Product Details

• Actors: Sylvester McCoy, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison
• Writers: Sydney Newman
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: BBC Video
• VHS Release Date: June 4, 2002
• Run Time: 73 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00005Y72H
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #204,037 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Where is he, your Uncle Sam?", February 4, 2004

By 

Jason A. Miller (New York, New York USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Doctor Who - Delta and the Bannermen [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Hiding in plain sight in the middle of "Delta and the Bannermen" is a dotty old Welshman named Goronwy. He's a beekeeper, a collector of honey, and a student of human nature. Script writer Malcolm Kohll clearly had something different in mind for this character. Everything Goronwy says reflects directly on the story unfolding around him. He's a living, breathing, Basil Exposition. It's he who tells us that, just as an ugly pupa becomes a beautiful butterfly, so will Delta's hideous green baby become the new Chimeron queen. It's he who tells Billy -- and us -- that a newborn bee can become queen just by the right diet.

On the other hand, Kohll also sees fit to include a pair of bumbling CIA agents named Hawk and Weismuller. Contrary to Goronwy, absolutely nothing they say advances the story at all. In fact, "Delta and the Bannermen" stops dead whenever they're on screen. And that's "Delta and the Bannermen" for you. The sublime and the ridiculous, all aggressively sewn up in the same package.

This most small-scale of "Doctor Who" stories -- twelve evil black-clad soldiers menace a Welsh vacation resort in 1959 -- is also the most hyper and frenetic the show ever got. The whole thing is a gigantic car chase. I mean, here we have more spaceships and motorcycles and buses and cars and other vehicles all in one place for the first time since "Planet of the Spiders". If you thought all those Season 11 chase scenes were too much to handle, try this 75-minute caper on for size!

The guest cast is variable. Let's go back to Hawk and Weismuller for a minute. Weismuller is played by Stubby Kaye, the New York-born Broadway star ("Guys and Dolls") who somehow wound up living in England, trapped in the middle of Season 24. Not only is he wearing a New York Yankees jacket, but he's wearing a Yankees cap, too, just in case we missed the point. In 1959, the Yankees only finished in third place, and Kaye looks tired and over the hill, just like Casey Stengel. But he's charming in the role and it's nice to add him to the "Who" legacy. His partner Hawk, on the other hand, has the worst American accent this side of "The Chase", and is played by someone named Morgan Deare who, if the Internet Movie Database is anything to go by, was most certainly not from New York.

The rest of "Delta" can be boiled down to vignettes that are interesting, and vignettes that are not. Resort director Burton gives a totally pointless speech to his staff before he evacuates them. You'd have thought, to hear that speech, that the entire staff was about to get blown up by Bannermen! A few minutes before that, Burton's assistant clears his throat directly into the camera and sings "When the Red Red Robin Comes Bob Bob Bobbin' Along". Yes, this is 1959, we get it. Mel wears four different outfits, and that's just in the first thirty-five minutes.

Much better is the rock-and-roll themed incidental music, and would-be companion Ray, who's such a cute breath of fresh air. I love how she keeps explaining to everyone that Keillor, the ill-fated bounty hunter in blue suede shoes, was "ionized". Sylvester McCoy is also terrific in this. You can tell they still weren't sure where to go with his Doctor yet -- witness all those misquotes ("A stitch in time fills up space!" that were never again a staple of his character). And yet, he's gentle with Ray, avuncular with Billy ("For a primitive piece of technology, it certainly delivers the decibels!"), and devastating to Gavrok. His Part Two confrontation with the Bannermen leader, cleverly staged on a rickety staircase, features great line after great line. A few minutes later, he's back to discussing honey with Goronwy.

The story wraps up about five minutes before the end, leaving time for an extended denouement where all the (surviving) characters get something amusing to do. Even that much free time wasn't enough for Kohll, who added five or six scenes on top of that for his novelization. It ends with Goronwy telling us that, in the end, the new queen bee creates "a new hive, and a new life", and then he winks at the disappearing TARDIS.

There is almost something profound in the middle of all this silliness, but it all went by so fast that maybe I didn't have time to realize that it was a lot more silly than it was profound. Or vice versa.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Better than I remembered, June 3, 2002

By 

Alan D. Patten III "A. Daniel Patten, III" (Taylors (Greenville), SC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Doctor Who - Delta and the Bannermen [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I hadn't seen this one in a while, as the later Dr. Who seasons didn't get shown much in my area. This is from Sylvester McCoy's first season. During this time Dr. Who entered a bit of a silly period, and I expected not to like this one but I did. The juxtaposition of a holiday camp in Wales in 1959 and invaders from outer space made for an odd little story. Even though it did get a little silly at times, it also would turn on a dime and get serious. It's not one of the best Dr. Who adventures by any strech of the imagination, but one that i found highly enjoyable and entertaining.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Doctor on holiday!, July 23, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Doctor Who - Delta and the Bannermen [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This episode was cheesier than Cheddar, England, but I loved it!
The Doctor and Mel win a trip to Disneyland in the 1950's, and, of course, as always happens whenever the Doctor tries to take a holiday, everything goes wrong!

They have to save an alien queen and her baby, and prevent the destruction of an entire race! But first they have to fix the bus.

That is what I most love about this story, it isn't all gloom, doom, and machiavellian machinations. It takes place in a simple 1950's holiday camp, complete with hula-hoops and bouffant hairdos.

And we learn some interesting things about the Doctor, such as: he doesn't like to pay a toll any more than the next person, he's always willing to lend a shoulder to cry on, and there's a standing bounty on his head. And he can dance, if he's surprised into it.

All in all this wasn't one of the deep, thought provoking stories. But it had it's surprises. After all, this was the first time I'd ever seen someone boobytrap the TARDIS! Which, really, you would think someone would have done before!