Doctor Who: The Dæmons: Episode Three starts as the Doctor (Jon Pertwee) manages to save himself from the Gargoyle Bok (Stanley Mason) using a trowel & part of a Venusian lullaby, don't ask. The Doctor finds all the information he needs & heads back to the pub The Cloven Hoof where he tells Jo, Captain Yates (Richard Franklin) & Sgt. Benton (John Levene) that inside the Devil's Hump barrow lies the miniaturised spaceship of a powerful Dæmon from the planet Dæmos. The Doctor says that the Dæmons visited Earth 100,000 years ago & are where legends of horned creatures come from & are responsible for the modern day image of the Devil that humans have. The Master is using ancient black magic rituals to summon & control the Dæmon using the Devil's End villagers to help him. Since the Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney) & UNIT are stuck outside Devil's End behind the heat barrier the Doctor has to stop the destruction of Earth on his own...
Episode 23 from season 8 this Doctor Who adventure originally aired here in the UK during June 1971, stylishly directed by Christopher Barry one has to say this is another great episode of The Dæmons only let down by some poor scientific terminology & a really odd cliffhanger ending which simply doesn't work. The script by producer Barry Letts & Robert Sloman under the pseudonym of Guy Leoplod is surprisingly varied & isn't anywhere near as repetitive as a lot of Doctor Who stories, I think The Dæmons would actually work better with all five episodes edited together as one long movie style compilation as it really does flow like a proper film & that would also cover up the cliffhanger ending here. Unusually the Doctor is very short tempered & intolerant here, there's a scene in particular here in Episode Three where Jo makes a casual remark about Lethbridge-Stewart & the Doctor really scorns her say she should have more respect for him, there is also many times when he tries to explain something & gets annoyed when people don't understand him or follow with a patronising attitude to boot. Although some have criticised this aspect of the story & character I quite liked it as it gives the Doctor a slightly darker edge without ever making him truly unlikable & of course he still saves the Earth & everyone on it. Some of the scientific explanations are a bit ambiguous (dialogue like 'negative diathermy buffer the molecular movement of the air with reverse phase shortwaves' is hard to get to grips with when it's supposed to refer to & concern Earth bound technology & terminology) & the horned beast speech in the pub is lifted straight out of Quatermass and the Pit (1967) which this story rips-off quite heavily. Now about that cliffhanger, it's the famous one where the Master summons the Dæmon & the episode ends as if the Dæmon is going to kill the Master. I don't get this ending at all, it's like ending a Dalek or Cyberman story with either a Dalek or Cyberman about to be killed & since they are actually the bad guy's it just doesn't work on a dramatic level for me.
The production values are high on the Dæmons with lots of nice location footage, it was shot in the small town of Aldbourne in Yorkshire & the small village look means it has dated too badly either. I'm a bit concerned about the heat barrier though, Lethbridge Stewart claims that the barrier is ten miles in diameter with the church as the epicentre yet during Episode Two when the milk van blew up because it hit the barrier the signpost next to it said 'Devil's End 1' with the 1 referring to one mile so the maths really don't add up & a silly production goof that shouldn't have happened. Having said that the fact you can watch each episode back-to-back straight after each other makes these sorts of mistakes even more noticeable these days. There's some decent action scenes in this episode from a helicopter chase to some motorbike stunts, the exploding helicopter shot was apparently footage taken from the James Bond flick From Russia with Love (1963).
The Dæmons: Episode Three is not quite as good as the previous two since the cliffhanger ending is awful & some of the science doesn't really work but The Dæmons is more about atmosphere, horror & the story than reality.
Episode 23 from season 8 this Doctor Who adventure originally aired here in the UK during June 1971, stylishly directed by Christopher Barry one has to say this is another great episode of The Dæmons only let down by some poor scientific terminology & a really odd cliffhanger ending which simply doesn't work. The script by producer Barry Letts & Robert Sloman under the pseudonym of Guy Leoplod is surprisingly varied & isn't anywhere near as repetitive as a lot of Doctor Who stories, I think The Dæmons would actually work better with all five episodes edited together as one long movie style compilation as it really does flow like a proper film & that would also cover up the cliffhanger ending here. Unusually the Doctor is very short tempered & intolerant here, there's a scene in particular here in Episode Three where Jo makes a casual remark about Lethbridge-Stewart & the Doctor really scorns her say she should have more respect for him, there is also many times when he tries to explain something & gets annoyed when people don't understand him or follow with a patronising attitude to boot. Although some have criticised this aspect of the story & character I quite liked it as it gives the Doctor a slightly darker edge without ever making him truly unlikable & of course he still saves the Earth & everyone on it. Some of the scientific explanations are a bit ambiguous (dialogue like 'negative diathermy buffer the molecular movement of the air with reverse phase shortwaves' is hard to get to grips with when it's supposed to refer to & concern Earth bound technology & terminology) & the horned beast speech in the pub is lifted straight out of Quatermass and the Pit (1967) which this story rips-off quite heavily. Now about that cliffhanger, it's the famous one where the Master summons the Dæmon & the episode ends as if the Dæmon is going to kill the Master. I don't get this ending at all, it's like ending a Dalek or Cyberman story with either a Dalek or Cyberman about to be killed & since they are actually the bad guy's it just doesn't work on a dramatic level for me.
The production values are high on the Dæmons with lots of nice location footage, it was shot in the small town of Aldbourne in Yorkshire & the small village look means it has dated too badly either. I'm a bit concerned about the heat barrier though, Lethbridge Stewart claims that the barrier is ten miles in diameter with the church as the epicentre yet during Episode Two when the milk van blew up because it hit the barrier the signpost next to it said 'Devil's End 1' with the 1 referring to one mile so the maths really don't add up & a silly production goof that shouldn't have happened. Having said that the fact you can watch each episode back-to-back straight after each other makes these sorts of mistakes even more noticeable these days. There's some decent action scenes in this episode from a helicopter chase to some motorbike stunts, the exploding helicopter shot was apparently footage taken from the James Bond flick From Russia with Love (1963).
The Dæmons: Episode Three is not quite as good as the previous two since the cliffhanger ending is awful & some of the science doesn't really work but The Dæmons is more about atmosphere, horror & the story than reality.