8x05. The Daemons
Writers: Barry Letts & Robert Sloman (as Guy Leopold)
Director: Christopher Barry
Script Editor: Terrance Dicks
Producer: Barry Letts
Synopsis: An archaeological
dig at the town of Devil's End threatens to awaken an ancient alien
race that has influenced human history and been mythologized as
"demons" by various cultures. The Master, posing as a local vicar, has
drawn some of the villagers into a secretive cult dedicated to Azal,
one of the aliens, whom he hopes to summon and convince to grant him
power over the world.
Review: "The Daemons" is proof
that pedestrian plot mechanics can be redeemed by good characterization
and some interesting underlying concepts. The characters spend much of
the time simply running back and forth between different locations and
being tossed around by various apocalyptic portents, but by drawing the
Master into a Season 7-esque examination of human values and progress,
the serial makes its mark as one of the better outings of the Pertwee
era to date.
The idea that some sort of alien presence has been influencing humanity
throughout history was not a new one even in 1971, and certainly the
creators of "The Daemons" must have known that they were walking in the
footsteps of Nigel Kneale's Quatermass
and the Pit. Fortunately, they do it well enough to earn the
right to a little borrowing, tackling some difficult ideas by
deliberately associating traditional demonic imagery with an alien that
the Doctor himself states is not really evil so much as simply amoral.
Azal's race have been conducting an experiment that has driven many
important developments, and their "demonic" appearance presumably found
its way into the popular imagination through those who decry every new
idea or innovation as "the work of the Devil," as somehow destructive
of tradition and social order. Though she herself practices an
unconventional religion, the white witch Olive Hawthorne in many ways
reflects this point of view, insisting that it is evil to continue the
archaeological dig and attributing the various disturbances to "magic."
The Doctor's chastisement of Azal for having given humanity the power
to destroy itself caught me by surprise, but I don't think he's
actually endorsing a negative view of human progress. He does, after
all, refuse Azal's offer of power over the human race, and more
importantly, he suggests that the human race should be allowed to "grow
up" without further intervention. In the Doctor's view, the problem is
not too much intellectual progress but insufficient ethical progress.
(In
other words, the question to ask is not whether we should turn back the
clock and "trade in," say, smallpox vaccine for the absence of nuclear
weapon technology, but
rather how we can better ourselves so that we don't actually build and
use nuclear weapons even if we know how to do so.) And while Azal's
defeat does come off as pretty hokey -- in response to Jo's offer to
sacrifice herself for the Doctor, he exclaims that this is "not
rational" and simply disintegrates -- I actually kind of like the idea
behind it, namely that there's something admirable in the human
character that isn't part of Azal's experiment and that surpasses the
formidable but morally vacuous power of this advanced alien race.
The Master and the Doctor are really having the same conflict in "The
Daemons" that they've been having all season long -- the Master is
trying to harness some sort of alien force to gain power, and the
Doctor is trying to stop him. What's interesting about "The Daemons" is
that it specifically repeats the "Colony in Space" scenario whereby the
Doctor is also offered enormous power (by the Master in "Colony" and by
Azal in this serial) and turns it down, once again showing that he'd
rather help others achieve independence than be their ruler. The
Master, true to his "rule or serve" philosophy, exploits fears of
progress (witness his open sneering at the concepts of freedom and
democracy) by offering his own absolute rule as the solution to his
followers' uncertainty. After the events of "Colony," however, he is no
longer interested in convincing the Doctor or winning his approval;
this time, he simply wants his rival dead. Though he occasionally
verges on camp, the Master has been a useful counterpoint to the Doctor
as an intelligent but ruthless and morally bankrupt Time Lord, and it's
fitting for the season to end with the two of them confronting one of
the driving forces of human civilization and demonstrating their
radically different attitudes towards it. The Master's capture by UNIT
also serves as an appropriate coda, though its impact is somewhat muted
for those of us who know that his nefarious schemes are hardly at an
end.
The town of Devil's End proves to be an effective backdrop for the
story; the mysterious "heat barrier" that keeps the Brigadier and his
UNIT team from entering adds a sense of isolation, and on a more basic
level, the extensive location work adds some variety and gets the show
out of the laboratories and military offices that have become standard
for the Pertwee era thus far. With the Brigadier away from the action,
Benton and Yates assume more prominent roles than they have in the
past. Benton proves up to the task; as always, he's a likeable and
engaging character, and he gets a slightly comedic scene in which he
helps the Doctor pose as a magician so as to scare off the Master's
followers in Devil's End. Yates, unfortunately, turns out to be part of
the serial's most glaring problem: the sense of urgency that should
accompany an impending apocalypse is never quite there, and his casual
manner (particularly when he seems amused at the failure of the
Brigadier's weapons against the gargoyle creature) adds to the slightly
phoned-in feel. Of course, the Doctor
Who team may be partly the victims of their own previous success
here. Having set the gold standard for apocalyptic horror in "Inferno,"
they face a tall order in trying to replicate a similar atmosphere of
dread, and the occasional "heat waves" and attacks by the gargoyle just
don't do the trick.
Jon Pertwee's second season has proven to be a mixed bag. The writers
sacrificed some of the edgy, subversive approach of his first four
serials, opting instead for a "safer" feel with a larger ensemble cast
and antagonists who were frequently rather conventional. On the other
hand, the Master, while sometimes a bit shallow, proved to be a worthy
adversary for the Doctor, and serials like "The Mind of Evil" and now
"The Daemons" showed that the new format could still lend itself to
first-rate, intelligent storytelling.
Other notes:
- The Brigadier has one of the oddest lines I've heard on Doctor Who in quite a while when he
complains that he's sitting around "like a spare lemon waiting for a
squeezer."
Rating: ***1/2 (out of four)