Christopher Wray | Through the Shattered Lens

Having been captured by UNIT at the end of The Daemons, the Master (Roger Delgado) is now a imprisoned on a small island in the English channel. He claims that he is reformed and he now spends most of his days watching the BBC. (Has he not been punished enough?)

When the Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and Jo Grant (Katy Manning) visit the Master to try to learn the location of his TARDIS, they come up empty. They do, however, learn that several ships have gone missing and, understandably, they suspect that the Master is involved.

They’re correct. The Master has duped his warden, Trenchard (Clive Morton), into helping him steal electrical equipment so that he can contact The Sea Devils, a race of bipedal reptiles the live under the sea. The Sea Devils, much like their cousins, the Silurians, were the original inhabitants of Earth. They’ve now woken from hibernation to discover that mankind — who they last knew to be a collection of barely evolved monkeys — have taken over the planet. And they’re not happy about it.

The Silurians and the Sea Devils appeared in three serials during the original run of Doctor Who and all of them followed the same basic plot. The Silurians or the Sea Devils woke up from their hibernation. The Doctor tried to broker a peace with humanity. Humanity reacted by blowing them up. The Sea Devils were usually more reluctant to make peace than the Silurians. In The Sea Devils, the Doctor himself is forced to sabotage their base to keep them from attacking humanity but that’s nothing compared to the atomic bomb that the British government wanted to drop on them. Whenever a Silurian or a Sea Devil shows up, it means that the Doctor is going to disappointed in humanity once again.

The Sea Devils is a serial of which I have fond memories because Malcolm Hulke’s novelization was the first Doctor Who book that I ever read. (Malcolm Hulke also wrote the serial itself.) I read the book before I even saw the show. The novelization was my introduction to the Doctor, UNIT, and especially the Master. Hulke was one of the best writers of the Doctor Who novelizations, taking the time to add depth to the characters. This was especially true of Trenchard, who is portrayed far more sympathetically in the novel than he was on the show.

The Sea Devils also features one of Roger Delgado’s finest turns as the Master. This was the Master’s first appearance during the ninth season of Doctor Who and Delgado shows that, even when imprisoned, the Master never stops manipulating and scheming. This episode shows why Delgado’s Master was such a classic villain and truly a worthy opponent of the Doctor. Delgado does such a good job in the scenes where The Master pretends to be reformed that it’s easy to understand how he managed to trick Trenchard. At the end of the serial, The Master makes another escape, again by fooling the humans around him. Delgado made The Master into a magnetic and compelling villain.

Roger Delgado appeared twice more as the Master before his untimely death in an auto accident. Jon Pertwee later said that Delgado’s death was one of the reasons that he decided to step away from the role of the Doctor. The Master would eventually return and he would be played by several different actors. For me, the true Master will always be Roger Delgado.

When I was growing up and watching Doctor Who on PBS, I had a friend whose mother forbid him from watching the show because she thought that it promoted Satanism.

Her opinion was almost totally based on the cover of the novelization of one of the Third Doctor’s most popular adventures.

She took one look at that cover and decided that both the book and the show were promoting Satan. I warned him that would happen when he first bought the book but, back in the day, it was nearly impossible to resist the temptation of the shelf of Doctor Who novels at Walden Books. It was almost as if the books had been put there by you know who.

If my friend’s mother had read the book or even watched the serial when it eventually aired on PBS, she would have discovered that The Daemons did not feature the Devil. Instead, it features Azal (Stephen Thorne), an evil horned alien who had spent centuries experimenting on humans and who had inspired many ancient myths and religions. If my friend’s mother had watched the show, she would have seen that, rather than celebrate Satan, the show instead suggested that there was no Satan and that all of mankind’s Gods were actually visiting aliens. She would have also seen that while The Master (played by Roger Delgado) disguised himself as a vicar, it fell to a local white witch to warn everyone in a quaint British village that the local archeological dig was a mistake. Because of the Master’s religious disguise, everyone followed him when they should have been listening to the pagan…

In hindsight, it’s probably a good thing my friend’s mother never watched the show.

The Daemons has a reputation for being one of the best of the Third Doctor’s adventures and I’m inclined to agree. The Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and his latest companion, Jo Grant (Katy Manning), try to stop the dig and instead find themselves trapped by a heat shield that has suddenly sprung up over the village. One of the defining images of this episode was a helicopter busting into flame when it hit the invisible barrier. With the Brigadier and the majority of UNIT outside of the village, The Doctor, Jo, Sgt. Benton (John Levene), and Captain Yates (Richard Franklin) try to stop the plans of The Master and Azal. Unfortunately, the villagers themselves have fallen under the sway of evil and are planning a special maypole sacrifice.

So many different actors have played The Master (and the character has become so overused) that it is easy to forget just how good Roger Delgado, the first Master, was in the role. Delgado played the Master as being incredibly evil but he also played him as having a sense of humor and style about his evil, which is something that subsequent Masters have often failed to do. Delgado’s Master appeared in every serial of the eighth series and he proved to be more than a worthy opponent for Pertwee’s Doctor. Off-screen, Pertwee and Delgado were close friends and Pertwee later said that Delgado’s death in a traffic accident was one of the factors in Petwee’s decision to step away from the show. The Daemons featured Delgado at his best as the Master did his worst and tried to claim the powers of someone who humans considered to be Satan.

The Daemons is also remembered for one of the best lines in the history of Doctor Who. When confronted by Azal’s gargoyle servant, the Brigadier calls over a UNIT solider and orders, “Chap with wings there, five rounds rapid.” I can only imagine how tired Nicholas Courtney got of having that line repeated to him over the years but his delivery of it is perfect. The Brigadier was such a uniquely English character, imbued with the unflappable attitude of a country that had survived the collapse of an Empire, the Blitz, and the Suez Crisis. Nicholas Courtney took a line that sounds like something Graham Chapman would have said on Monty Python and instead made it into an iconic piece of dialogue that reminded those of us American watching on PBS that, in Doctor Who, the entire universe was British.

Though it led to the show being forever banned in my friend’s house, The Daemons is a Doctor Who classic.