Chap with the wings there, five rounds rapid!

OK so for another change I thought I would do a critique of a Doctor Who story, The Daemons which came out this week on DVD and it is generally hailed as one of the all time great stories from the Jon Pertwee era, so here's a bit more about the plot.

The story starts with one of the residents of Devil's End, a small village in Wiltshire, dying of fright from seeing something in the local graveyard.  The local village doctor says that the man simply died of a heart attack, but the local white witch Miss Hawthorne (Damaris Hayman) insists there is evil afoot.  The BBC are also at this time doing coverage of the excavation of the Devil's hump, an ancient burial ground.  Miss Hawthorne also interrupts the broadcast and warns the archaeologist, Professor Horner (Robin Wentworth) that if he opens the tomb then he will bring death and disaster upon the village.  The Doctor at this time having been watching the live coverage on TV, decides to go to the dig himself with Jo (Katy Manning, probably looking at her best in this story).  On arriving at the dig, the Doctor is too late to stop Horner from opening the tomb and there is a freak gust of snow and ice that blows out of the tomb, apparently killing the Doctor and Professor Horner.  The Doctor is soon dug out (or excavated) off the earth and snow and taken to the local pub, the Cloven Hoof, where he lies in a coma.

In the meantime however, a certain familiar looking figure who goes by the name of the Magister, dressed as a Reverend, has been holding ritual ceremonies to try and bring about the appearance of a demon called Azal (Stephen Thorne).  This is of course the Master (Roger Delgado) who has been at work trying to raise the demon Azal, who in actual fact is a creature from another world, who has been lying dormant but has been on Earth for over 100,000 years.  The Doctor soon recovers from his coma, after a freak heat wave hits the village, and he then explains his theory to the locals, and he is accompanied by Sergeant Benton (John Levine) and Captain Mike Yates (Richard Franklin).  The Doctor tells them that Azal is a daemon from the planet Damos, who came to Earth to try and advance the human race and pass on their knowledge as part of an experiment, however, man is in danger of being destroyed if Azal chooses to.  The Master also finally summons Azal and speaks with him, and he asks that Azal pass on his power to him in order to fulfil his desire to rule the Earth.  Azal considers this but says there is another one of the Master's race here, referring to the Doctor, he said he will speak with him also before making up his mind, and that he will appear once more, but he says he will either choose to pass on his power or to destroy the Earth.   

And another problem arising from these circumstances is that Azal's awakening causes a heat barrier to be place around the village, preventing anyone from leaving the village or from any one to enter it, as the UNIT commander Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) soon finds out when he tries to get to the village.  The Doctor contacts the Brigadier and tells him there might be a way for him to gain access to the village, but it will involve building heat exchanger energy machine that will help bypass the barrier, and the Doctor soon comes to the Brig (within resonable distance of the barrier) to help them build it.  As this is all going on the Master then through his hypnotic powers of persuasion gets quite a few of the village locals on his side, and to help him with this ritual ceremony in the cavern's of the church, in order to summon Azal once more and so he can control the daemon.  The Master soon successfully summons Azal for the last time, just as he does, Jo and Mike enter the cavern and witness Azal grow to huge size right infront of them.  The Doctor also manages to get into the cavern and past the Master's gargoyle and heavy Bok (Stanley Mason) whom he has been using throughout the story for his own evil ends.  The Doctor once in the cavern confronts the Master and Azal in deciding the fate of the planet.

The Daemons is without a doubt one of Jon Pertwee's best stories, made back in 1971, when the series made the crucial change in tone from the doomish Quatermass style that appeared in Pertwee's first season.  The story which was written under the psuedonym of Guy Leopold, was actually written by Barry Letts and Robert Sloman, and its a fine example of how good the scripts could be in the show.  Letts and Sloman make very clever use of the themes of witchcraft, demonism, religion, faith and duplicity, and I also like how they explain the background of the daemons helping man throughout the ages in advancing their knowledge.  You could almost say that the Daemons were babysitters for mankind and they helped instruct them in how to grow, although the Doctor at one point does state to Azal, that thanks to him now man can blow up the world and probably will, which is something Azal says that the planet smells of failure.  This ultimately points to man being his own downfall, and to Azal the Earth is just a failed experiment which he is in danger of destroying.

The characters in the show are all well catered for, especially the UNIT members, Benton and Yates, who are given more to do here than usual in a Doctor Who story.  Yates and Benton make their way to the village and get tangled up in the choas of what happens there, being beaten, abducted, and giving chase to the baddies.  Benton particularly is given plenty to do in helping out Miss Hawthorne, in the church where he beaten up telekinetically on a marked stone, and staving off an attacker in the pub, as well as finally giving in to having a dance with her at the end!  It also makes a nice change of pace to have the Brigadier separated from his team, as he goes off to a dinner at the start of the show, but later comes into the show when he is informed that his helicopter has been taken by Yates and Benton, and the heat keeps him apart from the Doctor and the others.

