The Kings Demons

Two Episodes
Aired between 15th March 1983 and 16th March 1983

Written by Terence Dudley
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Tony Virgo


Synopsis

The year is 1215AD.  King John of England is meeting with Sir Ranulf Fitzwilliam to try and extort more taxes form him to fund his crusade to the holy land. 

When Sir Ranulf explains that he cannot pay any more, the King says he's insulted and his champion, Sir Gilles Estram, challenges Sir Ranulf to a joust.

Sir Ranulf's son, Hugh accepts the challenge on his fathers behalf and they set the date for the morning after.  As the two joust it out, the TARDIS arrives on the field. 

Rather bewildered at not arriving on Turlough's home planet, the group are nevertheless welcomed by the king himself and hailed as demons (although welcome ones).  The "demon's" arrival puts the resolution of the dispute off and the King instructs Sir Ranulf to entertain their new guests. 

Whilst being entertained, the Doctor comes to recognise that the King should not be in this location at this time, and something's wrong.  He tries to uncover why and the arrival of Sir Ranulf's cousin, Geoffrey De Lacy confirms that the real king is elsewhere.

The Doctor confronts the King with this, has a sword fight with Sir Gilles and bests him in combat.  It turns out that Sir Gilles is actually the Master.

Following this, there's a lot of two and fro between the various people, and Sir Ranulf believes the Doctor to be up to no good.  There's lots of hiding and evading men with swords until, at last, the Doctor happens upon the Kings room and discovers that the King is actually a robot. The robot is called Kamelion and was found on the planet of Xeraphas by the Master (see Time Flight).

Kamelion somehow helped the Master escape and now the Master is having a "test run" of Kamelion's capabilities by masquerading as the King to disrupt the signing of Magna Carta - the backbone of current democracy. If this is successful, he'll use Kamelion to help disrupt and conquer the galaxy.

The Doctor realises that the Master controls Kamelion by telepathic thoughts and engages with him in a battle of wits, eventually helping Kamelion, breaks the Master's hold on him and helps him escape in the TARDIS,

Kamelion is offered the chance to join the TARDIS crew and accepts, despite Tegan being against it.

Trivia

• This story amost entirely came about because of a mad-capped idea that John Nathan-Turner had.  
• A company designing and making robots (in 1983 bear in mind) came to JNT and told him they had a robot that could walk and talk almost exactly like a human being.  
• JNT was still disappointed that the K9 and Co pilot hadn't taken off, and so had jumped at the chance.  
• One of the designers morbidly enough died in an accident shortly before filming began, so it's never known whether he took any of the key secrets to making Kamelion work, with him
• The reality as you might imagine was vastly different from the claims that the company had made.  The thing couldn't walk, it had to be programmed for hours before it's mouth would move in time with the words (and eventually stopped working altogether) and all in all was a complete and utter failure.
• Nevertheless, JNT held out hope and insisted that they keep the robot on as part of the crew, but by the end of the story, just about everyone had had their fill of it, so in subsequent stories Kamelion was totally and utterly ignored until they could find a way to get rid of it! (see Planet of Fire)

• It's possible that The Black Adder and this story used the same set props as the Master's TARDIS i.e. the Iron Maiden appeared in episode 2 of the Black Adder.

• Episode 1 was the 600th Doctor Who episode to be screened

• Peter Davison and Antony Ainley performed their fight scene themselves, no stunt doubles

The Review

The best thing I can say about this story is that it's mercifully only two episodes long!  Alright, alright, I'll try to be fair.

The sets as you might expect from the BBC are very good because period costumes and props are their forte.  Annnnd.... that's about it.

The problems with The King's Demons run much deeper than how bad the make up is on Antony Ainley or how bad his French is.  Every single bit of this story feels like it's a filler (because it is).

The Kings reactions are bewildering, the courts are too - one minute they like the Doctor, the next they're trying to kill him.  Why welcome demons to stay the night anyway? And all of this is before we even examine the ending.

The way they beat the Master is as exciting as watching porridge drop from a spoon and the entire set up, as pointed out in other sources, makes no sense whatsoever.  The Master- a master of disguise - wants a robot that can disguise itself to take over the galaxy.  Let's start with that and then look at so what if they can disguise themselves?  It has it's uses, but it doesn't automatically mean access to unlimited power. If it did, the Master would be a ruler of multiple galaxies by now. 

I think this is in the running for one of the worst Doctor Who stories ever produced. I'm back to my original statement where the best thing I can say about it is that it's only two episodes long.  That and the fact that I don't ever have to watch it again.

Rating

3 out of 10

Re-watchability Factor

3 out of 10 

Watch this if you liked...

