass through a transformation arch to become more humanoid, so they're less conspicuous on 1950s Earth. The shot of the purple Navarino struggling to get through the arch, flipping between his real and assumed forms, is hilarious, and beyond silly.

But it works! I know people hate Delta and the Bannermen - some detest it with a passion - but it's a Doctor Who period comedy. It's Doctor Who having fun - so much fun - and not being ashamed of it. This is bright, colourful, zany, comic strip fun, an adventure to remember whether you like it or not. OK, so it's not The Caves of Androzani, but at least it's not drab and forgettable like The King's Demons. The watchword is FUN, both for this story and the whole season. And if you don't like fun, then you're a fan of the wrong programme.

Mel joins the Navarinos on their space bus (piloted by the loveable Murray) while the Doctor follows on in the TARDIS, which is just as well when the bus is hit by an American satellite and has to be guided in to crash-land (Sylvester McCoy operating the TARDIS controls like no other Doctor!). The bus plonks itself in a flower bed at the entrance to the Shangri-La holiday camp in South Wales. Right year, wrong continent!

The real Disneyland opened in July 1955, but if the Doctor and Mel had made it there they would have been able to visit such attractions as the Mickey Mouse Club Circus, Merlin's Magic Shop, the Skyways to Tomorrowland and Fantasyland, Space Station X-1, and the Monsanto Hall of Chemistry. I can just see the Seventh Doctor and Mel capering about the complex, hand in hand, marvelling at it all!

The Nostalgia Trips crew is welcomed by Burton Burton, manager of the Shangri-La camp in deepest, brightest Wales. He is very Welsh, and agrees to let them stay the night until they can get their bus fixed. Shangri-La could do with a lick of paint (the metal stairways are a bit rusty) and the grass certainly needs cutting, but this may be something to do with the production team using the Butlin's Majestic Holiday Camp on Barry Island, which had closed the previous winter, as a location.

McCoy is in his element here, matching the light-hearted feel of the story with his natural eccentricities. This is a lovely version of his free-spirited Doctor before the darkness settles, and he seems very at home in this environment - on vacation with a bunch of wrinkly purple aliens disguised as 50s holiday-makers who accidentally crash-land at a holiday camp in Wales instead of Disneyland in California! It's all delightfully bonkers. McCoy has a few scenes where his Doctor quietly shines, such as when he takes the gift of an apple from a little boy, then listens to it, followed by several aborted attempts to eat it!

McCoy is also lovely in his scenes with Ray, played by Sara Griffiths putting on the Welshiest Welsh accent ever (it's so over the top that it becomes a parody). It's clear Ray has the hots for lick-the-mirror-handsome mechanic Billy (and who can blame her?), but it's an unrequited, unreciprocated love. It's nice that the Doctor recognises this, and encourages Ray to move to the front of the hall at the evening hop to see Billy's band perform. Later, after Ray's been spurned by Billy's quick-setting fascination for Delta, the Doctor finds her sobbing in the laundry store, and awkwardly tries to comfort her.

Meanwhile, Mel is also in her element, keen on maximising the fun to be had hanging out at a holiday camp. Despite her initial disappointment that Shangri-La looks "a bit grim", she's ever the optimist, determined to make the best of things. She tries to befriend her starchy roommate Delta ("I'd help anyone in trouble if I could") but does not expect to be faced with an ugly green alien baby hatching out of an egg on Delta's bed. The screams are inevitable (hell, I think I'd scream too!), although I'm not convinced the newborn's entire body could fit inside the egg.

The cliffhanger sees the Doctor and Ray cornered by bounty hunter Keillor, who's reported Delta's whereabouts to the Bannermen, in exchange for a one million unit reward. Keillor is played by Welsh actor and singer Brian Hibbard, best known at the time for singing with the Flying Pickets, who had the 1983 Christmas number 1 in the UK with Only You (at the time the band dressed up in 1950s style fashions, so the casting fits). The Doctor sweetly tries to get Keillor to let Ray go, but sadly the bounty hunter enjoys murder as a pastime: "I don't just kill for money. It's also something I enjoy!"

Thoughts:

• This is the first story set in 20th century Britain since The Two Doctors, a fact which made me realise that contemporary-set stories become quite scarce toward the end of the classic series. In the final five years, there were only seven stories set in contemporary times (I'm excluding the "futuristic" Battlefield), but only two are set entirely on Earth (The Awakening and Silver Nemesis).
• The look of the Chimeron males is a bit naff. Costume designer Richard Croft goes over the top with the green theme, even making their hard hats green! The faces aren't fab either, but for the amount of screen time they get, it's fair I suppose.
• The Doctor finally has his trademark question mark umbrella, which makes an appearance before he does as it emerges from the TARDIS first. McCoy handles the prop differently in these early episodes, clutching it like a staff at the mid-section, holding it conspicuously aloft, rather than using it as an umbrella/ walking cane as in later stories. As beautiful as the brolly is, it's just too on-the-nose in tandem with the Doctor's question mark collar and pullover. "Who am I? Guess who I am, go on, guess!"
• There's a whole subplot hobbling along with two American agents wandering about the Welsh countryside, supposedly contacting the White House in Washington DC using a phenomenally incongruous real-life police box. I very much doubt you'd find a police telephone box in the middle of the South Walian countryside. And the idea you'd be able to get through to the President is nonsense, as the telephones inside were wired to the emergency services only. Anyway, the scenes with Hawk and Weissmuller are tiresome, and feel quite separate and irrelevant to the fun elsewhere.
• Having said that, Weissmuller gets one of the funniest lines of the story when he reports that he is calling from "Wales... in England!" For anybody who has lived in Wales, this is a frustratingly common misconception!
• Weissmuller is picking up the BBC Light Programme's Housewives' Choice on his radio, which means the events we're witnessing take place between 9.00am-10.00am, during the summer months (it's bright daylight).
• It was a Nostalgia Trips tour that got stuck with the glass-eaters of Tharl, according to the Doctor. What's so terrible about the glass-eaters of Tharl? Even Mel seems to recognise that being stuck with them would not be a good thing!
• The Bedford coach used as the Nostalgia Trips space bus (VWW 361) was first registered in May 1958, making its use perfectly authentic!
• There's one of those annoying bits where somebody has to stifle (or fails to stifle) a sneeze as the enemy circles. This time it's the Doctor (he's just as sneezy in Remembrance of the Daleks), but this happens to Ace in Silver Nemesis too.
• Delta and the Bannermen was broadcast between November 2nd-16th 1987, finishing just a few weeks before the final series of sitcom Hi-De-Hi! debuted (the BBC comedy was set in a holiday camp in the 1950s, and was a clear influence on this serial).

Delta and the Bannermen part 1 is a tour de force of energy and style. The design department's firing on all cylinders when it comes to the setting - the evening hop looks fab, all the fashions, music, quiffs and lingo - and it's directed with pace and passion. Season 24 continues to give the viewer colour, enthusiasm and freshness after years of Doctor Who being stuck in a rut with no sign of rescue. It might not be peak Who, but thank goodness Andrew Cartmel came along to give the programme the shake-up it so desperately needed.

First broadcast: November 2nd, 1987

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The infectious exuberance of the story. Doctor Who is having fun again, for the first time in years!
The Bad: The subplot with the Americans is dull.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

Ace says "Professor": 0

NEXT TIME: Part Two...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part Two; Part Three

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site.

Delta and the Bannermen is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Delta-Bannermen-DVD/dp/B001UHO12U