In terms of the performances, the regular cast are on fine form here, Jon Pertwee had wonderfully grown into his part of the Doctor by then and plays him as well in this story as he ever has, and his relationship with Jo has blossomed very nicely by the end of the season.  And by then the Doctor and Jo really have formed their partnership well, and Katy Manning, who looks rather fetching in this story (with her outfit, which apparently she didn't like!) over the space of that one season has matured nicely from the young lassie who first stepped into UNIT office, where the Doctor patronisingly said to her "no tea today, thank you!".  If there is however on aspect of their relationship that seems a bit off then that is the Doctor's way in which he puts down Jo or puts her in her place quite a bit, like a father telling off their child.  This is conveyed in the scene where the Doctor tells the Brigadier how stupid it would be to organise an aerial assault on the barrier surrounding the village, and Jo agrees with the Doctor afterward who says "Jo, the Brigadier is doing his best cope with an almost impossible situation and seeing that he is your superior officer, you should try and show him a little respect."  Its like Jo is trying to win over the Doctor's respect but he just rebuffs her and tells her off rather than agrees. 

John Levine and Richard Frankling are also both very good in their respective roles of Sergeant Benton and Captain Yates, as they too have comfortably grown into their roles, and they share a nice bit of banter with each other, especially in the scene where Benton moans while watching the TV that his football team lost in the first episode, and he flicks a coin he lost in a bet to Yates.  And Roger Delgado as the Master is great as ever in his role as the charming, suave and incredibly evil character, who has a hold over the village and poses as the local reverend, although by then in the 8th season, he had appeared in every single story, so it was no longer much of a surprise when he showed up.  Perhaps at the time of the show there was a bit of controversy over the user of the incantations used to raise Azal as they might appear to be a temptation for children to copy (well maybe there wasn't!), but amusingly enough Delgado only really used the nursery rhyme "Mary had a little lamb" backwards, and at one point he even says Damaris Hayman's name backwards when he wards off Azal. 

As for the supporting cast Damaris Hayman does fine with her character of Miss Hawthorne, the headstrong and stubborn white witch who forecasts doom and disaster on the village, although her performance is a bit cheesy overall.  Stephen Thorne as Azal is quite impressive although his appearance is rather brief as you only really see him in the last episode, but the effects and make-up for his character are actually very good, and yes those are tights he is wearing in the scenes where you see his hooves!  The only really silly addition in the cast is Stanley Mason as Bok, the Master's gargoyle, which he uses to bump off the villagers that oppose him, as prances around in the white lycra suit, and the face make-up for Bok appears to have his tounge sticking out for some strange reason!

The story itself has plenty of enjoyable scenes including the scene where the Master tries to persuade the villagers to his way of thinking, the scene where Benton fights of a thug in the cavern and is attack invisibly by an unknown force when he lands on a paving stone.  I also quite like the scene where the Doctor is tied up and about to burned alive by the locals for being a "witch" and Miss Hawthorne pretends he is a great magician, and she uses Benton to make it look like the Doctor can use his magic to shatter a street lamp or shoot the weathercock.  And there is of course the final confrontation between the Doctor, the Master and Azal, which is well performed.  The heatwave barrier effect is also quite well done, and nicely directed, as we see a milkman in his van, jump out as the thunderish noise crashes in and we see his van go up in flames, and later the Brigadier throwing bits of rock or wood at the barrier and it disintegrates.  And one of the story's most memorable pieces of dialogue in the story comes from the Brigadier who once he has gotten into the village addresses on one of his soldiers to shoot Bok, "Jenkins, chap with the wings there, five rounds rapid!".

My only slight niggle about the story however is the end where (SPOILER ONCE AGAIN) Azal cannot understand Jo's decision to save the Doctor from being killed by him, by offering herself as a sacrifice instead.  The decision seems to totally baffle Azal and send him into self destruct mode, but I suppose that Azal is a creature that only deals in absolutes and can't handle the notion of such an intervention of selfless-ness.  But you can't help but think, wait a minute, in order to defeat this guy all we had to do is just confuse him?????  And that's it????  Surely we should have thought of that sooner!  The resolution of ridding the world of Azal seems just a bit pat and convenient that all it takes is one action to confuse him and that's him taken care of.

As for the DVD extras, there is a very good new documentary, which covers the making of the story, and its revealed the pub, The Cloven Hoof, which in reality was called something else, still have the sign that was outside the pub, which the owners proudly have kept behind the bar.  There is also a really funny bit in the documentary where Katy Manning refers to the scene with the Brigadier and Mike Yates, where Mike asks the Brig for a dance who says "I'd rather have a pint", and she said that Nick Courtney at the time said "Well that's settles it, the Brigadier is an alcoholic and Mike Yates is gay!".  The DVD commentary of the story itself is also quite enjoyable as some of the cast Katy Manning, Richard Franklin and Damaris Hayman all reminisce of their time making the story.   

So the Damons remains a classic Doctor Who story which rightfully remains one of the most fondly remembered from the classic series.  And it also reflected the time where the UNIT family was at its peak and one of Jon Pertwee's finest.

And that's it.