• The Crusade

• The Time Warrior

• Robot of Sherwood (Doctor Who, Series 8)

Enlightenment

Four episodes
Aired between 1st March 1983 and 9th March 1983

Written by Barbara Clegg
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Fiona Cumming

Synopsis

The TARDIS still hasn't recovered from Turlough's tampering. It's powered down to emergency lights and the Doctor is trying to fix it when they get a faint visitation from the White Guardian. 

The Doctor instructs Turlough to increase the power feed in the TARDIS so they can effectively hear the message that the White Guardian is trying to impart, but on advice from the Black Guardian, he shuts down the feed.

The Doctor is angry at him, but he makes an excuse that it was risking the destruction of the TARDIS to keep the power so high.

The Doctor manages to get the TARDIS to work enough to follow coordinates that the White Guardian told him.  They materialise inside what looks to be an Edwardian sailing vessel.  Turlough and the Doctor begin snooping around and befriend the crew below decks.

Tegan ends up snooping on her own and meets a super creepy officer of the ship.

Through various means, the TARDIS crew are taken to the wheelhouse and discover that they are indeed on an Edwardian ship, but it's crewed by a race of eternal, emotionless beings and it is flying through space.

They are partaking in a race around the solar system as a means of fun for the eternals (who pilot different vessels). The prize for winning this race is enlightenment.

These eternals can read minds and they try to make the Doctor and his companions at home but Tegan is thoroughly creeped out, especially by Mr Mariner, an eternal that fancies her, and Turlough is creeped out by the Black Guardian insisting that he's doomed in result for failing him too many times.  The Doctor isn't concerned with all that though, he's more interested in why another eternals ship seems to explode without warning.

They all go on deck (with spacesuits of course) to get a better look, but Turlough has had enough and throws himself overboard in desperation. 

Thankfully, he's rescued, but it's by a competing ship - A pirate ship called The Buccaneer.

It turns out that Captain Wrack, the leader of that ship is a sly and devious eternal who has no qualms about eliminating her competition.  As a peace offering, she invites the crew of the Edwardian ship to hers for a banquet so they can regain Turlough. 

In the meantime, Turlough spies on Captain Wrack who uses a secret room to do something and another ship spontaneously explodes.

The Doctor, Tegan and of course, Mr Marriner go over there.  Whilst there, Tegan is separated from the group and hypnotised. A red gem is placed in her tiara and she is sent on her way back to the group.

Meanwhile. Turlough has told the Doctor about Wracks secret room and they discover inside it, a red eye that the Doctor theorises somehow channels Wracks energy into a focus and destroys the other ships.  He realises that gems are the key, but is captured by the pirate crew. Turlough convinces Wrack that he was capturing the Doctor (she can't read his mind for some reason), so she sends the Doctor, Tegan and Marriner back to the Edwardian ship. 

When alone, Wrack tries to make Turlough walk the plank, but again, he convinces her that he's working for the Black Guardian, the same boss as she. 

As the Edwardian ship closes in on the Buccaneer, Wrack takes turlough to the eye chamber and shows him that she is summoning the power of the Black Guardian to destroy the ships.

Meanwhile, the Doctor hunts frantically for the red gem that he suspects is aboard their ship.  He only just finds it on Tegan's Tiara in time and gets rid of it overboard.

He convinces the captain to let him use the TARDIS to get back to the Buccaneer. 

He does so, but is soon captured by Turlough, Wrack and her first mate.  The Doctor pleads with her, but she doesn't want to listen. 

From the Edwardian ship, Tegan sees two figures jettisoned into space and believes it's the Doctor and Turlough.

The Buccaneer wins the race to a big crystalline city and whilst all the human crews of the ships are sent back home via teleportation, Tegan Marriner and Captain Striker (of the Edwardian ship) go into the structure to congratulate the winners on the Buccaneer. 

It turns out that it was Wrack and the first mate that were jettisoned and the Doctor and Turlough brought the ship in.  Tegan is happy and Striker and Mariner are banished.  The Guardians appear before them and offer the Doctor enlightenment, a shiny crystal on a table. 

He refuses it and says he doubts anyone is ready for it.  They offer it to Turlough and the Black Guardian says he can have enlightenment AND the TARDIS if he sacrifices the Doctor, or he can choose to give up the crystal and be ignorant forever. 

After what seems like a difficult decision, Turlough throws the crystal at the Black Guardian and foregoes being manipulated again.  The Black Guardian disappears in fire and the White Guardian says that the crystal was never really the prize in the first place, hinting that Turlough's wisdom in his choices was the real prize. 

He also warns that the Black Guardian will never go away and will be waiting for the Doctor in the future.

The Doctor is now happy with Turlough and sees that he's been manipulated by the Black Guardian.  Turlough asks their forgiveness and says he'd like to be taken back to his home planet.  The Doctor agrees.

