Life continues on Earth for the Doctor, and as there is no referencing the Master's exploits on Exarius it's probable that a bit of time has gone by since Colony in Space. The Doctor isn't obsessing over the state of the TARDIS for the first time in a while, this time he is working on his car, Bessie, perhaps making the most of what travel he can do. There's a sense of relaxation among the regulars in this one, like they have all developed into a proper team together like Jo hanging around the garage while the Doctor tinkers, Benton and Yates watching a football match together, the Brigadier off for the night in his mess uniform like a parent leaving the kids home alone for an evening. In the DVD extras the cast attribute this to the script being written by an insider - producer Barry Letts himself - but it just adds to the feeling that time has gone by on Earth for the Doctor, not just a few months so far. The UNIT family has grown a bit more as well, bringing Corporal Jenkins into the mix along with Sergeant Osgoode who was retconned in The Eye of the Giant but is now here in the role that spawned the buffoonish other Osgoode in the new series on TV.
This story has a marked difference from some of the others, being that it flirts with the notion of the occult and satanic rituals and lets itself get away with it only because there is a scientific explanation for it all. There's that old saying in literature about higher forms of science being indistinguishable from magic, and here it's really the m.o. of the story; black magic incantations and such serving as ways of whipping up and focusing specific psychic energy bursts to be harnessed like electricity. But the Master is the picture of a Satan worshiper (ornate red robes and some need to put Jo Grant in a white dress to offer her as sacrifice) and Azal himself is modeled after the Devil with horns and hooves and... sagging stockings... and... well, some pretty inconvenient extra body hair (if you're into that). And as for Bok, the stone gargoyle brought to life, he's a nasty little customer chasing people down and blowing them away with fireballs instead of this big giant menace that is Azal. The last of the Daemons is not a big raging monster but he's not of a good disposition either; humans are just another experiment to the Daemons after all - they gave knowledge to humanity over the centuries - but the experiment has not borne the fruit they had hoped. The choice is now clear: pass on the power of the Daemons to a custodian, or destroy the experiment.
This one has an interesting length as well: it's done over five episodes which has not been seen since The Mind Robber. In fact except for The Dominators there are no other five part stories anywhere in the series; in the Troughton era they are there back to back because one was under length and needed stuff added and the other was too long and was cut down from six, but The Daemons has no such story to go with it's length, it simply just ran five episodes in a twenty-five episode season. At least that's the story so far; someone might know something different. But this was the finale episode for the season as well and it was craftily done, even bringing the Master to justice and leaving the series regulars to literally dance their way into the credits (except for Yates and the Brig who went drinking).
The next season would bring the Master back, but before that there is, as always, a bit of expanded universe fun to be had...
NEXT EPISODE: WHO KILLED KENNEDY
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