An insubstantial piece of fluff, The King's Demons serves primarily as an introduction to The Fifth Doctor's potential new traveling companion, the shape-changing android, Kamelion.Unfortunately, Kamelion - who producer John Nathan Turner had hoped would be a more reliable replacement for K9, who he strongly disliked - turned out to be a pile of rubbish and only actually appeared on screen again in Planet Of Fire.
The automaton's creator, Mike Power, was sadly killed in a boating accident shortly after this story was filmed and no one else was able to operate Kamelion, thus it was swiftly written out of the series (only really to crop up in a few spin-off novels, short stories and a Big Finish audio play).
The TARDIS materialises in Medieval England, 1215, beside a a jousting match and The Doctor, Tegan and Turlough are immediately welcomed by King John (Gerald Flood) as his "demons".
The Doctor has stumbled into some "small-time villainy" (his words) by The Master (Anthony Ainley) to discredit King John and stop the signing of the Magna Carta (using Kamelion as 'King John').
Despite a competent script by Terence Dudley, that makes great play of the social mores and beliefs of the times, The King's Demons doesn't really amount to much.
Coming in at 50 minutes - a comparable running time with current Doctor Who episodes - this season-ending two-parter looks the part, with the usual high BBC production standards for historical dramas and the beautiful backdrop of Bodiam Castle in East Sussex, but feels terribly padded... there's even a musical number!
Having escaped from Xeriphas where he found the Kamelion android, The Master appears to have cooked up some incredibly long and complicated plan to undermine the history of all the key planets in the galaxy by tampering with key moments in their past. Unfortunately, he clearly hasn't done his research that well (or is simply bonkers) and has started his scheme in medieval England.
The fact that the history is all wrong though is pretty irrelevant - and Doctor Who isn't exactly a factual series in the first place - but the unraveling of The Master's dastardly plans just feels a bit ham-fisted, with the final departure of protagonists and antagonist from the story being slightly anti-climactic.
Kamelion, like Frobisher, is a companion who should thrive in the comic strip adventures. They could probably make him work with today's technology, too, but I'd rather see Frobisher first. ;)
ReplyDeleteI think we'd all like to see a 'live-action' Frobisher!
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