The Dæmons (TV story)

The Dæmons
Doctor:	[[doctor::Third Doctor]]
Companion(s):	Jo Grant Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart Captain Mike Yates Sergeant Benton
Main enemy:	The Master
Main setting:	Earth; circa 1970s
Key crew
Writer:	Guy Leopold
Director:	Christopher Barry
Producer:	Barry Letts
Release details
Release number:	59
Premiere broadcast:	22nd May - 19th June 1971
Format:	5 25-minute Episodes
Production code:	JJJ

Synopsis

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Plot

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Cast

Doctor Who - Jon Pertwee

Josephine 'Jo' Grant - Katy Manning

The Master - Roger Delgado

Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart - Nicholas Courtney

Captain Mike Yates - Richard Franklin

Sergeant Benton - John Levene

Miss Hawthorne - Damaris Hayman

Bert the Landlord - Don McKillop

Winstanley - Rollo Gamble

Prof. Horner - Robin Wentworth

Alastair Fergus - David Simeon

Harry - James Snell

Garvin - John Joyce

Dr. Reeves - Eric Hillyard

Tom Girton - Jon Croft

PC Groom - Christopher Wray

Baker's Man - Gerald Taylor

Bok - Stanley Mason

Sgt. Osgood - Alec Linstead

Thorpe - John Owens

Azal - Stephen Thorne

Morris Dancers - The Headington Quarry Men

Jones - Matthew Corbett

Crew

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References

• The Master has taken over as vicar in Devil's End.
• Azal is one of the Daemons from the planet Daemos.
• The Doctor has fitted Bessie with a remote control.

Story Notes

• The shot of the exploding helicopter is actually a scene taken from James Bond film From Russia With Love.

• The Master's summoning phrases for Azal is 'Mary had a little lamb' backwards.

• 'Guy Leopold' (the writer), is a pen name for Robert Sloman and Barry Letts.

Ratings

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Myths

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Influences

• This story makes a few nods towards Quatermass and the Pit, and not just for the idea that stories of devils and demons may be a race memory of horned aliens who conducted a eugenics experiment on early humans. Devil's End is essentially the same as Hobb's End, the fictitious London setting of the earlier story, Hob being an old name for the Devil. The use of iron to hold both Azal and Bok at bay is an old folk superstition that is also referred to in the Quatermass story. (See also DW: Image of the Fendahl.)

• The large hoofprints left by Azal as he walks around the village of Devil's End and encircles the community with a heat barrier brings to mind a famous and well-documented case. On the morning of 9th February, 1855 the inhabitants of several villages and towns in Devon awoke to find what appeared to be the tracks of a hooved, two-legged creature in the snow, traversing a total distance of one hundred miles, going over rooftops, a 14-foot wall, and even apparently leaping across a two mile wide estuary. Many believed that the Devil himself had walked through Devon the previous night.

Location Filming

Aldbourne, Wiltshire

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

• Various pronunciations of 'Dæmons', 'Dæmos' (and all other permutations) is used throughout the story.

Continuity

• The Doctor uses a few lines of a Venusian lullaby which is heard in full during The Curse of Peladon.

• The Master sends his TARDIS to the Devil's End crypt at the close of The Face of the Enemy.

• The Master is captured by UNIT forces at the conclusion of this story and is next seen in prison in The Sea Devils.

• The Master retrieves his TARDIS from the debris of the church in The Eight Doctors.

• A Daemon carcass is used by the Faction Paradox as a spaceship in Interference: Book Two (The Hour of the Geek).

• Daemos in mentioned in The Satan Pit.

DVD, Video and Other Releases

Video Releases

• The Dæmons was released on VHS in the UK and Australia in 1993, this was a recolourised version of the story.

Target Novelisations / Script Books

• The Daemons was published in 1974 as Doctor Who and the Dæmons By Barry Letts.
• The Dæmons was also released by Titan Books as a script book in the early 1990s.

External Links

• BBC The Dæmons page
• Outpost Gallifrey The Dæmons page
• The Dæmons detailed sypnosis at Doctor Who Reference Guide