The Daemons - Episode 4

The penultimate episode of this season finale story and I’m still in two minds about this story but for different reasons than at the beginning of the story. I think that the problem is that like most six part stories, this is too long for the story. Admittedly its only one episode too long but its still too long. Azal’s first appearance is a rather odd shot of its feet/hooves, the next would be the back and side of its head. His involvement in the episode is brief yet important and after spending three episodes talking about him its good that there seems to be some on screen development in this area.

In the initial moments of the episode, the Master looks like the assistant as opposed to the main person. This is just as surprising as the cliffhanger from the previous episode. This weird look doesn’t last for long as the moment he leaves the crypt he’s back to his old self. The sight of the Doctor on a bike is something that still takes a bit of getting use to. As is the scene where is he shot at and falls off the bike. Pertwee’s Doctor is very much an action figure and he shows it again here and has a very good episode unlike Katy Manning who does really get much to do apart from running from one place to another and falling down a lot. Roger Delgado on the other hand continues to impress from start to finish and has his best scenes when he’s in the crypt talking to Azal. Despite my disapproval of how the Brigadier has been used in recent episodes having been kept outside the main action, I must say that I felt he was given slightly more to do but compared to Jo he looked like he had a million and one things to do.

The whole business of the Doctor being tied up and trying to convince the locals that he has powers and it means that we get to see Bessie moving seemingly on her own like she did in episode one. When he was looking for things to move he had help from Benton who deserves some praise as he feels frustrated that everyone seems to be doing something or cant be found and he’s having to endure Miss Hawthorne who has a wonderful smile on her face for the whole episode.

The CSO shot of Azal didn’t start off particularly well but by the end it looked and it was a good cliffhanger and it ended was a pretty pedestrian episode. Apart from a few brief moments of action from Jon Pertwee, nothing of much interesting happened. It’s quite surprising that considering we are so close to the end that it doesn’t feel like the end is in sight and this also feels like a padding episode.