Category: Complete Review
Doctor Who episode 303: The Dæmons – Episode Five (19/6/1971)
Structurally, the same issues that have plagued the rest of the story crop up again here. The Doctor spends half the episode chatting to the Brigadier on a walkie talkie, the Brigadier again spends a load of time out of the action building a McGuffin, and even the grand finale consists of everyone standing around having a chat. I’m not sure if Terrance Dicks was reticent about script editing his boss, but this could very much have done with another pass by him.
Doctor Who episode 302: The Dæmons – Episode Four (12/6/1971)
The Dæmons continues to crash different genres of horror together in quite an effective way. There’s something a bit Devil Rides Out Hammer Horror about the Master’s consciously retro chanting as he summons up the devil in amongst fire and brimstone. Up above, the Doctor is faced with much less supernatural, and therefore more terrifying horror as the ugly side of rural traditions surfaces in a way that’s totally Wicker Man. The way several villagers snatch in their children and slam their windows shut as the Morris Dancers arrive is quite creepy: like the locals know this is not, as Miss Hawthorn suggests, just a charming ritual, but represents something repressed and sinister. The increasingly violent beatings and threat to burn the Doctor alive are very dark indeed.
Doctor Who episode 301: The Dæmons – Episode Three (5/6/1971)
As much as it’s held up as a classic, the structure of this is all over the place. Up until the last few minutes, most of this middle episode is exposition, putting some pseudo-scientific Von Danikenesque explanations around all of the weirdness that has been going on so far.
Doctor Who episode 300: The Dæmons – Episode Two (29/5/1971)
If the first episode established tone and mood, this episode starts to throw in various random bits of weirdness that continue to build the sense of the uncanny at the expense of actually doing much to advance the plot. By the end of it, the Doctor and the Brigadier know the Master is involved, somehow, but they haven’t actually met him, and his plan remains fairly obscure. There are an animated gargoyle, a 30-foot devil, a model spaceship that weighs 740 tons and a heat barrier surrounding Devil’s End, but, other than the fact that they all seem to be centred on the barrow, we have a lot of jigsaw pieces without the box.
Doctor Who episode 299: The Dæmons – Episode One (22/5/1971)
This opens like one a BBC ghost story, with thunder, lightning and driving rain; leering gargoyles and startled animals, and a man struck down by fright by something offscreen. The tone is quite different from the hyperactive storytelling of Terror of the Autons and The Claws of Axos; this takes its time to create a sense of place and atmosphere, banking, rightly, on the audience enjoying the dichotomy of the Doctor’s unshakeable rationalism with the modish interest in ghostly curses, ‘unspeakable rites’ and ‘all that magic bit’.
Doctor Who episode 298: Colony in Space – Episode Six (15/5/1971)
Malcolm Hulke’s take on the Master is absolutely fascinating. Earlier in the season he’s been both a Bond villain and a dark version of the Doctor, but Hulke gives him a motivation of his own. With the Doomsday Weapon in his grasp, the Master offers the Doctor a half share in the Universe, and he really means it. ‘You could end war, suffering, disease. We could save the Universe… Bring good and peace to every world in the galaxy.’ While he’s clearly a Satanic character – his mantra seems to be better to rule in hell than serve in heaven, and he continually tries to tempt the Doctor – he isn’t just a force of random evil. He’s the classic Sauron/Palpatine/Daenerys type, desiring order, but believing only he can deliver it. Steven Moffat picks up on this characterisation when writing Missy, another incarnation who offers the Doctor absolute power.
Doctor Who episode 297: Colony in Space – Episode Five (8/5/1971)
Structurally, Malcolm Hulke is trying to pull off the same trick with Colony in Space that he and Terrance Dicks managed brilliantly in The War Games: materially advance the plot each week, gradually peeling back the layers, and keeping things interesting through a series of reversals. The problem is that The War Games was melodramatic, with vivid characters, locations and fairly momentous revelations. Whereas Colony in Space has characters like David and Robert, a muddy quarry and some caves, and a very serious moral about corporate exploitation.
Doctor Who episode 296: Colony in Space – Episode Four (1/5/1971)
We’ve known from literally the start of this serial that the Master was going to show up at some point, the mystery was when and where. If you don’t know what’s coming, the cliffhanger of the last episode might suggest that he’s been lurking in the “Primitive” city, waiting for Jo to be brought before him. But, in fact, he’s disguised himself as the Adjudicator. Surprise!
Doctor Who episode 295: Colony in Space – Episode Three (24/4/1971)
The structure of the serial is good. Like Hulke’s The War Games, there’s a logical progression and escalation, with the first episode introducing the colonists and their situation, the second focusing on IMC and their objectives, with this episode bringing both sides together. In principle, having set up two groups of people with opposite aims, this should be where the sparks fly. In practice, it’s a bit damp.
Doctor Who episode 293: Colony in Space – Episode One (10/4/1971)
Writing partners Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke were famously not enamoured with producer Derrick Sherwin’s decision to exile the Doctor to Earth, and a big part of the success of Season Seven comes down to their attempts to push the boundaries beyond simple alien invasions or mad scientists. With Sherwin gone, Season Eight has felt like a snowballing attempt to revert to an earlier, less restricted concept of Doctor Who. In that sense, Colony in Space feels like the upshot of what Dicks and Hulke have been aiming to achieve.
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