The planned opening of a barrow in the not at all suspiciously named village of Devil’s End - on Walpurgis Night to boot! – awakens the interest not just of a TV team but also of the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee), at this point of the show exiled to Earth, without a functioning TARDIS and working with UNIT, while driving around in a canary yellow old timer.
Turns out what’s buried under the barrow is the last survivor of the alien race that is the original model on which all tales of horned devils and demons throughout human history are based, and the thing is really not very nice at all. Further complicating things is the presence of the Master (in his Roger Delgado incarnation, aka the best male one), who really wants to be endowed with the elder thing’s power, even if he has to go undercover as a vicar and dabble in black magic to do that. Well, and sacrifice the Earth and all of humanity.
I don’t think I’m going to get into the habit of writing about classic Doctor Who serials here, though you never know with me, but this five-parter written by producer Barry Letts with Robert Sloman under the pseudonym of Guy Leopold, and directed by Christopher Barry, is too fitting for the season not to.
As people who know their classic Who history will understand, the era of the Third Doctor, as well as about the first half of the stint of my beloved Fourth Doctor Tom Baker, was particularly and pretty consistently close to the horror genre, with many a British version of classic monster movie tropes, and quite a few moments for children to go through the classic hiding behind the couch ritual. The serial at hand, with its ancient evil hidden below rural soil, black magic rituals and a not quite right village, is also clearly part of the folk horror spirit of the time, as well as paying homage to the Nigel Kneale method of mixing horror and science fiction approaches.
Because this is 70s Doctor Who, there are also some well-shot arrows cheerfully aimed at the spirit of fascism (the Master didn’t call himself that without reason), some companionable poking at the officer class with the Brigadier (obviously, Nicholas Courtney), and a bit of an anarchic spirit of just going for tales bigger than the budget should reasonably allow.
Though, when it comes to visual attractions, this serial is actually rather richly realized, with a lot of location shooting (as always then with the BBC, shot on better filmstock) that really provides the tale with the sense of place it needs to work, as well as some great sets. The latter, as is typical of this Who era, may look cheap to modern eyes (and probably were) but were clearly built with love and attention, showing a focus on the telling detail that is usually more than enough to convince me of a cheap set actually being what it’s supposed to. Hell, somehow, the production even manages a handful of properly effective action scenes here. Add to this the often great and highly strange sound design so typical of several decades of BBC TV, and Barry’s genuine ability to create a sense of strangeness and mystery when the script calls for it, and the whole serial looks and feels really rather impressive.
The plotting of these things, with their cliff-hangers every twenty-five minutes and their stop and start structure is certainly an acquired taste, but this serial certainly makes up for this by throwing a fun or clever or endearingly goofy idea a minute at the viewer, seldom suggesting any dragging of feet. So we get - aside from the whole back plot about the truth about the shittiness of humanity caused by ancient aliens - attractions like a living gargoyle as portrayed by someone capering in a rubber suit, a very shouty Devil progenitor (which makes sense, because he is really very tall, and must have gigantic lungs), the Master finding out why you should not call up what you cannot put down again, a Weird Science machine that’ll make the Brigadier’s “technical chap” sweat quite a bit, an invisible heat barrier, evil Morris Dancers, Delgado really getting into the black magic rituals, a perfectly bizarre sequence in which the local white witch saves the Doctor’s life by pretending he is a wizard, and so much more.
The only annoying element for this contemporary viewer is the way the series at this time treats the companion, Jo Grant (Katy Manning), whose main function is to be patronized by writers and Doctor alike, and to get into trouble so she can be rescued. Even here, when she’s actually doing something to save the planet during the climax, she’s still treated like a mascot more than a human being or a hero afterwards.
Despite of that, this is certainly a top tier example of classic Who, bringing ideas intelligent and weird, whatever the British version of pulp values should be called, quite a bit of subtext, craftsmanship, as well as a great sense of excitement to the screen.
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