The Doctor confuses Bok by holding up some iron, "an old magical defence," and reciting the first line of a Venusian lullaby (one we will hear more of when he visits Peladon in a later story). Bok does one final, halfhearted rar and then he flies away.
The Master is still disguised as the vicar and he talks to Mr Winstanley, who he is trying to win over without using his normal arm-gripping method.
"All this talk of democracy, freedom, liberty... What this country needs is strength, power and decision! And those are what you can give to it."
Then, when this doesn't persuade him, the Master uses magic to scare Mr Winstanley by causing the wind to blow inside and, for good measure, his theme music to play.
Winstanley says
"I'll do anything you say."
thus demonstrating the "strength, power and decision" of a typical would-be dictator.
The Doctor and Miss Hawthorne argue about whether science or magic are responsible for what is happening, continuing the theme established in part one with the scene between the Doctor and Jo, only a lot more childishly:
"You're being deliberately obtuse - we're dealing with the supernatural, the occult, magic.""Science!""Magic!""Science, Miss Hawthorne."
The Brigadier telephones Yates to tell him that the heat barrier is in the shape of a dome all the way around the village, so he can't get in.
The Doctor does a slideshow for the benefit of Jo, Yates, Benton and Miss Hawthorne to give them exposition about aliens with horns. This may be a deliberate parallel with the Master's use of a slideshow back in The Mind of Evil, or maybe slideshows were just the fashionable thing back in 1971 the UNIT era.
"Now creatures like those have been seen over and over again throughout the history of man, and man has turned them into myths: gods or devils. But they're neither. They are, in fact, creatures from another world.""Do you mean like the Axons and the Cybermen?"
(The earliest and most recent aliens encountered by Benton get namechecked by him here, but the Autons don't get a look in.)
"Precisely. Only far far older, and immeasurably more dangerous.""And they came here in spaceships like that tiny one up at the barrow?""That's right. They're Dæmons from the planet Dæmos, which is...""Sixty thousand light years away on the other side of the galaxy."
(I'm not sure why Jo is suddenly an expert on this, except that it keeps the scene from being totally one-sided.)
"And they first came to Earth nearly one hundred thousand years ago."
The Doctor goes on to say that
"They've been coming and going ever since. The Greek civilisation, the Renaissance, the industrial revolution: They were all inspired by the Dæmons."
and
"All the magical traditions are just remnants of their advanced science, and that is what the Master is using."
This is quite a dump of exposition, only disguised by having so many other characters present for the Doctor to explain it all to, and who can each take a turn interrupting him or asking him questions.
The Master and Winstanley are having a meeting with lots of other mannys, where the Master reveals that he knows the secrets of several of the mannys, including implying that one of them has murdered his wife:
"And you, Mr Grenville, has your wife come back from her sister's yet? Will she ever come back, do you suppose?"
Is this the most subversively adult line of dialogue in all of the original series of Doctor Who, do you suppose?
Because we know who the Master is really, it is easy for us to guess how he found these things out, but the mannys are scared and they stay and listen to him when he starts to use his hypno-eyes on them. He says
"I only need two things: your submission and your obedience to my will."
But they start to turn against him and Winstanley says:
"What's all this about obedience and submission? You said that we were going to rule."
So the master summons Bok to come in and disappear Winstanley. When the rest of the mannys are too scared to act against him, the Master says
"Thank you. It does my heart good to know I have such a willing band of followers."
Roger Delgado has been giving a commanding performance throughout, but this ironic line sets off the scene.
The Brigadier wants to blow the barrier up, but the Doctor tells him it won't work. The Brigadier says
"I'm not going to sit here like a spare... like a spare lemon waiting for the squeezer."
I think the reason he pauses in the middle there is that he realised just in time that he's not allowed to say 'dildo' on TV until after the watershed. The Doctor tells the Brigadier to build a technobabble contraption to blow up the barrier properly, but the Brigadier doesn't know how so the Doctor has to go out there himself. Jo says
"Of all the idiotic plans, as if blowing things up solves anything?"
for which the Doctor gives her into trouble like a massive hypocrite, considering how often he insults the Brigadier's plans himself.
The manny from the pub has been spying on the Doctor, and he now reports what he has learned to the Master. The Master sends a henchmanny to steal Yates's helicopter. Yates chases after him on a motorbike because, like in The Mind of Evil, he has delusions of being an action hero.
The helicopter flies over the Doctor and Jo as they drive along in Bessie, a scene that has echoes of North by Northwest or, since it is a helicopter and not an aeroplane, From Russia With Love. But the helicopter flies into the heat barrier and blows up, no grenade necessary this time.
The Doctor only starts to tell Sergeant Osgood (here acting as the Brigadier's thumbs to do the actual W-word) how to make the device to blow up the barrier, then the Master decides to summon Azal the Dæmon.
Azal is the POV monster, and he becomes so high up (signifying he is giant) that even the Master gets scared and falls over. The camera does a wobbly special effect meant to signify the ground shaking, and the cliffhanger moment is the Master cowering and shouting
"Go back! You will destroy me! No! No!"
While it is highly unusual for a baddy being in peril to be the cliffhanger, it shows how the Master is just as much a regular character as any of the Doctor's Companions from UNIT.
This episode is incredibly heavy with exposition, to the extent that the Doctor resorts to a slideshow, but now that we're through it we can more clearly see the similarities and differences between this story and its obvious influence Quatermass and the Pit.
The similarities are obvious to anyone familiar with both stories, since they both feature an archaeological dig turning up an ancient spacecraft, whose alien occupants are horned, and who have influenced the development of humanity, and whose technology is sufficiently advanced as to be taken for the supernatural.
Looking beyond that, there are plenty of significant differences that mean The Dæmons can hardly be called a ripoff of Quatermass. Here are just some examples:
- Quatermass and the Pit is all about the slow build-up over the course of its episodes, up until the explosive, dramatic payoff at the climax in the final part. The Dæmons, meanwhile, has action from as early as part one
- Quatermass and the Pit is set in London, specifically post-war London, and this setting is a vital element to the story. The Dæmons is set in a rural English village, and this is an essential part of its plot, where the Master can infiltrate the community and our heroes can be easily isolated
- In Quatermass and the Pit the explanation of the aliens is mainly theorising by Professor Quatermass, with nothing ever explicitly confirmed on screen. While in The Dæmons, the Doctor (and the Master) already know about the alien Dæmons from before the story begins
- The character of the Master, who seeks to gain the power of the aliens for himself, has no parallel in Quatermass
So the differences build up to ensure the actual storylines are hardly similar at all. The most direct lift from Quatermass is the live TV broadcast from the scene of the action, that is then cut off. Only this occurs towards the end of Quatermass and the Pit, but early on in The Dæmons (in episode two).
What The Dæmons borrows (or steals, if you prefer) is not whole plots, but rather ideas, or details. For a final example of this, the name of the village, Devil's End, is quite close to the name of the street where the events of Quatermass and the Pit took place, Hobbs Lane/Hob's Lane - with "Hob" being another name for the devil.
This gets even closer if we consider the film version of Quatermass and the Pit (which was made in 1967, much closer to when The Dæmons was made than the 1958 TV series), where the London Underground station setting is Hobbs End.
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