Doctor Who 'Delta and the Bannermen' Review

The villainous Bannermen

The story begins on the planet Chimeron, where the merciless Bannermen, led by the evil Gavrok, have all but wiped out the Chimeron people.  The lone survivor of the entire race, Queen Delta, manages to flee the genocide with the egg containing her unborn daughter and last hope for her species.  Delta manages to make her way to a spaceport where the shape changing Navarinos are planning to visit Earth as tourists on a spaceship disguised as an old bus. 

Meanwhile the Tardis lands at the spaceport and the Doctor and Mel are congratulated for being the ten billionth customers, there prize being allowed on the trip to earth.  Mel gets onto the ship and meets Delta whilst the doctor follows behind them in the Tardis.

Unfortunately whilst on route the ship collides with an American satellite and is forced to set down at a holiday camp in South Wales instead of their intended destination of Disneyland.  Unfortunately the Bannermen are not far behind and track Delta to the holiday camp where they intend to finish the genocide of the Chimeron. 

Delta and her daughter

‘Delta and the Bannermen’ has to be without a doubt one of the worst episodes of Doctor Who that I have ever seen.  The show feels incredibly cheap, and it’s easy to imagine a tiny budget being the reasons for a number of the ludicrous inclusions to the story, such as the central location being a run down holiday camp in South Wales and the spaceship being ‘disguised’ as an old bus.

The story wanders around all over the place and is populated by people who are, frankly, idiots.  The villains are very incompetent and run around the Welsh countryside with no apparent tactic and continuously loose Delta, where it could have been very simple to capture her if they used their brains.  The villains are also easily dispatched by the Doctor, at one point he uses honey to get a swarm of bees to sting them.  I can’t help but question how awful the Chimeron must have been in order to be wiped out by a bunch of idiots like the Bannermen.

Another factor of the story that comes across as ridiculous is the love story between Delta and one of the humans she befriends at the holiday camp.  In the space of twenty four hours Billy goes from not knowing Delta to falling madly in love and injecting a bunch of alien chemicals that will cause him to mutate, possibly horribly as the Doctor warns him, and subsequently leaves earth with Delta.  Some people might enjoy this love story, but I can’t help to find it so ridiculously stupid to the point of being unbelievable. 

At only three episodes long this is a short serial, but one that took extremely long to watch as I found no real desire to continue watching.  A real chore to watch and has a story that is baffling and stupid beyond belief.  1/10

Amy.
xx

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