This is the real Fifties.
For a series regarded as quintessentially British, very few moments on Doctor Who stand out as purely—which is to say, peculiarly—rooted in the British experience. True, there have been occasional references to cricket and boarding school, and explorations of British history make up an entire sub-genre of stories, but they all remain explicable, understandable, to the moderately well-read viewer from beyond the English Channel. That is, until Malcolm Kohll’s “Delta and the Bannermen” (Story Production Code 7F), showcasing that most specifically British of all institutions: the holiday camp.
Established as an inexpensive, all-inclusive getaway in the early twentieth century, the holiday camp, exemplified by the Butlin’s chain, typically features a series of shared, spartan accommodations not unlike barracks—and indeed several camps were used as such during the Second World War—with group meals at fixed times and elaborately planned entertainments on the fenced-in camp grounds, from fun races and skits through to dances and bathing beauty competitions. A veritable army of young people would serve as camp hosts, running the festivities and doing their best to engage campers in activities. While American analogues to the British holiday camp exist, as in the Catskills resorts of the ’50s, the incessant focus on constant communal interaction sets these camps apart. The visual language of the British holiday camp—bright colors, workers in matching blazers, and utilitarian architecture within a walled compound—makes for an instantly recognizable setting, at least if you happen to be British.
Many of the holiday camp guests in “Delta and the Bannermen” are not British, instead being Navarinos, “[s]quat, wrinkly, purply creatures,” transmogrified into human form in preparation for a nostalgia trip to Disneyland on Earth in 1959. The Seventh Doctor and Mel tag along on their trip, in a spaceship designed to look like a bus, by virtue of being the ten billionth customers at an intergalactic toll booth, winning spots on the tour as a prize. Also tagging along is Delta (Belinda Mayne), whom we see fleeing from a group of armed ruffians at the start of the story, defended bravely by what, to all intents, appear to be life-size plastic green army men.
There’s a curious lack of concern on the Doctor’s part about this nonchalant excursion of aliens into Earth’s past, even after the galactic tour bus smashes into an early American satellite, causing the Navarinos to land, somewhat shy of Anaheim, in Wales after the Doctor’s intervention with the TARDIS. Rather than immediately removing the aliens via his own perfectly functional time-space craft, he suggests they all stay at Shangri-La, the holiday camp they have fortuitously crashed next to, going so far as to ask the camp’s mechanic, Billy (David Kinder), to help Murray (Johnny Dennis), the Navarino tour guide, fix the “nav pod” on the interstellar bus.
Such temporal infelicities soon pale, however, as one of the Navarinos, Keillor (Brian Hibbard), turns out to be an intergalactic assassin who recognizes Delta as the “Chimeron queen,” relaying her location to Gavrok (Don Henderson), leader of the Bannermen seen hunting her at the beginning of this story’s first episode. And as a three episode story, events must needs move fast. (Season Twenty-Four, like the season just past, is budgeted for only fourteen twenty-five minute episodes, leading to a pair of three episode stories to close out Sylvester McCoy’s abbreviated debut season.) Kohll doesn’t even wait until the middle of the story to have Mel scream, as in the first episode cliffhanger she witnesses an egg carried in a glowing disco box by Delta start to hatch an unlikely green chicken…
The Chimeron hatchling, who will grow at an accelerated rate, represents the last hope for Delta’s people, who have been wiped out by Gavrok and the Bannermen for reasons Kohll never quite gets around to explaining. For all the frenetic energy of the first episode, however, the story just sort of stops once Delta explains the import of this young princess to Mel and Billy, who has swiftly become enamored of the alien queen, much to the dismay of his unrequited paramour, Ray (Sara Griffiths).
The location shooting, in and around the former Barry Islands Butlin’s Camp in South Wales, takes on a starring role instead, with the Doctor and Ray riding around scenic Welsh vistas on a scooter looking for Delta and Billy, who have gone on a romantic excursion in the midst of an intergalactic crisis while Mel and Murray assist camp director Burton (Richard Davies) with evacuating the holiday makers, extraterrestrial and otherwise, before the arrival of the Bannermen. The humans get away safely, but Murray and the Navarinos don’t quite make it, with Mel and Burton captured in the aftermath.
Kohll and director Chris Clough also make time for a bumbling pair of American secret agents, Weismuller (Stubby Kaye) and Hawk (Morgan Deare), sent to Wales to track the satellite launch so rudely interrupted by the Navarino time bus, an inclusion ostensibly requested by producer John Nathan-Turner and script editor Andrew Cartmel, per Tat Wood’s invaluable About Time Volume 6, to increase the amount of humor in the story. The two American actors—a fairly rare species on Doctor Who still—dig deep into their heritage to sell such pure, unadulterated Americana that they can in no way be taken seriously, and indeed, they contribute mightily to the essential fever dream that “Delta and the Bannermen” becomes. And that’s not even taking into account the apiarist Goronwy (Hugh Lloyd) who speaks with his bees, who, in turn, speak to Delta, summoning her to the safety of the beekeeper’s house after the Bannermen arrive.
The story turns directly to farce, or even camp, if one might pardon the pun, for the latter half of its roughly seventy-five minute run time. Rather than running through corridors or quarries, our protagonists scurry across hill and dale on sidecars and scooters, accompanied by jaunty, Fifties-inflected music, again showing off the extensive location shooting. Kohll and Clough undercut this jocularity via the casual violence of the Bannermen, who destroy the Navarino bus once it’s loaded and beginning its escape, and Gavrok’s crude behavior, including the worst table manners this side of Shockeye. But none of the danger or menace lands; all the traps and tricks set by the Bannermen exist solely to allow the Doctor to outwit them.
