The Dæmons Episode One

The one where the Horned Beast is woken from his slumber live on BBC Television...

The Dæmons opens like one of the best Hammer horror films. It's got rolling thunder and sheet lightning, torrential rain and howling wind, a churchyard, spewing gargoyles, toads, cats, owls and rats. As a mission statement for what's to come, you couldn't get more explicit.

And to top it all, a lonesome man and his dog tumble out of the local inn and fight their way through the driving wind and rain into the churchyard, where the poor dog is killed by something terrible off-screen, and we get a fantastic close-up of Jim's horrified face just before he is bumped off too. Now that would make a damn good cold open (I often wish some clever YouTuber would re-edit classic stories to give them New Series style cold opens).

Of course, the dog's death is inevitable the moment it appears. If a production team has given the time and money of getting a dog on set, it has to be worthwhile, so more often than not the dog karks it to make the audience go "awwwww"! We're also treated to another horror movie stalwart, the Local Mystic aka Miss Olive Hawthorne, who warns of impending danger if the barrow at the Devil's Hump is opened as planned.

There's an archaeological dig at Devil's End, a village infamous for its dark history of witches and Pagan rituals (neighbouring villages include Satanhall, Witchwood, Covenstone and Abbotsburn!). A BBC TV Outside Broadcast crew plans to televise the opening of the Devil's Hump live at midnight, as part of a programme called The Passing Parade hosted by the cheesy Alastair Fergus. The fact Doctor Who invented BBC Three 32 years before the real life channel came into being is really rather marvellous, although The Passing Parade was not a new idea - there had been a radio programme in America called just that syndicated between 1937-51, which inspired a series of Oscar-winning MGM shorts in the 1940s which were then re-edited for TV in the 1960s. The Passing Parade focused on strange-but-true historical events, so there's a very real possibility writers Barry Letts and Robert Sloman were thinking of this.

Leading the excavation is the wonderfully grumpy Professor Gilbert Horner (played by Robin Wentworth), who, despite his obvious cynicism at Miss Hawthorne's warnings of death and disaster if the barrow is opened, plans to do so at the stroke of midnight on April 30th, aka Beltane. Why? Because his latest book is out the next day! I love Professor Horner; it's a pity he doesn't hang around to continue his little feud with Miss Hawthorne throughout the story.

It's frustrating that Devil's End is given all of this mythological background, but it's not really expanded upon. There's mention of 17th century witches hiding in the cavern beneath the church to escape Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins, and Ferguson's commentary also references an incident in 1793 involving a Sir Percival Flint, and another in 1939 labelled the "Cambridge University fiasco". If you've ever listened to the 2000 Big Finish audio story The Spectre of Lanyon Moor, you might recognise a link with The Dæmons and Sir Percival...

Meanwhile, the Doctor's initial scepticism about Jo's interest in "the dawning of the Age of Aquarius", "the supernatural and all that magic bit" becomes intense interest in The Passing Parade once he somehow connects Devil's End and Beltane. It's not made clear yet why the Doctor thinks opening the barrow would be catastrophic, but it's a nice twist that it puts him on the side of white witch Olive Hawthorne rather than the scientist Gilbert Horner.

The Doctor's experience in the Cloven Hoof is a real hoot ("I am no sort of chap, sir"). The inebriated locals fail to take his arrival seriously, mocking his funny clothes and "wig", believing him to be a part of the BBC crew, and it's great to see Pertwee's haughty Doctor struggling to be heard. Jo's much more gentle approach saves the day, asking directions to the barrow with one of her winning smiles.

Of course, we can't forget the principle revelation of the episode, which in a way isn't a surprise at all. It seems the new vicar, Mr Magister, is actually the Master, who appears to have done something terrible to Canon Smallwood in order to take his place. It's suggested that the Master isn't expecting the Doctor to turn up, so this is obviously one of those evil plans from the filing cabinets we saw in his TARDIS in Colony in Space. The Master's ever-presence is getting really tiresome and boring now, despite Roger Delgado's charismatic performance. It's too much of a coincidence that he had two dastardly plots of his own on Earth in Terror of the Autons and The Mind of Evil, then got caught up accidentally in the Axon invasion (he really didn't need to be in The Claws of Axos at all), and then the Doctor just happened to be sent by the Time Lords to foil his machinations on Uxarieus. And now here he is again, plotting to awaken some long buried manifestation of the Horned Beast; something called Azal...

There's no denying that Roger Delgado playing the Master disguised as a vicar, dressed in Pagan ritualistic robes summoning an ancient beast in the caverns beneath a rural church is the stuff of classic Doctor Who. There's a white witch, local yokels, a sceptical scientist, a devilish vicar ("a rationalist existential priest"), Pagan ceremonies, freak weather conditions, a churchyard, an inn, a village green, an archaeological dig, and the threat of a mystical manifestation of Satan himself being woken from his ancient burial place. It's almost Doctor Who harking back to its Quatermass leanings of Season 7, but with added supernatural sauce. I mean, the gargoyle moves and has glowing red eyes! You've gotta love it...

First broadcast: May 22nd, 1971

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: I love Robin Wentworth's curmudgeonly Professor Horner. I wish he was in more of the story.
The Bad: It's the Master. Again... #rolleyes
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

"Now listen to me" tally: 13
Neck-rub tally: 5

NEXT TIME: Episode Two...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Episode Two; Episode Three; Episode Four; Episode Five

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-dmons.html

The Dæmons is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-D%C3%A6mons-Jon-Pertwee/dp/B006LI50HI