abstract
| - It also gave Peter Davison a chance to display his fencing skills. The Fifth Doctor became the third consecutive incarnation of the Doctor to have some skill with a blade, his immediate predecessors having swashbuckled in The Sea Devils, The Masque of Mandragora, and The Androids of Tara. Indeed, Demons provided a kind of rematch for the Doctor and the Master, echoing the earlier duel between the Third Doctor and . It was the last televised story to feature the Doctor-as-swordsman until David Tennant's debut in 2005. Narratively, it ends with an unusual, "one-way, retrospective cliffhanger". That is, it's only visible if The Five Doctors is seen immediately after Demons. At the conclusion of Demons, the Doctor promises to take his companions to the Eye of Orion. Since the Doctor often makes promises of future adventures at the ends of stories, this doesn't appear to be a cliffhanger at all. It's only by seeing The Five Doctors that the audience realises he's kept a promise made in the previous story. Perhaps more crucial is the notion that the Master we see in The Five Doctors has been recalled to Gallifrey immediately after his 13th century defeat by the Fifth Doctor, a fact that, once known, can subtly change the viewer's perception of certain scenes in The Five Doctors. For years, this connection was fairly obvious on home video, because home video viewers were forced to buy a version of The Five Doctors on VHS, where the two stories had been bundled together. Following 2010's separate release of this story on DVD, the cliffhanger will likely escape more viewers' attention. Thanks to the dismal ratings for the first episode, this serial as a whole was the lowest-rated serial of the Fifth Doctor's run. It therefore contrasts with another two-parter, Black Orchid, which was the highest rated Davison story. (REF: The Fifth Doctor Handbook)
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