41 - Delta and the Bannermen

Composer: Keff McCulloch
Director: Chris Clough

What's the score?
Much of this story is set in Wales in 1959 ("the rock 'n' roll years!"), so '50s rock and earlier tunes that were popular at the time feature heavily. This being DW, aliens also feature prominently, and for scenes of extra-terrestrial mayhem the order of the day is bombastic synth foolery in a very similar vein to the previous two musical scores. Keff McCulloch was approached to work on this story as well as Time and the Rani; in fact, he was required to work on this story before/during filming as well as in post-production, as we will shortly see. However, the sudden commission to provide the music for Paradise Towers complicated matters and left McCulloch with (at a guess) less than a month before transmission to finish the Delta and the Bannermen score.

Musical notes

• A substantial part of McCulloch's contribution to this story was recording covers of various vocal and instrumental pieces of 1950s music for diegetic use; producing new versions of these tunes presumably saved the production office a small fortune in royalty fees. The vocal items were recorded by "The Lorells", a studio ensemble whose backing singers, the Wilson Sisters, included McCulloch's fiancée. McCulloch himself played the Fender Stratocaster electric guitar, the instrument made famous by Buddy Holly. Some of these songs were required for the filming of Part One itself, in which "The Lorells" (and McCulloch!) appear in character behind Billy the singing mechanic at the Shangri-La Holiday Camp Get To Know You Dance. The Millennium Effect website has a full list of the items covered, but it's worth going through that list and pointing out the context in which each is used:
• "Singing the Blues", "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" and "Mr Sandman" are performed at the dance in Part One, with "Mr Sandman" continuing over a camp tannoy as the Doctor follows Ray to the laundry store. The band are miming, so presumably these three songs would have been recorded before filming even started. The two big questions are, were all of the vocal covers recorded up front, and were any of them actually played back on set? There's a good chance that at least one of them was, because...
• "Rock Around the Clock" plays on the Navarino tour bus sound system earlier in Part One, and the alien tourists all sing and boogie along to it.
• "Goodnight Campers", a holiday camp repurposing of "Goodnight Sweetheart", is heard over the Shangri-La tannoys early in Part Two, when Billy brings flowers to Delta's room. Presumably the vocalist is the same yellowcoat seen crooning "When the Red, Red Robin" into a microphone the next morning.
• "That'll Be the Day", "Only You" and "Lollipop" are all heard over the radio at Goronwy's house in Part Three.
• "Who's Sorry Now" seems to be playing on Billy's record player as he packs his bags in Part Three. Having said which, there's no indication that Billy or the Doctor are actually listening to the record player in that scene, and it'd be a pretty odd choice of song anyway.
• "Happy Days Are Here Again" is blaring out of the speakers of the tour bus that arrives at Shangri-La at the very end of Part Three.
• Now on to the instrumental numbers. "Calling All Workers" is heard on the radio of Hawk and Weismuller's car when we first see them in Part One. "Calling All Workers" was composed by Eric Coates as the opening and closing theme of the BBC radio programme Music While You Work, which was broadcast twice daily on working days at the time this story is set - so we know Part One is set on a weekday.
• "Puffin' Billy" is playing over the Shangri-La tannoys when the Navarino bus arrives in Part One. "Puffin' Billy", a steam-train-themed composition, was used as the theme for the Saturday morning BBC radio show Children's Favourites - it wasn't specifically composed for it, so the camp staff might well have a copy for their own use on a weekday afternoon, but there's a timing problem if we're supposed to believe they've left the PA system tuned to the BBC Light Programme. Incidentally, we haven't heard the last of this tune in DW.
• "Parade of the Tin Soldiers" plays over the tannoy immediately after this in the same scene. Composed in 1897, it was used as the theme for one of many serials on the BBC's Children's Hour radio programme, broadcast daily in the evenings at the time this story is set; but it appears here directly after another tune with no commentary in between from a DJ or continuity announcer. This further suggests that we're not hearing a radio broadcast, and the staff just happen to have copies of both records.
• "In Party Mood" can be heard playing over the PA system in the Shangri-La dining room as the campers settle down to what is presumably their tea. This was used as the theme for another BBC radio programme, Housewives' Choice, which went out on weekday mornings, but again the composition pre-dates the BBC's use of the tune, and it's easier all round to assume that this is another item taken from the holiday camp's record library.
• Finally, "The Devil's Galop" is not heard diegetically, but is worked into the incidental music as part of a chase scene in Part Three. It's teased with some rather arch horn music in Part Two, and intercut with a variety of camp "chase scene" cues in both episodes. "The Devil's Galop" was used as the theme for the BBC radio drama serial Dick Barton - Special Agent between 1946 and 1951, but is best known through its terminal overuse since then in decades of imitations and parodies. It's instantly recognisable as That Chase Scene Music. McCulloch really didn't have to use it in a chase scene in a story set in 1959, but it's not out of place.
• In among an assortment of generic pop/rock incidental cues in this story, there are definite Shadows homages in two cues: the brooding low guitar piece heard as the bounty hunter Keillor contacts Gavrok in Part One, and the more lively guitar piece with "surf" licks that plays as the Doctor drives up to parley with the Bannermen in Part Two. The key work here is "Apache", a massive breakthrough hit for the Shadows, which includes sections that resemble both of these cues. (We haven't heard the last of this piece of music either.) The Shadows' career was only just beginning in 1959, around the time this story is set, and "Apache" wasn't released until 1960, so the references are anachronistic; then again, both scenes do centre on characters from the future.
• There's another musical reference in the droll bass guitar phrase that follows Keillor's sudden death, accompanying a shot of his smoking (what else?) blue suede shoes. It sounds a little bit like a slowed and pitched down version of the lead guitar licks from the middle eight of Buddy Holly's cover of "Blue Suede Shoes", although this would be anachronistic - Holly's cover must have been recorded before his death in February 1959, but wasn't compiled and released until 1964. It's more probably a reference to Henry Mancini's theme from Peter Gunn, an American series about a jazz-loving private detective. Peter Gunn first aired in America in 1958; as far as I've been able to find out, it was broadcast in the UK but not until the '60s.
• One last anachronism worth considering is the decidedly modern rockin' electric guitar in the scene of the Doctor helping Billy to wire up the holiday camp's PA system to defeat the Bannermen in Part Three. We could excuse this one too, but it's much more of a stretch than the other, rather borderline examples. At the same time, it's not outlandish enough to be passed off as one of McCulloch's "outer space stuff" cues.
• McCulloch's final concession to the story's period setting is a cheesy doo-wop ballad that accompanies the scene of everyone farewelling Delta and Billy. It's an original composition, but as a vocal piece it features "The Lorells" in their only non-diegetic performance in this story. The Wilson Sisters do the heavy lifting with their "ooo wah wa-oooo" refrain, while the lead vocals are provided by a woman (your humble blogger suspects it's McCulloch's fiancée pulling double duty) singing "Here's to the future" and "Love is the answer" with an accent that's strangely upmarket for this type of song.
• The usual synth shennanigans are saved for scenes of alien activity, and indeed it sometimes feels as if McCulloch has saved three full episodes' worth of bombast for these cues. Some of them seem to be composed entirely out of orchestra hits, notably the cues at the start and end of Part One (pitched battle on an alien world between Bannermen and Chimerons; a green space baby hatches out of Delta's egg). It's as if he's purging them all out of his system so that he can focus on the '50s material elsewhere.

