The King’s Demons

Afternoon, faithful viewer! It’s your own prancin’ dancin’ Chance here, and I’m so pleased that you could join me today. Let’s get right to it, shall we?

From time to time, I miss the old historical episodes that we used to get on this show. Things like “The Aztecs” and “The Highlanders,” period pieces that don’t have any aliens in them at all. Of course, those don’t always turn out very well (the most recent “Black Orchid” springs to mind), and in general, I tend to think that a bit of sci-fi madness always does a story a power of good.

Photo credit, http://www.doctorwhonews.net

Whether that’s true in the case of this story, I’m not sure.

When the Doctor and companions land on Earth this time, it’s in early-13th century England. John the Worst First is on the throne, and he’s in the middle of negotiations to sign the Magna Carta. When we see him, however, he’s far more interested in the ongoing crusades and traveling about the countryside, extracting taxes from his constituents. At the moment the Doctor shows up, he sees the King making an ass of himself in front of Sir Fitzwilliam and his family. This in itself is problematic; what’s even more troubling is the fact that at that moment in time, John I was supposed to be in London taking the Crusader’s Oath. The Doctor concludes that the King is not the King after all, but an extremely convincing imposter. But who in the galaxy could or would go to the trouble of impersonating the ruler of Britain at such a crucial moment in history?

Photo credit, 2013doctorwhomarathon.blogspot.com

Faithful viewer, I’ll spare you the suspense: It was the Master. Once again, the Master has been mucking about with human history, purely for the sake of annoying the Doctor. And as usual, the Doctor has to step in and clean up the Master’s mess.

Photo credit, http://www.bbc.co.uk

Whenever I find myself watching a story with the Master in it (as I too often do), I ask myself: Is this the lamest plot he’s ever come up with? In the case of this story, survey says yes. The whole goal of the plot was to get John I ousted from his throne, thus stopping him from signing the Magna Carta, and really…big whoop. As history shows, John I didn’t follow the rules of the Magna Carta anyway, and the document was ignored and annulled for the first year of its existence. It didn’t gain any real clout until 1297, when it was over 80 years old. Allow me to show off my research skills. I doubt the Master could have made life any harder than humans were already making it. It was just chaos for its own sake, and it honestly didn’t seem like the Master’s heart was in it at all.

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The only thing of real significance in this serial was the introduction of a new companion–though I use the term very loosely. In order to put his plan into motion, the Master had to have a perfect replica of John I to carry out his foul business. He accomplished this with the use of a robot called Kamelion, which can shape-shift to perfectly mimic any living being. Once the Doctor defeated the Master, he decided to take Kamelion on to the TARDIS, to study its workings more closely.

Photo credit, tardis.wikia.com

Kamelion, when not being controlled by the Master, has an adorable personality, as all good robots do. However, I know from my notes that we won’t be seeing much more of him in the future. Kamelion was constructed by Richard Gregory and Mike Power, and it was on the strength of their work that John Nathan-Turner decided to include Kamelion in the show. Unfortunately, Power passed away after filming this episode, and nobody else could figure out how to work the Kamelion prototype, with the result that we’ll only see the adorable automaton occasionally over the next few episodes.

Photo credit, siskoid.blogspot.com

Well, this story was a poor follow-up to last time’s great adventure. But we’ve got more excitement on the way, faithful viewer. Next time, we’ll be talking about the 20th Anniversary Special! That’s right, we’ve made it all the way to 1983, and it’s time for the Big 2-0 Extravaganza! See you next time!

Stay tuned ’til next time, faithful viewer, when we celebrate 20 years of Doctor Who fun with some big adventures on Gallifrey and beyond…