It’s a simple matter, once the Doctor has rescued Mel and Burton, to occupy the Bannermen with a few false leads, enabling him to set a trap of his own at Shangri-La. The Chimeron princess (grown version, Carley Joseph) happily possesses a high frequency voice that enables her to incapacitate any non-Chimeron who hears it. With Billy’s help, the Doctor installs a souped-up amplifier on the roof of the camp chalets, and when Gavrok and his cronies finally track down their prey, the princess lets loose with a song not likely to chart but sufficient to knock out all the Bannermen. Gavrok, for his troubles, falls into the sonic trap he installed on top of the TARDIS, fried by his own petard…
It’s all quite inconsequential, a tidy resolution of a foregone conclusion. The only shocking moment comes when a love-struck Billy decides to ingest a special Chimeron growth compound that Delta has been feeding the fast-growing princess, beginning the process of chimeric transformation. Mars might need women, but Chimeron needs a man, and Billy has volunteered. The Doctor makes some disapproving noises, but, as he notes, “love has never been known for its rationality,” possible mutations be damned. Ray, for her part, takes Billy’s tacit rejection in stride. Per Wood again, both this story and the following three-episode tale were considered for the season finale, and each features a possible replacement for Bonnie Langford, whose time as Mel soon comes to a close. Ray’s close coordination with the Doctor throughout “Delta and the Bannermen” makes greater sense in this context.
With so little actual plot in play, the actors perforce must carry the weight of the story, and the guest cast comes through in spades. Sara Griffiths, in an audition of sorts for companion as mentioned, makes a good case for joining Team TARDIS, with a practical mechanical bent which would be a first for a companion—who needs a Sonic Screwdriver when Ray has “a one and five eights socket” at the ready? Griffiths plays Ray in a quite affable manner, unfazed by the sudden appearance of alien hitmen and surprisingly keeping her equanimity when her would-be boyfriend gallivants off with an extraterrestrial queen, just the kind of even keel needed for a life with the Doctor. Richard Davies’ Burton likewise embodies the “can-do” attitude required of the leader of a holiday camp, taking an invasion from outer space in the same stride as he would running out of fish and chips or a cancellation by that night’s band for the big “Getting to Know You” dance.
Yet again, Bonnie Langford spends the majority of a story operating independently from the Doctor, far more than any other companion in some time. She does scream frequently, alas, but she brings about the evacuation of Shangri-La without a hitch, other than the whole Navarino bus explosion, which really wasn’t her fault. With such a large guest cast, Mel receives fewer lines than perhaps her role deserves, but Langford remains gamely committed to the character, singing along to “Rock Around the Clock” on the bus ride and hanging on for dear life as the Doctor careens a sidecar around a tight bend, and seldom has a companion been more endearing than when Mel waves at cows lolling beside the road during a supposedly urgent chase.
Sylvester McCoy shows none of the growing pains that, frankly, all of his predecessors in the title role have experienced, and for the Seventh Doctor’s third outing, he has completely made the character his own. The malapropisms, the physical comedy, the casual gestures and asides, all combine to create a whole. McCoy gives off the sense of having always been the Doctor, and audiences that have been through quite the wringer over the series’ near-cancellation and truncated seasons, to say nothing of the rather abrupt firing of Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor, must feel at least some relief that the series seems to be in good hands again. If nothing else, McCoy’s heart(s) are in the right place(s).
More than most stories, “Delta and the Bannermen” relies heavily on its background music, which, as noted, carries a real Fifties feel throughout. Covers of popular contemporary songs feature throughout, in particular with a version of “Lolipop” overlaid as the Bannermen storm a deserted shed in pursuit of Delta and the Chimeron princess. The juxtaposition of this music, so often associated with sock hops and drive-ins and milk bars and other light-hearted pursuits, with explosions and spaceships and endless motorcycle rides drives the overall feeling of “Delta and the Bannermen,” creating a story that is more mood piece than coherent narrative.
Notably absent from this story is any sense of series continuity, any implication of the Doctor having responsibilities to the sacred laws of time and space that so hem in prior Doctors. Timeline corruption via advanced technology accidentally left in a camp chalet? Not a worry. Overly talkative camp director and hapless American secret agents aware of a broader intergalactic community? Mere details. In some senses this reflects the presence of new script editor Andrew Cartmel, who has already begun to unmoor the series from its incessant self-referentiality under producer Johnathan Nathan-Turner’s six-odd years at the helm (though, it must be said, in favor of his own understanding of said history). It’s hard to imagine this script being green-lit for Colin Baker or Peter Davison, or at least what little script there is.
Indeed, there’s scarcely more than the barest sketches of a plot in “Delta and the Bannermen,” and the conceit could have easily been an episode of the delightful Hi De Hi! without seeming too out of place. But there’s a certain beauty in the notion that Doctor Who is the perfect vehicle for this story. “Aliens invade Butlin’s” is such a winning précis that it doesn’t really need a deeper examination or a more fulsome explication. Turn the Doctor loose in a holiday camp in the Fifties, throw in some complications in the form of a never-explained intergalactic conflict, hire a pitch perfect guest cast, and just let the cameras roll in a delightful setting. It doesn’t make sense, but it’s fun in a way the series desperately needs.
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Post 156 of the Doctor Who Project