“I can’t condone this foolishness” —The Doctor
Story
The Bannermen— it’s not clear whether that’s the name of an army or a species or an empire, but they carry banners attached to their backpacks— led by the evil Gavrok, are wrapping up a war of genocide against the Chimerons, an alien race which, though humanoid, appears to have a biology similar to social insects. The Chimeron queen, Delta, escapes in a stolen spacecraft as the only survivor of her species, carrying a single egg.
Meanwhile the TARDIS materializes in a run-down spaceport where trumpets proudly announce that it’s the 10 billionth spacecraft to pass through the facility, and accordingly the Doctor and Mel have won a deluxe vacation at Disneyland on Earth in 1959. The prize is less impressive than it seems when the deluxe vacation turns out to be two tickets on an existing package tour put together by what the Doctor recognizes as the most cheap and inept tourist agency in the Galaxy. A group of aliens disguised as humans board a spaceship disguised as a 50’s-vintage bus, excited about visiting Earth in the era of Rock n’ Roll. Mel thinks it’ll be a lot of fun but the Doctor wisely decides to follow along in the TARDIS rather than riding the bus. Unnoticed by anyone, Delta stows away aboard the bus as well.
Approaching Earth, the bus collides with a Sputnik-era satellite just launched by the US and is forced to make an emergency landing, in Wales rather than at Disneyland. The bus lands outside the Shangri-la Holiday Camp, a sad-looking, low-budget sort of place where the tourists are mistaken for another tour group that failed to show up. They’re shown to rooms in the camp, planning to spend the night while the bus gets repaired. They seem to be as happy with this place as they would be at Disneyland. (“This is the real 1950’s!”)
A bounty hunter in the alien tour group recognizes Delta and sends a signal to the Bannermen, who arrive to hunt her down and kill her. Her egg hatches into a baby which grows at an accelerated rate, and Delta tells the Doctor she needs to get the child to the “brood planet,” and if she does then she’ll be able to go to a galactic tribunal to bring a charge of genocide against Gavrok and the Bannermen. Meanwhile Billy, a mechanic who works at the holiday camp, has fallen in love-at-first-sight with Delta, while two bumbling CIA agents try to track the US satellite (which came down with the bus), an elderly beekeeper behaves eccentrically, and the Bannermen wander around trying to kill everyone without much success (except for one gratuitous scene).
Review
Oh dear, what a load of rubbish. To my taste, at least, this story marks the absolute low point of late Classic Dr Who. I suppose I should try to give some specifics.
First off, they’re trying to do full-on comedy again, which almost never works in Dr Who: it should always have a sense of humor, but it’s got to take its adventure seriously. This time the comedy is very broad, with goofy cartoonish characters (especially the two CIA agents, who are so inept they’d be unbelievable even in a Laurel and Hardy movie). The Holiday Camp, the alien tourists, and the Bannermen themselves are all played mostly for laughs (but fail to be funny). Even the background music, when not quoting from 50’s rock-n-roll, quotes from the melodies often heard in Bugs Bunny cartoons.
The few moments that try to make a real menace out of the Bannermen fall flat because they’re so jarringly out of place. At one point in the story, the aliens get their bus repaired and the comical bus driver and comical alien tourists board to resume their trip to Disneyland (the Doctor, Mel and Delta staying behind), and the Bannermen blow up the bus, killing them all. It’s about the only time in the story that they actually manage to do anything, and while Mel is briefly outraged no one seems really to care for very long. And let’s just mention one other glaring example: the story opens with a genocide (featuring a battlefield scene with some of the most explicit violence we’ve seen in Dr Who, with the bodies of soldiers getting blown to pieces on screen). And then we proceed directly to goofy comedy. That’s either the wrong way to start, or the wrong way to go on.
The story itself, what there is of it, is very choppy and underdeveloped. Episode 2, in particular, feels like it’s summarizing the story rather than telling it. It constantly feels like vital information has been skipped— not in the “keep up the pace by skipping the backstory” kind of way, but in a way that feels like we’re supposed to have heard it, but it ended up on the cutting room floor.
The length of the story might provide some explanation. Delta is 3 episodes long, a new length for a Dr Who serial. Given a 14 episode season, sticking to the series’ traditional serial lengths would have meant either a 6-parter or a 2-parter. John Nathan-Turner believed the 6-parters Dr Who used to do were too long, and he thought a 2-parter was too short. So he compromised: the season would have two 4-part stories, and two 3-parters. Watching Delta, especially its middle episode, you can imagine that it was not only scripted but actually shot as a 4-parter and then had to be shortened in editing for the new length— except that I don’t recall ever hearing that the length was changed at such a late date. As far as I know, it was always planned to be 3 episodes long. I still suspect something of the sort, however— it would make so much sense of the choppy tone.
What we do get to see doesn’t help much. When Billy walks in on Delta (after falling in love at first sight without having actually spoken to her) and finds her holding a green, scaly baby right out of a horror movie, what happens next? Does he run away screaming? Express mild surprise? React at all, in even the slightest degree? None of the above. He sits down while she explains she’s an alien queen on the run from a genocidal army, with about the same degree of surprise and interest he’d show if she said her father was an accountant. Meanwhile Mel, who is sharing the room with Delta and moments before was screaming her head off at the sight of the monster baby hatching out of the egg, is now so uninterested she goes to bed and falls asleep while Delta is talking.
It’s impossible not to cringe at these and many other such moments.
It would be unfair of me, I suppose, to also criticize the nonsensical ending of the Billy/Delta story: hearing from the eccentric beekeeper about “royal jelly” fed to bee larvae to turn them into queens, he steals some of the food Delta is feeding the baby and eats himself, which conveniently transforms him into a Chimeron male so he and Delta can run off and live happily ever after. I’m so strongly tempted to howl about this, but I have to recognize that every New Age Health Food story in America today thinks that “royal jelly” is some sort of magical eternal youth drug, so I can hardly blame one Dr Who writer for equally magical thinking. (Actually, I can. So there.)
The quote at the top of the page comes from the Doctor warning Billy this was a dangerous and foolish thing to do, but since it all turns out okay for Billy and Delta in the end, the quote becomes far more apt at the Doctor’s comment on this entire story.
Next Week:
“Dragonfire,” 3 episodes, the season 24 finale.