Trivia

• Believe it or not, this is the first Doctor who story actually written by a woman. It would also be the last one until well into the new series

• The story met with huge delays due to strike actions and a lot of this was to be re-mounted after initial filming

• A knock on effect of this was that the original man to play Striker was Peter Sallis (Clegg from Last of the Summer Wine, and also see The Ice Warriors).  He couldn't make the dates for the re-mount, so Keith Barron was put in place instead

• This is the last story (so far) to feature the Guardians 

• The scene where Turlough jumps off the ship was shot on a stage, where Mark Strickson was suspended by a wire.  The wire actually snapped and he was significantly injured, which is why he doesn't do much running around and why he and Tegan are playing chess at the start (because he can't walk very well!)

• Finally, Wracks First Mate is actually a singer from a band called Imagination.  They were popular at the time, and this was his first attempt to break into acting.

The Review

This story has a mish-mash of styles running across it, thanks to the trilogy plot arc of the Black Guardian and John Nathan-Turner's meddling. 

The story as written by Barbara Clegg is old in style and has the feeling, like Four to Doomsday that it's come about twenty years too late.  William Hartnell or Patrick Troughton would not be out of place, jaunting around on jolly sailing ships in space, but by now we've seen the horror of Alien and the epic scope of Star Wars and the Empire Strikes Back.  Audiences I would imagine wanted more than this.

Linda Baron, although good, is so over the top as to make me cringe and the less said about her first mate the better.  Mr Mariner and Striker are much better, and the ships crew are okay, but nothing in this is exciting or gripping. 

One change of pace is that the Black Guardian has now finally stopped giving Turlough chances to prove his worth, but even he's now inept and has turned into a comedy villain with his "nyarr harr harr" laughter.

The special edition that had re-conceptualised shots and CGI makes the story much more bearable, but still, it just feels flat to me. 

This story is a very drab and uninspiring end to a very uninspiring trilogy of stories.  Mawdryn Undead was the best of the three, but this story shows just how far the traitorous companion could go without becoming repetitious - i.e. not very far. 

The angelic beings abducting and using humans has been done before, and has been done better. This one's a miss for me.

Rating

4 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

4 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Smugglers

• The War Games

• Carnival of Monsters

• The Curse of the Black Spot (Doctor Who, Series 7)

Terminus

Four episodes
Aired between 15th February 1983 and 23rd February 1983

Written by Steve Gallagher
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Mary Ridge

Synopsis

Under orders from the Black Guardian, Turlough messes around with the TARDIS circuitry.  Tegan suspects him of sabotage, but he acts nonplussed. As she goes off to complain to the rest, the TARDIS begins to break up.  Cracks in time begin to appear and Nyssa is trapped in her room.

The Doctor can see as part of these cracks, a mysterious door with a skull on it has appeared.

He tells her to go through it and then he finds a way to go looking for her. He figures out that the door belongs to a space vessel that the TARDIS in emergency has locked on to. He intends to go in and find her and warns them they are not to follow.

The Doctor's warning lasts about five minutes before Tegan disobeys him and goes in after him.  Turlough is contacted again by the Black Guardian and told to go and kill the Doctor. After he goes through the door, the TARDIS fades away, trapping them there.

The Doctor finds Nyssa and together they go exploring the ship.

Meanwhile, two space pirates called Kari and Olvir blow their way onto the ship. 

They head straight for the bridge where they meet the Doctor and Nyssa, and takes them prisoner.  The pirate ship they came on however detaches from the spaceship they're currently on and flies away.  Olvir tries to threaten the Doctor into him taking the pirates on his ship, but it's no good as the TARDIS isn't working right now.

Meanwhile, searching for the Doctor, Tegan finds a locked room but hears voices behind it. 

Her and Turlough break the lock and find that there's hundreds of zombie-like humans behind it.

An electronic voice comes over the ships speakers and announces that the ship is about to dock at Terminus.  Olvir freaks out when he hears this and says no wonder the pirates left them, they're on a lepper ship.

Through Tegan and Turlough crawling around under the floor, listening to what's happening and through the Doctor's investigations and conversations, we find out that Teminus is a space station at the very heart of the known universe. It's a place run by an uncaring coroporation that ship leppers to it. Olvir said his sister had the disease, but from what he knows, nobody returns from Terminus.

There are guards walking around in strange armour, and Tegan and Turlough see one of them go off into an area the others call a "forbidden zone".

The Doctor agrees to try and find the TARDIS entrance again, but as they search, Nyssa starts to feel ill and warm. She removes most of her clothing to keep cool but ends up collapsing and is taken away by a robot drone.

