Trivia / Doctor Who S8E5 "The Dæmons"

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• Alan Smithee: Writers Robert Sloman and Barry Letts are credited together under the pseudonym of "Guy Leopold," as Sloman was under contract elsewhere at the time, while Letts was not allowed to be credited with any additional role alongside his producers' credit. Sloman would be credited under his own name for his remaining stories on the show, though Letts was never credited on-screen as a writer.
• Cast the Expert: Damaris Hayman (Hawthorne) was keen about the supernatural and became an unofficial adviser during production. She also had a friend that was a practising witch, who praised the scripts for their accuracy.
• Corpsing: In the long shot just after the Doctor gets caught up in the middle of the Morris dance when they all round on him and begin hitting him with their sticks and bladders, you can see Jon Pertwee is cracking up. (Despite the ludicrous description, this is supposed to be a scene meant to induce dread.)
• Creator's Favourite Episode: Jon Pertwee named this as his favourite serial, while Nicholas Courtney named it his second favourite after "Inferno". Director Christopher Barry also said it was his favourite, saying it was "a damn good script".
• Hostility on the Set: Director Christopher Barry was trying to shoot a sequence where an invisible heat barrier singes the ground, an effect by the location being hit by a freak snowstorm in early May. After a series of delays, Barry announced it might not be possible to get the scenes in the can after all, at which point Jon Pertwee fired up the Doctor's motorbike and drove off in a huff. Relations between the star and the director were already strained, after plans to film one Sunday were shelved so that Pertwee could perform one of his regular cabaret engagements in Portsmouth, despite Barry having missed his sister's wedding to be on set.
  Pertwee: I hit the roof, using the most colorful language at my disposal, and generally behaved in the most unprofessional manner.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: The "missing sixth episode", set off by an April Fool's prank in a fanzine. The somewhat abrupt and ill-explained ending of the story, combined with its unusual length of five episodes, led to a fan rumour that it was made as a six-part story and then had the last two episodes crudely edited into one. This had happened a couple of times earlier in the show, with "Planet of Giants", and "The Dominators", but this was written as broadcast. The reason why this story ended up five episodes long was simply because the season was allocated 25 episodes, meaning they had to go with an odd number of episodes for one of the stories; the production team managed to snag an extra episode for the following season, allowing them to standardise stories at either four or six episodes.
• Throw It In!: Yates and the Brig's dialogue at the end, where the former cheekily asks the Brigadier if he wants to dance and the Brig replies that he'd rather have a pint, was ad-libbed by Richard Franklin and Nicholas Courtney.
• What Could Have Been: Nicholas Courtney suggested including the Brigadier's wife, whom he proposed might be called Fiona. Terrance Dicks was not in favour of this, however, and it was not included in the scripts. The character would eventually debut in the Past Doctor Adventures as the Brigadier's first wife, and mother of Kate Stewart.
• Working Title: The Demons.
• Write What You Know: The scene in which Jo gets herself and the Doctor lost by holding a road map upside-down was inspired by a real incident when Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning were driving to a location shoot.

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