The Daemons

Target novelisation Doctor Who and the Daemons

Author	Barry Letts
Published	1974
ISBN	0 426 10444 7
First Edition Cover	Chris Achilleos

Back cover blurb: DOCTOR WHO is strangely concerned about Professor Horner's plan to cut open an ancient barrow near the peaceful English village of Devil's End; equally worried is Miss Hawthorne, the local white witch, who foretells a terrible disaster if he goes ahead; determined that the Professor should is Mr. Magister, the new vicar (in truth the MASTER) whose secret ceremonies are designed to conjure up from out of the barrow a horribly powerful being from a far-off planet... The Brigadier and Jo Grant assist DOCTOR WHO in this exciting confrontation with the forces of black magic!

• Target aquires a new noveliser... by Tim Roll-Pickering

Target aquires a new noveliser... by Tim Roll-Pickering 5/12/03

Doctor Who and the Daemons is a minor landmark in the Target novelisations, being the first of the originated books to be written by someone other than Terrance Dicks or Malcolm Hulke. Until 1993 Barry Letts never managed to achieve an on-air credit as a Doctor Who writer due to various concerns but here he gets the chance to stretch his literary legs in retelling the first story he co-wrote with Robert Sloman.

It's often possible to read a Target novelisation and see which of the 1960s novelisations it most closely resembles in terms of its treatment of the original story. Here Letts seems to be following the example set down by Doctor Who and the Crusaders by rearranging the order of scenes so that instead of lots and lots of short moments we get substantial material before shifting the setting. This can work but unfortunately here everything in close proximity and so it's difficult to pull this off without having moments where a character appears to be in two places at once - for example Bok emerges from the church in passages before the ones detailing his departure from the cavern. This is however perhaps the book's only real weakness.

On television The Daemons is a strong story which attempts to do something different from the norm by exploring the occult and black magic. The explanations given on television were sufficient in that medium but here more exposition may be required. Letts more circumvents this problem than tackles it by having characters thinking to themselves how difficult it is to understand the Doctor's explanations of how something is not black magic. The other notable weak point on television was the Doctor's sudden wealth of knowledge about the Daemons without doing much to discover it through the course of events. Here more explanation is given that he learnt about this in school but then forgot and only fully realises events through his researches in Miss Hawthorne's library. It isn't the most perfect explanation but short of a significant restructuring of the plot this works a lot better than on television.

Otherwise this book contains many enhancements upon the televised story. Letts often takes the opportunity to delve into the thoughts of individual charecters, so we get to understand how many of them react to the strange events unfolding around them, as well as learning more about the relationship between the Doctor and the Master before they both decided to opt out of Time Lord society. We also get fringe characters beefed up, such as the coven member in the televised story who objects to Jo being sacrificed has now been fleshed out as Stan Wilkins who is shown to have serious doubts about what he has been drawn into. The pub landlord Bert is enhanced as well, coming across as highly sympathetic as Letts shows how he and others have been convinced by the Master that what they are doing is the right thing.

This novelisation contains perhaps the first notable continuity error in the Target books as they were originally published, when Jo's initial encounter with the Master and how he hypnotised her is briefly recalled. Although it doesn't go into details, it is clearly not referring to the previously published Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon which had claimed to be Jo's first adventure. Whilst this means the book is closer to the television continuity, it is nevertheless the first step by which the novels gradually lost coherency between one another when one diverged from the television series but another did not. But this is not sufficient to damage what is an exceptionally good book. 9/10