301 The Dæmons: Episode Three

EPISODE: The Dæmons: Episode Three
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 301
STORY NUMBER: 059
TRANSMITTED: Saturday 05 June 1971
WRITER: "Guy Leopold" (pseudonym for Robert Sloman and Barry Letts)
DIRECTOR: Christopher Barry
SCRIPT EDITOR: Terrance Dicks
PRODUCER: Barry Letts
RATINGS: 8.1 million viewers
FORMAT: DVD: Doctor Who - The Dæmons
EPISODE FORMAT: 16mm b&w film recording recoloured using 525 off air video

"I see, so all we've got to deal with is something which is either too small to see or thirty feet tall, can incinerate you or freeze you to death, turns stone images into homicidal monsters and looks like the very devil!"

The Doctor repels Bok using a Venusian lullaby. He returns to the village and researches what he's seen in Miss Hawthorne's books. The Brigadier confirms that the barrier encompasses the village on all sides and over the top. The Doctor believes they are fighting a Dæmon from the planet Dæmos, powerful beings that have been influencing mankind's development. The local squire calls a village meeting where the Master has Bok kill him to ensure the obedience of the rest of the villagers. The Doctor plans a machine to deal with the barrier and travels to the barrier to explain it to the Brigadier. One of the villagers is sent to pursue the Doctor and he steals the Unit helicopter from the village green, pursued by Yates on a motorbike. Making a mistake while flying he crashes into the heat barrier and is killed. Jo is injured in the pursuit so Mike takes her back to the village in Bessie. The Master summons the Dæmon again and it appears in the cavern towering over him.....

This story is rolling along quite nicely with all of the main cast being given something to do. The Doctor spends most of this episode delivering extrapositionary dialogue to a larger than usual audience of Jo, Yates, Benton & Miss Hawthorne

HAWTHORNE: Here you are, Doctor.
DOCTOR: Oh, thank you, Miss Hawthorne. Let me help you.
HAWTHORNE: Thank you. The pick of the finest collection of occult material in the country, though why you wanted me to bring it, I don't know.
DOCTOR: You've all been asking me for explanations. Perhaps these will help me to provide them.
HAWTHORNE: Well, there is only one possible explanation. This is the supernatural at work.
DOCTOR: Nonsense.
BENTON: Yes, well, what about the thing that got me? That was real enough.
DOCTOR: There's nothing more real than a forcefield, Sergeant, even a psionic one.
HAWTHORNE: You're being deliberately obtuse. We're dealing with the supernatural, the occult, magic.
DOCTOR: Science.
HAWTHORNE: Magic!
DOCTOR: Science, Miss Hawthorne.
YATES: Look, whatever it is, how do we stop it?
JO: And how can we stop it without knowing what it is?
DOCTOR: Well done, Jo. You're being logical at last. I'll turn you into a scientist yet. Right, if there are no more interruptions, I'll tell you what it is.

The science vs magic argument comes very much to the fore during this story.

DOCTOR: Right, that's it. Now, as you can see, we're smack in the middle of a sort of lethal mushroom, about ten miles across and a mile high.
YATES: I can understand that part of it all right, but can't you explain the wider issues, Doctor?
DOCTOR: Yes, all right. Jo, Captain Yates, would you mind drawing the curtains? Come on, Jo, stir your stumps. Now then. All right? Now then, tell me. Who's that?
JO: An Egyptian god, isn't it?
DOCTOR: Top of the class, Jo, top of the class. That's right, that's the Egyptian god Khnum, with horns. There's another one, a Hindu demon.
ALL: With horns.
DOCTOR: Oh. Thank you very much. And our old friend the Horned Beast.
YATES: I don't get it.
DOCTOR: Probably because I haven't finished, Captain Yates.
YATES: Oh sorry, Doctor.
HAWTHORNE: Oh, you could go on all day and all night showing us pretty pictures. I mean, horns have been a symbol of power ever since
DOCTOR: Ever since man began? Exactly. But why? All right, Captain Yates, the curtains. Now creatures like those have been seen over and over again throughout the history of man, and man has turned them into myths, gods or devils, but they're neither. They are, in fact, creatures from another world.
BENTON: Do you mean like the Axons and the Cybermen?
DOCTOR: Precisely, only far, far older and immeasurably more dangerous.
JO: And they came here in spaceships like that tiny one up at the barrow?
DOCTOR: That's right. They're Daemons from the planet Daemos, which is?
JO: Sixty thousand light years away on the other side of the galaxy.
DOCTOR: And they first came to Earth nearly one hundred thousand years ago.

