59: The Daemons

Before Watching

Right, this bit will eventually make sense. I was researching my family history about ten years ago, and I found out that one of my great, great, great grandfathers was born in Aldbourne, Wiltshire. Now, something in my memory said that this village name rang a bell, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was. Now, it is still rare to find any English Parish registers which have been transcribed and put online, and was even rarer ten years ago. Yet Aldbourne was, and I found out that my 3x great grandfather was an illegitimate child baptised in St. Michael’s, Aldbourne in 1820. He went on to become a blacksmith, and I’ll be honest, I think that every family should have an illegitimate blacksmith in their family tree somewhere. Coming back to the point, though, again, St. Michael’s, Aldbourne rang a bell. I googled it, and it transpired that this is none other than the church at the centre of “The Daemons”!

Some stories stick on the memory while others don’t. This was very much the former. So much so that when I watched the film version of “Quatermass and the Pit” a few years ago it very much reminded me of something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, until I realised that in some ways it was reminding me of “The Daemons”.

So it’s an iconic story. And the thing about iconic stories is that sometimes they deserve their iconic status. . . and sometimes they don’t. Now, until I watch it, I can’t say which is the fairest assessment of “The Daemons”. And this is worrying me a little bit, because if it isn’t close to being as good as I remember it, I’m probably going to be unhappy and wish that I hadn’t watched it again. I’m not sure that I want some of my illusions shattered. Oh well, what must be must be. Bring it on.

After Watching

Of all the stories of the 8^th season, this, the last, is probably the ‘marmite’ story. People either love it or hate it, but one thing you can usually guarantee is that they’ll have an opinion about it. We’ll try to examine why this is the case as we go through the story.

I’ve already mentioned the village of Aldbourne, and this story makes full use of it as a location. For Aldbourne we read the fictional village of Devil’s End. It’s aptly named, since this is the first time that Doctor Who takes a shy at black magic, witchcraft and the trappings of Satanism. It won’t be the last. “Masque of Mandragora”, “The Stones of Blood” and the spin off “K9 and Company” all had aspects of the occult in them, to name but three. Yet it was “The Daemons” that came first.

I’m sure that I once read that when Katie Manning made her screen test audition for Jo Grant she had to run around a churchyard set at midnight being chased around by a gargoyle, which may well have been the ‘Bok’ costume that was actually used in the story. Barry Letts supposedly liked this scene so much that he and writer Robert Sloman worked together to produce the script for this story. It went out under the pseudonym Guy Leopold, mainly because there were fairly strict BBC rules about who could be allowed to write a script if they were working on the same series, in order to prevent script editors and producers from commissioning themselves to write stories. Robert Holmes was always needing to be given special permission to write stories when he was script editors, or to do page one rewrites of other writers’ stories – “The Ark in Space “ and “Pyramids of Mars” being two particularly special results of his efforts. Robert Sloman’s three later stories –series 9’s “The Time Monster”, series 10’s “The Green Death” and series 11’s “Planet of the Spiders” both went out solely under his name, leading to speculation whether Barry Letts had any script input or not. We’ll discuss this again in more detail when we get to “Planet of the Spiders”.

Coming back to “The Daemons” the story concerns what happens when BBC3 (the 1971 concept of the future BBC3 seems rather similar to the 2015 contemporary BBC4) are transmitting a live archaeological dig of the Devil’s Hump, a barrow just outside the village. This happens at the same time as the new vicar, one Mr. Magister, takes up his post. Now, if you know Latin, then you don’t need to actually watch the story to work out who this is, Magister being Latin for Master. The Master it turns out is conducting quasi Satanist rituals in the crypt of the church to summon up an entity he calls Azal.

Concurrent with all this, and as a result, a heat shield encircles the village.

Helicopter Watch

The story goes that the team bought a few seconds of film from a James Bond film of a helicopter being blown up, and used it as a helicopter trying to pass the heat shield.

