A little while back, the argument was made that Victory of the Daleks is one of the worst Dalek stories ever because it's essentially a close-to-50-minute commercial for the New Paradigm Daleks. The same exact thing can be said about The King's Demons when it comes to Kamelion, only without the jazzy new action figures to go with it. That's the biggest problem with this story, apart from it being so wafer-thin you could probably serve it to Mr. Creosote and make him vomit. Once again, it's barely even a Master story at all. Even the Doctor says that the Master's plan to mess up the signing of the Magna Carta is "small-time villainy by his standards". After all, what would that actually have achieved in the long run? That's a rhetorical question, by the way. Instead, the whole story is geared to introduce Kamelion into the series - just in time for the guy who ran his software in real life to die in a horrible accident, making it impossible for anyone to operate the damned thing for another year. At least Planet of Fire makes some good use of both the Master and Kamelion, whereas here it's just the robot sitting down most of the time with the Master being... well, wallpaper, really. If nothing else, it gave Ainley a reason to come back for The Five Doctors.
Tony Whitt has previously written TV, DVD, and comic reviews for CINESCAPE, NOW PLAYING, and iF MAGAZINE. His weekly COMICSCAPE columns from the early 2000s can still be found archived on Mania.com. He has also written a book of gay-themed short stories titled CRESCENT CITY CONNECTIONS, available on Amazon.com in both paperback and Kindle format. Whitt currently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois.