Benton a lot quicker on the uptake than those round him here.

The Doctor now gets down to details...

BENTON: Well, I still don't get it. I mean, what's the creature doing here? I mean, why did they ever come?
DOCTOR: To help Homo sapiens kick out Neanderthal man. They've been coming and going ever since. The Greek civilisation, the Renaissance, the industrial revolution. They were all inspired by the Daemons.
HAWTHORNE: But this thing the Professor let loose is evil, you said so yourself and now you're trying to say they've been helping mankind for a hundred thousand years.
JO: Yes, and you say they come from another planet. Well then, what's all this jazz about witchcraft and covens and so on?
DOCTOR: Look, don't you see? All the magical traditions are just remnants of their advanced science, and that is what the Master is using.
HAWTHORNE: Then these creatures are linked with the black arts. They are evil.
DOCTOR: Amoral, perhaps. They help Earth but on their own terms. It's a scientific experiment to them. Just another laboratory rat.
YATES: Then what's the Master up to?
DOCTOR: He's established a link with the Daemon. What worries me is the choice. Domination by the Master or total annihilation.
JO: What, this Daemon could destroy the world?
DOCTOR: What does any scientist do with an experiment that fails? He chucks it in the rubbish bin.
JO: The end of the world.

Meanwhile Nicholas Courtney is superb as the Brigadier getting increasingly frustrated by being unable to do anything to help!

BRIGADIER: Greyhound Two to Trap Two. Is that you, Yates? Now, what's going on there?
YATES: Quite a bit, but I don't think you'd believe me, even if I told you.
BRIGADIER: The thing is we can't get past this wretched heat barrier. It incinerates anything that tries. Over.
YATES: Can't you go round it, Brigadier? Over.
BRIGADIER: The thought had occurred to me, Captain. I sent out patrols but as far as I can see.... Well, that settles it. The perimeter of this thing is an unbroken circle ten miles in diameter, its centre being the village church. Over.
DOCTOR: Give me that. Hello, Lethbridge Stewart? The Doctor here. What about going over the top of it?
BRIGADIER: The RAF are just coming through now. Hang on a minute.
PILOT: Red zero four to Greyhound Two. No go, repeat, no go. Last test canister exploded at altitude four five zero zero feet. Estimate dome shaped area above village approximately one mile high at apogee. Over.
OSGOOD: Thank you, zero four. Received and understood.
PILOT: Over and out.
BRIGADIER: You hear that, Doctor? We're locked out. Over.
DOCTOR: Or we're locked in. All right, Brigadier, we'll keep in touch.
BRIGADIER: Doctor? Doctor! Yates! Typical.

He quickly resorts to Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's Plan A: Blow Something Up!

YATES: Greyhound Two. Come in, please. Over.
BRIGADIER: Is that you, Yates? Now look, we're going to blast our way in. I'm calling up the artillery and RAF strike command. You lot had better evacuate to the cellars.
BRIGADIER: Over.
DOCTOR: What? Give me that. You'll do no such thing, Lethbridge Stewart. Of all the idiotic suggestions. In the first place, the energy released would only strengthen the barrier, in the second place it would provoke the most appalling reprisals and in the third place I've got a better idea. Over.
BRIGADIER: Well, what? Now I'm not going to sit here like a spare (pause) like a spare lemon waiting for the squeezer. Do you hear me? Over.
DOCTOR: Have you got the mobile HQ there?
BRIGADIER: Yes, of course.
DOCTOR: With the new mark 4A condenser unit?
BRIGADIER: Apparently.
DOCTOR: Good. Then I've got your problem solved and mine. We're going to build a diothermic energy exchanger. Is your technical fellow there?
BRIGADIER: He's listening.
DOCTOR: Right, well tell him to build an EHF wide band width variable phase oscillator, with a negative feedback circuit tunable to the frequency of an air molecule at, er, what is the temperature up at the barrier, Brigadier?
BRIGADIER: We've no idea what you're talking about, Doctor. Over.
DOCTOR: Well, it's a simple enough question. Over.
BRIGADIER: No, no, what you said earlier. The oscillating feedback bit.
DOCTOR: All right, I'll come out and explain it to you myself. Yates and Benton can stay here and keep an eye open. Only don't touch anything until I get there. Understood?
BRIGADIER: All right, Doctor, we'll try it your way, but get a move on, will you?
DOCTOR: I'll be with you in ten minutes.
BRIGADIER: Make it five. Over and out.