Stuck inside the village, the Doctor and Jo find a tiny, shrunken yet incredibly dense spaceship inside the dig. This is the first clue that Azal is not, as expected, the Devil or a small d demon, but an alien from an incredibly powerful race, called the Daemons. The Master succeeds in calling Azal up, and we learn more. Azal is actually the last of the Daemons. It transpires that they have been using the Earth, and Humanity as an experiment. They have been hothousing and guiding human development, destroying civilisations, like Atlantis, which proved to be blind alleys. This Atlantis thing is a little bit of a continuity headache due to “The Underwater Menace”, and I’m pretty sure that next season’s “The Time Monster” is only going to muddy the waters further.  Coming back to “The Daemons”, when Azal appears for the penultimate time, he says that the experiment is now at an end, and he must make decisions. He has to decide whether Humanity has passed, or whether to destroy them. He must also decide whether anyone is worthy to receive his knowledge and his powers, as his own time is up. Unsurprisingly, the Master puts himself forward as a candidate. Azal, though, decides that the Doctor fits the bill. The Doctor, again unsurprisingly, refuses. Azal decides that this is reason enough to destroy him. At this point Jo Grant, dolled up as the sacrificial victim as she is, throws herself in front of the Doctor and demands he kill her instead. This wildly illogical behaviour does Azal’s head in, and he collapses in confusion, giving Doctor, Jo, Master and all the chance to escape before he explodes, sending the church up in flames in a rather good model sequence. The Master tries to escape in Bessie, but is foiled by the Doctor’s remote control device.

Now, you can look at this story and say that it’s rather original, or on the other hand you can look at it and say that it’s very derivative. It’s original in the context of Doctor Who. We haven’t really had any story which has even touched on the unique development of humanity before. We haven’t had a story which has looked at the Science v. Magic debate before. On the other hand, this clearly draws on some well known sources. I’ve already mentioned the film of “Quatermass and the Pit” and I can’t help coming back to it. Alright, the dig is not an archaeological one, but a non human skull is found while digging an Underground station. The name of the station? Hobb’s End. The film does explain that Hob is an archaic alternative name for Old Nick, or the Devil. A buried and ancient spaceship is found, and it turns out that conceptions of the devil are race memories of these aliens etc etc. Surely it’s not just me who can see the links here. The quasi Satanist scenes in the crypt are rather reminiscent of quite a lot of 60s and 70s horror films I’ve seen since as well. The idea of a supernatural being who has been worshipped/feared on Earth turning out to be an incredibly ancient and powerful alien was explored in the “Who Mourns for Adonais?” episode of the original Star Trek, first broadcast in 1967, where the crew encountered the Greek ‘God’ Apollo. This was actually a really good exploration of the theme – its exhumation for the 1989 Star Trek film “The Final Frontier” was rather less successful.  I’m sure that I read an interview with Dennis Spooner in the Doctor Who Monthly Magazine back in the 80s where he said that he always wanted to do a story in which the TARDIS crew encountered ‘God’ – only it would turn out not to be God at all, just an alien being of unimaginable power.

Actually, though, it doesn’t really matter that much how derivative or original a story is. While we might award brownie points for originality, no amount of it can save a story when it’s just plain bad. Likewise, a story can draw heavily from a number of well known sources, and still turn out to be fresh and enjoyable. So maybe I’m easily pleased, but “The Daemons” still pleased me. Roger Delgado, of whom you already know I am a huge fan, looks even more silkily sinister as a vicar. I enjoyed Damaris Hayman’s splendid portrayal of the white witch Miss Hawthorne, even if I did find that the whole Magic v. Science debate dealt with rather heavy handedly. I enjoyed the sub plot of UNIT’s attempts to break through the heat shield. Oh, and I’m also on the side of those who don’t have a huge problem with the line,

“Jenkins – chap with wings. Five rounds rapid” Even the ending, which is one of the most English things I have ever seen, did it for me. Watching a group of young ragamuffins dancing around the village maypole, mufti clad Mike Yates asked if the Brigadier fancied a dance, to which the Brig replied he’d rather have a pint.

What Have We Learned?

Ok – the destruction of Atlantis – version 2 – it was the Daemons wot did it now.

BBC3  as conceived in 1971 was a very different kettle of cathode rays to BBC3 today.