Delta and the Bannermen Episode 1

Season24@30. A smorgasboard of ideas tapping into an iconic era this episode packs as much into 25 minutes as some stories do into 90. It is buzzing with concepts aplenty from an escaped alien Queen, time travelling holidays, a machine that changes various species into whatever form they need to be in for the holiday and a coach that is actually a spaceship. It’s the sort of mix we might expect in a modern story but for it to turn up in 1987 in the original series is surprising. It seems clear we can trace a line through this season from `Time and the Rani’s` final backwards look to Doctor Who as it had been in recent memory through `Paradise Towers` sometimes frustrating mix of old and new to this shiny example of Doctor Who as it could be. It is a hugely enjoyable visual feast and do you know what the weird thing is? When it was shown thirty years ago I didn’t like it!

In fact I couldn’t even appreciate it back then because I had grown up with serious Doctor Who keeping company with the likes of Sutekh the Destroyer and Davros and Magnus Greel. Compared to that `Delta and the Bannermen` was surely taking the proverbial, sending up the show and extracting its last vestige of credibility. Funny how time changes things. Watching this episode in 2017 I love every minute of it, yes even Ken Dodd’s delivery of the line “the rock and roll years”. I can see it for what it really is; a cleverly assembled homage both to telefantasy and to the Fifties.

I actually did like the opening thirty years ago and it’s still a rare and superbly realised `on the run` scenario you’d get in a film. Then we meet two retired American agents of some sort using a real police telephone box just like the Tardis. The Doctor and Mel’s unexplained decision to go on a Nostalgia Tour (after the last story I was expecting Mel to ask about a swimming pool) ushers in the first of several scenes that writer Malcolm Kohll delivers with economy. There is no slack in the episode and my favourite shortcut is when Billy comes to sit down at Delta’s table and smiles at her, she returns a smile. No dialogue but that scene informs later events and you know there’s a connection. Likewise the blue suede shoed character just has to look across the bus to let us know he’s up to no good.

It’s well known that Ray played by Sara Griffiths was at one stage considered as the next companion though her story here portrays someone who would struggle with rigours of time and space if her reaction to Billy’s rejection is anything to go by. I was thinking though- was this the first time a Doctor Who plot involved something as sweet and simple as a love story?

Wales is of course synonymous with the programme nowadays but back in the day it usually only doubled for Gallifrey or some other planet except for `The Green Death`. These rare visits did always dial up the Welshness (remember those miners back in 73) and here both Ray and holiday camp Burton (a wonderfully busy Richard Davies) do the same. Even so it is impressive how well they’ve populated the place with extras to give it a real old fashioned holiday air.

The bustle of the narrative and the busy storylines deflect our attention away from the odd ropey effect but its worth mentioning the ones that do work including that opening and the nifty way they show us the coach’s bumpy landing. One of the most impressive is the way the lights in the rear of the coach really do convey the sort of power that would needed could such a thing exist, it’s typical of the attention to detail you get in the best stories. Most of all the episode has real rock and roll music in it which mixes well with the incidental score to gift wrap a joyous, perfect opening episode.