Meanwhile Roger Delgado Master, pretending to be the local vicar, gets to work bringing those outside his little cult to heel, starting with a bit of blackmail, airing some of their secrets

MASTER: Now, you'd better explain to them all why you've called them together, then leave the rest to me.
WINSTANLEY: Yes. Meeting to order, please. Thank you. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Well now, it seemed to me that we ought to get together and discuss the situation, before it gets out of hand. Now it seems that the vicar here has had a few thoughts on the subject, so I've asked him to put in a word. Mister Magister.

MASTER: Now, as I've told you, this is not going to be a sermon. But all the same, I do beg of you to listen carefully. Because this could be the most important day in your lives. Now as you know, I am a newcomer among you, and yet already I feel that I know you all. For instance, you, Mister Thorpe. Are you still padding the grocery bills of the local gentry?
THORPE: What are you on about? That's slander.
MASTER: Now, now, don't deny it. I know. And you, Charlie. How's your conscience? Do you think you'll manage to balance the Post Office books in time? And you, Mister Grenville. Has your wife come back from her sisters yet? Will she ever come back, do you suppose? Now, now, no, please. Please do not be angry with me. I assure you that I'm on your side. Now, listen. If you do what I say, you can all of you get whatever you want in this world, when you want it. If you listen to me.
MASTER: I ask you what you want in life and I offer it to you. I tell you that everything is possible if you do as I say. everything.

At which point the Master is briefly interrupted...

MASTER: Now please, as I was telling you, the whole world can be ours. I only need two things. Your submission and your obedience to my will.
WINSTANLEY: What's all this about obedience and submission? You said that we were going to rule.
MASTER: You rule? Ha! Why, you're all less than dust beneath my feet!
WINSTANLEY: Preposterous!
MASTER: You choose to question me, do you? Very well, I'll give you another choice. Obey me or I shall destroy you!
WINSTANLEY: If that's your brave new world, you can keep it! I'm getting out of here and if the rest of you have got any sense, you'll come with me.
THORPE: I reckon the Squire's right. Come on, let's get out of here.

Winstanley shows some backbone to The Master a few times in this long for this world and this is the last straw as Bok gets set on him!

MASTER: Right, does anybody else agree with the Squire? Thank you. It does my heart good to know I have such a willing band of followers. Now, today is May Day. Go and enjoy yourselves. Celebrate the festival with your families. When I need you all, I shall summon you again.

We met Bok earlier at the church where The Doctor was able to subdue him

DOCTOR: Klokleda partha mennin klatch.

DOCTOR: Phew.
JO: How did you do that?
DOCTOR: Iron. It's an old magical defence.
JO: But you don't believe in magic.
DOCTOR: I don't, but he did. Luckily.
JO: Was that a spell you said?
DOCTOR: No, it's the first line of an old Venusian lullaby, as a matter of fact. Roughly translated it goes, 'Close your eyes, my darling. Well, three of them, at least'.
JO: Doctor....

This isn't the last time we'll hear the Venusian Lullaby as it's sung in two stories time to the tune of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" while the Master's black mass used at several points in the story is "Mary had a little lamb" spoken backwards.

There's a mistake repeated through the story though, first by Miss Hawthorne in the cavern in the last episode

HAWTHORNE: Good heavens!
BENTON: What? What is it?
HAWTHORNE: The gargoyle. It's gone!

It's repeated again by The Doctor at the dig:

DOCTOR: I must admit, that thing took me completely by surprise.
JO: What was it?
DOCTOR: It looked like a gargoyle made of stone.
JO: But it was alive.
DOCTOR: In a sense, yes.
JO: But that wasn't what Miss Hawthorne described, surely?
DOCTOR: No, the creature she saw must have been a hundred times more hideous.
JO: And neither of them were the Devil.
DOCTOR: No, not your mythical devil, Jo, no, but something far more real and far more dangerous.

Bok isn't a Gargoyle, it's a Grotesque or Chimera

Playing Bok is Stanley Mason, a juggler, acrobat and circus performer who also appears in Monty Python's Flying Circus

After a load of exposition there's a brisk action sequence towards the end of the sequence where The Master sends Girton after the Doctor. First Girton gets into, and wins, a fist fight with Mike Yates and then he steals the parked UNIT helicopter from the village green! I think from this you have to assume Girton is ex forces: a village hardman standing up to an Army Captain I could get but flying a helicopter as well?

