May 31: The Dæmons Episodes Two & Three

The Doctor's in a coma again (the fourth one for this incarnation), and Jo is in hysterics.  The Brigadier can't be reached, so Benton and Yates decide to take matters into their own hands and fly a helicopter to Devil's End.  When they arrive they find some giant hoofprints (which, as everyone points out, change size when viewed from the air versus the ground), and then Benton gets beaten up by an invisible force after rescuing Miss Hawthorne, who's been tied up and placed in a trunk by the verger for no obvious reason whatsoever.  Then the verger is killed by something, which also sets up a giant heat barrier around Devil's End that no one can penetrate.  It all seems to be magical, but then the Doctor wakes up and is confident that it's not, even if he's not giving out explanations quite yet.  But his learning that the Master is involved ("Jo, did you fail Latin as well as science?  Magister is the Latin word for master!") seems to confirm some of his suspicions, and another visit to the dig site confirms the rest.  Only Jo and the Doctor are then set upon by a living gargoyle...

Episode two (which is also the 300th episode of Doctor Who) doesn't have much in the way of plot advancement, concentrating instead on ensuring that all the pieces are in their proper positions.  So Benton and Yates are in Devil's End with the Doctor and Jo, and the Brigadier and any UNIT backup is stuck on the outside of the heat barrier.  And Miss Hawthorne is stuck in a trunk so that Benton can hear her, rescue her, and then be assaulted by something that appears to be supernatural rather than scientific.  The whole episode, in fact, is ensuring that everything looks supernatural indeed -- so it's making sure that the audience's mindset is also in the proper position, ready to be debunked by the Doctor in episode three.

The Doctor explains the Dæmons to Miss Hawthorne, Benton, Jo,
and Yates. (The Dæmons Episode Three) ©BBC

And episode three does in fact give us some explanations that aren't rooted in magic.  Well, sort of.  The Doctor's explanation, that the Dæmons (here pronounced with an [e] sound, identical to the name "Damon") are an ancient race with incredibly advanced science that left their mark on humanity in the form of horned gods, devils, and all sorts of black magic -- and so when the Master is using invocations to summon the Dæmon that's been sleeping in the Devil's Hump, he's just tapping into their science -- sounds scientific but isn't actually that different from "it's magic".  And when the Doctor scares away Bok the gargoyle with a magical-sounding incantation and a trowel, he's tapping into Bok's fear of that same science.  You might notice this as essentially being Clarke's Third Law ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"), but it does give them a fig-leaf to keep doing "magical" things with this scientific, ultra-Rational Doctor.

But if pseudo-explanations aren't up your alley, there are still some nice action sequences, such as Yates's fight with the unusually strong and resilient Girton (the implication being that's he tapping into some of that Dæmon science, thanks to the Master), and the subsequent car/helicopter chase between the Doctor and Jo in Bessie and Girton in the UNIT helicopter, which blows up in the heat barrier thanks to a last-minute swerve by the Doctor -- albeit one which throws Jo clear, injuring her in the process (entertainingly, the novelisation has the Doctor wondering why she didn't buckle her seatbelt).  And there's also the Master's effort to place the entire town under his sway, which at times looks like attempted mass hypnosis but ultimately seems to be an effort to persuade them that his position is right; and when that doesn't work, he summons Bok to kill Squire Winstanley in front of them.  If you can't make them see it your way, make them fear you, I guess.

And then the Master summons the Dæmon Azal into the cavern below the church, which causes an earthquake and leads to the Master being worried that Azal will crush him underfoot (underhoof?) -- a bit of an odd cliffhanger, as it requires the audience to be worried about the fate of the Master, the villain of the piece...