Vox pop
This story isn't a favourite of mine, but there's plenty of interest in McCulloch's score. In places it's horribly cheesy, and in others it's ridiculously hyperactive, but between these extremes there's some great material.
Looking ahead, it's remarkable how much more diverse and interesting McCulloch's Season 24 scores are when compared with his later DW work. It's doubly remarkable in light of the difficult circumstances under which these scores were composed - first the late nights working on Time and the Rani, then composing Paradise Towers in scarcely more than a week, and then playing catch-up on this demanding story. Did he do his best incidental composing when under pressure and deprived of sleep? Your humble blogger is inclined to think so; McCulloch himself reportedly believes that Time and the Rani was his best DW score, so there may be something to it.

Availability

• The BBC DVD release does not include the isolated score for this story, but nearly eight and a half minutes of Keff McCulloch's music can be heard on the photo gallery.
• Five tracks from this story were included on The Doctor Who 25th Anniversary Album, most of them extended by doubling sections of the broadcast cues. "Gavrok's Search" is the piece that plays during the Bannermen's pursuit of Delta to the spaceport in Part One. "Burton's Escape" is a lively piece from the motorbike escape sequence in Part Three. "The Sting" is a concatenation of two pieces: the growling first part of the cue that plays when the Bannermen storm Goronwy's honey shed in Part Three, and the hard-rockin' final showdown cue. "The White Flag" is the opening cue from Part Three. And of course, "Here's to the Future" is the doo-wop song from the end of Part Three.