There then follows a three way chase between Girton in the air the helicopter and, on the ground, The Doctor & Jo in Bessie plus Yates on a borrowed motorcycle!

It ends with the helicopter hitting the heat barrier in an explosion reused from the James Bond film You Only Live Twice!

The Brigadier isn't best pleased by this

BRIGADIER: Twenty thousand pounds of UNIT money gone up in a puff of smoke.
DOCTOR: You've got the mind of an accountant, Lethbridge Stewart.

DOCTOR: You've got the mind of an accountant, Lethbridge Stewart. So, this is your heat barrier, is it?
BRIGADIER: Yes, and I advise you to keep your distance.
DOCTOR: Yes? Hmm. Even rock.
BRIGADIER: Wood, rock, four inch armour plate. You name it, we've tried it. It's impenetrable.
DOCTOR: A hasty and inaccurate assessment, Brigadier. Tell me, have you got enough cable to reach those high tension pylons over there.
BRIGADIER: Yes, we should have. Why?
DOCTOR: We'll need at least ten thousand volts to get through this lot.
BRIGADIER: All right, I'll lay things on.
DOCTOR: Good. Only please hurry, we may have very little time left.

The end of the chase and the heat barrier scenes are all filmed at the Airfield by Durrells farm now known as Ramsbury Airfield.

Jon Croft plays Tom Girton, in the background for the first three episodes but more prominent in this episode. He was previously in Out of the Unknown as Parnell in the missing third season episode Get Off My Cloud, which features the Daleks, and later appears in the second & third episode of Douglas Camfield & Robert Holmes' The Nightmare Man as McGrath.

Playing Thorpe, the villager whose wife has gone to her sisters, is John Owens who you can easily spot in the next few episodes thanks to his mutton chop sideburns. He's also in An American Werewolf in London as Assorted Police officers, The Professionals as Johnson in A Man Called Quinn, Educating Marmalade as the Usher in Short Sharp Shock and appears in the The Young Ones episode Boring.

Playing Charlie, the postmaster with his hand in the till, is John Scott Martin. He's also a coven member in the last two episodes of this story, but given that Charlie's being coerced here it's unlikely the coven member is Charlie! John Scott Martin made his Doctor Who debut in The Web Planet as a Zarbi graduating to Dalek Operator in The Chase three stories later a role he'd repeated in Mission to the Unknown, The Dalek Masterplan,Power of the Daleks and Evil of the Daleks. He'll return as a Dalek in Day of the Daleks, Frontier in Space, Planet of the Daleks, Death to the Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks, The Five Doctors, Resurrection of the Daleks, Revelation of the Daleks and Remembrance of the Daleks. He also plays the Robot in Colony in Space, a Mutant in the Mutants, Hughes in The Green Death, a guard in Robot and Kriz in Brain of Morbius. His distinctive hair makes him a familiar figure amongst bit part actors in many television roles: he was in Quatermass and the Pit as a T.V. Technician in The Wild Hunt and A for Andromeda as a Lab Assistant / Man in Pub in The Message. He appears in the missing Out of the Unknown episode The Naked Sun as a robot but misses out when The Daleks turn up in Get Off My Cloud. In Doomwatch he's a Man in The Islanders and e appears in the first episode of The Tripods as the Schoolmaster. Away from science fiction he was in I, Claudius as Julia's Lover in Waiting in the Wings and a Slave in Some Justice and appears on the big screen in Pink Floyd - The Wall as a Dancing Teacher.

So who is Mr Grenville? He's not credited, like Thorpe, or instantly recognisable, like Charlie!

In amongst the villagers in this episode, and Grenville possibles are Ronald Mayer & Michael Earl who were both in episodes 1 & 2, Keith Ashley, who's too young and returns in many future Doctor Whos, Bill Lodge, William Gossling, Walter Goodman, Ian Elliot and Ernest Blyth, who returns in episode 5. Geoffrey Witherick, Michael Moore, Bill Burridge, Laurence Archer, Rex Rashley and Charles Shaw Hesketh are all villagers here and Coven Members over the next two episodes. There's also three female villagers in this episode, Gladys Bacon, Renee Roberts and Mo Race, the last of whom was in the Cloven Hoof in episode 1.

I was a little taken out the story by the noticeable improvement in picture quality as this episode concludes: the very end is taken from the following episode which survives on it's original video tape while the others, including this one, are colour recovered film recordings.

News reaches us this week that Damaris Hayman, who plays Miss Hawthorne, has died aged 91.