There’s a line in this episode which goes without comment, but recognises that the new format invented by Derrick Sherwin in 1969 has been abandoned: ‘This is the TARDIS’s first test flight since I got it working again.’ Unlike Colony in Space, which (we’re reminded here) required a set-up scene with the Time Lords, here it’s almost taken for granted that the Doctor is a time and space traveller again (and has bought himself a fancy new orange jacket to celebrate). But for now, to all intents and purposes, the Daleks are back, the Doctor has the ability, however badly, to pilot the TARDIS, and UNIT are nowhere to be seen. Letts and Dicks have successfully reasserted the status quo ante-Sherwin.

Continue reading →

So, after spending three episodes building up to a showdown between the Doctor and the Daleks… It doesn’t happen. He spends the episode retreating from them, luring them into a trap and watching them get blown up by the same bomb that was meant to ensure their future. It’s poetic justice. It’s a logical resolution to the time paradox. It’s also a bit of an anti-climax. Last time the Doctor confronted the Daleks he went up against their Emperor. This time, he doesn’t even get to berate a subordinate.

Continue reading →

Much of this episode is elaborate vamping to keep the Doctor and the Daleks apart ahead of a (presumably explosive) showdown, even though both know the other is present (‘Doctor? Did you say Doctor?!’). Fortunately, this takes the form of a slight return of the brutal Inferno torture sequence, followed by a politely relentless attack on the Controller, resulting in the most memorable episode of the serial so far. There’s also a lot of reiteration that the Doctor and Daleks are the most implacable of foes: ‘I know [the Daleks] only too well. They’ve been my bitterest enemy for many years,’ says the Doctor. ‘The Doctor is an enemy of the Daleks! He must be found at once and exterminated!’ scream the Daleks. ‘He is the sworn enemy of the Daleks. He’s the one man they’re afraid of,’ proclaims the guerrilla leader.

Continue reading →

It probably works to the serial’s advantage that this wasn’t conceived as a Dalek story, and so the plot isn’t reliant on wheeling on the knackered old props for a “best of” turn. Instead, they’re again kept largely in the background of this episode, a malevolent presence, clearly calling the shots but largely from behind the scenes. It gives everything else space to breathe including Aubrey Woods (with the same silver face he has in Blake’s 7 – or maybe he just had a silver face) establishing himself as the oleaginous Controller, and maintains the sense of intrigue.

Continue reading →

The first episode of Season Nine opens the New Year with a potted reminder of some of the highlights of the previous one. More for the audience’s benefit than Jo’s, the Doctor clarifies that he’s no more in control of the TARDIS than he was a year ago, confirming that his trip to the Colony in Space was engineered by the Time Lords. There’s a worsening international situation, a peace conference, and a temperamental Chinese delegation that must be a call-back to The Mind of Evil. And the repeated emphasis on the idea of ghosts and haunted houses, even though the finished script immediately establishes its phantoms are very much flesh and blood, comes across as an attempt to recreate some of the atmosphere of The Dæmons.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

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’.

Continue reading →