The Dæmons (TV story)

"Chap with wings, five rounds rapid..."

Synopsis
The Master, posing as a rural vicar, summons a cloven-hoofed demon in a church basement.

Plot
The Doctor becomes alarmed on seeing television coverage of an archaeological dig by a Professor Horner into an ancient barrow near the village of Devil's End. He hurries to the scene with Jo.

The Master is posing as the local vicar, Mr Magister, and using black magic rituals to summon Azal, the last of a race known as the Dæmons, whose miniaturised spaceship is buried within the barrow. Benton and Yates arrive in a UNIT helicopter but, before the Brigadier and his troops can join them, a heat barrier appears and cuts the village off from the outside world.

As the Doctor attempts to breach the heat barrier, they must contend with Bok, a living gargoyle. The members of the community, under the Master's possession, attempt to burn the Doctor at the stake for being a witch. He is saved with the assistance of Miss Hawthorne, herself an actual witch.

Azal will appear three times and on the last of these occasions will decide whether to transfer his awesome powers to another or to destroy the planet as a failed experiment. The Master hopes to be the recipient of the powers, but in the event Azal offers them to the Doctor instead. The Doctor declines, arguing that the human race should be allowed to develop at its own pace.

Azal decides to kill him, but Jo then offers to take his place and, unable to comprehend this act of self-sacrifice, the Dæmon self-destructs. The Master is finally captured by UNIT and taken away to await trial for his crimes against humanity.

Cast

 * Doctor Who - Jon Pertwee
 * Josephine 'Jo' Grant - Katy Manning
 * The Master - Roger Delgado
 * Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart - Nicholas Courtney
 * Captain Mike Yates - Richard Franklin
 * Sergeant Benton - John Levene
 * Olive Hawthorne - Damaris Hayman
 * Bert the Landlord - Don McKillop
 * Winstanley - Rollo Gamble
 * Professor Horner - Robin Wentworth
 * Alastair Fergus - David Simeon
 * Harry - James Snell
 * Garvin - John Joyce
 * Dr. Reeves - Eric Hillyard
 * Tom Girton - Jon Croft
 * PC Groom - Christopher Wray
 * Baker's Man - Gerald Taylor
 * Bok - Stanley Mason
 * Sgt. Osgood - Alec Linstead
 * Thorpe - John Owens
 * Azal - Stephen Thorne
 * Morris Dancers - The Headington Quarry Men
 * Jones - Matthew Corbett

Crew

 * Assistant Floor Manager - Sue Hedden
 * Costumes - Barbara Lane
 * Designer - Roger Ford
 * Fight Arranger - Peter Diamond
 * Film Cameraman - Fred Hamilton
 * Film Editor - Chris Wimble
 * Incidental Music - Dudley Simpson
 * Make-Up - Jan Harrison
 * Producer - Barry Letts
 * Production Assistant - Peter Grimwade
 * Script Editor - Terrance Dicks
 * Special Sounds - Brian Hodgson
 * Studio Lighting - Tony Millier
 * Studio Sound - Ralph Walton
 * Theme Arrangement - Delia Derbyshire
 * Title Music - Ron Grainer
 * Visual Effects - Peter Day

Story Notes

 * The shot of the exploding helicopter is actually a scene taken from James Bond film From Russia With Love.
 * The Master's summoning phrases for Azal is 'Mary had a little lamb' backwards.
 * 'Guy Leopold' (the writer), is a pen name for Robert Sloman and Barry Letts.
 * This story had the working title; The Demons.
 * The area under the church is always referred to as 'the cavern' and never 'the crypt'. This was a BBC requirement to avoid the risk of causing offence to viewers with religious sensibilities.
 * Similarly, much to director Christopher Barry's amazement, no mention of God was permitted to be made in the story's dialogue, although references to the Devil were acceptable.

Ratings

 * Episode 1 - 9.2 million viewers
 * Episode 2 - 8.0 million viewers
 * Episode 3 - 8.1 million viewers
 * Episode 4 - 8.1 million viewers
 * Episode 5 - 8.3 million viewers

Myths

 * There was a sixth episode planned, where the master escaped UNIT. (This was an April Fool's joke in the fanzine DWB.)

Influences

 * This story makes a few nods towards Quatermass and the Pit, and not just for the idea that stories of devils and demons may be a race memory of horned aliens who conducted a eugenics experiment on early humans. Devil's End is essentially the same as Hobb's End, the fictitious London setting of the earlier story, Hob being an old name for the Devil. The use of iron to hold both Azal and Bok at bay is an old folk superstition that is also referred to in the Quatermass story. (See also DW: Image of the Fendahl.)


 * The large hoof prints left by Azal as he walks around the village of Devil's End and encircles the community with a heat barrier brings to mind a famous and well-documented case. On the morning of 9th February, 1855 the inhabitants of several villages and towns in Devon awoke to find what appeared to be the tracks of a hooved, two-legged creature in the snow, traversing a total distance of one hundred miles, going over rooftops, a 14-foot wall, and even apparently leaping across a two mile wide estuary. Many believed that the Devil himself had walked through Devon the previous night.

Filming Locations

 * Aldbourne, Wiltshire
 * Ramsbury Airfield, Ramsbury, Wiltshire
 * BBC Television Centre (Studio 4), Shepherd's Bush, London

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

 * Various pronunciations of 'Dæmons', 'Dæmos' (and all other permutations) are used throughout the story.
 * A signpost next to the heat barrier says: 'Devil's End 1'. However, in episode two, the barrier has a five mile radius, centered on the church.
 * In episode three, the energy exchanger interferes with radio communication, but by episode five it has lost this annoying side effect.

Continuity
Some events of this episode are referred to in Last of the Time Lords
 * The Doctor uses a few lines of a Venusian lullaby which is heard in full during The Curse of Peladon.
 * The Master sends his TARDIS to the Devil's End crypt at the close of PDA: The Face of the Enemy.
 * The Master is captured by UNIT forces at the conclusion of this story and is next seen in prison in The Sea Devils.
 * The Master retrieves his TARDIS from the debris of the church in EDA: The Eight Doctors.
 * A Daemon carcass is used by the Faction Paradox as a spaceship in EDA: ''Interference - Book Two.
 * Daemos in mentioned in DW: The Satan Pit.
 * In DW: The Sontaran Stratagem there is a UNIT character named Jenkins (most likely as a homage to the famous line from this story "Jenkins, chap with the wings there, five rounds rapid").

DVD, Video and Other Releases
Video Releases
 * The Dæmons was released on VHS in the UK and Australia in 1993, this was a recolourised version of the story.

Target Novelisations / Script Books

 * Novelised as Doctor Who and the Dæmons in 1974 by Barry Letts.
 * The Dæmons was also released by Titan Books as a script book in the early 1990s.