She's taken to the men in armour who are effectively unhappy slave caretakers of the station. They're there only because they get sent a drug called Hydromel that keeps them alive and free of disease.  They are uncaring and their leader, Valgard calls forth a large monster with a dog's head called the Garm. He instructs it to bring back the armour from the body of the man who went into the forbidden zone.

Later, Valgard finds the Doctor and the pirates and attacks them. They manage to stun him and escape into the forbidden zone. Once inside the zone, they find the missing armoured man, Bor. He is dying, but tells them that one of terminus' engines is leaking radiation and if it explodes, it will be very bad for the universe. He tells them to follow the cables. 

The Garm then arrives and takes Bor away. The monster is summoned again, this time to take Nyssa to the area for curing.

Olvir surprises them all and fires on the Garm but has no effect. The Garm doesn't retaliate, but instead takes Nyssa into the forbidden zone as she is deemed to be diseased now, too. Olvir has little choice but to follow.

The Doctor and Kari meanwhile find a cockpit at the heart of Terminus. It contains a dead alien astronaut.

The Doctor pieces together that Terminus is an ancient time-ship and it was faulty. It had to dump fuel mid flight to avoid overload, and accidentally caused a huge hydrogen reaction, thus creating the big bang. The Doctor discovers that now the other engine is damaged, the ships auto pilot has started a countdown to do the same again, only this time it will destroy the universe.

Olvir is confronted by Valgard and attacked, as the Garm takes Nyssa away and chains her up in a room.  Olvir eventually wins and goes to find her and when he does, he sees that the Garm wasn't going to hurt her at all, in fact, because of the radiation, she's somehow cured of the disease.

Turlough when alone asks the Black Guardian to help him back to the TARDIS. He does so, reluctantly and when the announcer says that the ship will be departing Terminus, he smiles as Tegan rushes off to stop it. He is about to set off, but the ships launch is cancelled. The Black Guardian's crystal then knocks the boy unconscious.

Back at the console room in Terminus, the Doctor sees a huge switch that is too powerful for them to move.

He finds the control box that summons the Garm and brings it to the room.

He explains to the Garm what's going on and gets the Garm to push the switch back into place, cancelling the fuel dump and thus the explosion.  In return, the Doctor smashes the control box and give the Garm his freedom.

Valgard finds the Doctor trying to shut down the engine and fights him, but they're rescued by Nyssa and Olvir. 

The Doctor explains everything to him and Nyssa says that the Garm, now free, can help improve treatment for all with the disease. Valgard says even if it's true, it's useless as the corporation control the hydromel that keeps them safe. Nyssa says she can synthesise it and tells the Doctor she's staying behind.

They all make it back to the spaceship and Nyssa gives a teary farewell.

 Turlough meanwhile comes back to life and hears the echoing voice of the Black Guardian warning him of his final chance.

Trivia

• Mark Strickson was very unhappy about being made to crawl around in tunnels for four episodes

• John Nathan-Turner made the call to drop Nyssa from the series before this season started. Sarah agreed to it because she didn't think there was much else that could be done with the character. 

• It was Sarah's decision (for some reason) to strip off during the story, and she now regrets it because it's the one thing people always remember her for and ask about, rather than the strong, scientific and moral character that she portrayed

• The production team got a stern letter after the broadcast of this story though for crediting the announcers voice as a "tannoy" man. The letter came from the Tannoy company.  It turns out that the device was commonly named as the company name like a hoover.

• Surprisingly enough, until 2018's initial story in Series 11, this was the last story to feature three regular TARDIS companions

The Review

There are few words to describe how utterly boring this story is. I mean the concept at the heart of this could be halfway decent, with the alien race being responsible for the big bang, but to do so because it jumped from another dimension... when there's entities of immense power such as the Guardians and the Daemons, and the creature that could well be Satan (see Doctor Who series 2, The Satan Pit).  All of those began and were effectively spawned because a spaceship's engine blew up?  Come on.

So, that concept to me is lackluster at best. And then, it's wrapped in the most dismal of plots that fill out the rest of the three and a half episodes.  The men in armour are meant to be bored, but they're also representations of the audience in my opinion.  The Black Guardian even gets stale by this point, threatening countless times to end his minion and then giving him ANOTHER final chance.

The Garm is crap and we're meant to feel like there's an ominous uncaring threat from the "evil corporation", but it turns out to be just that - uncaring.  Nyssa says they'd never go to Terminus and take it back by force because of all the leppers, but has she never heard of a spacesuit and flamethrower. 

This story is abysmal in my eyes and I'm so glad I've had a chance to watch it now, because I'll not have to sit through it ever again. It's not as bad as The Crusades, or The Celestial Toymaker, but it's certainly on a par with them.  Terrible.  Just terrible.

Rating

3 out of 10

Re-watchability Factor

2 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Mutants

• The Creature from the Pit

• New Earth (Doctor Who, Series 2)