The serial has generally received good reviews from fans and critics over the years. Reviewing its DVD release, Ian Berriman of "SFX" however was more critical, giving it three and a half out of five stars. He derided it for being an "awful mess" with a plot that "doesn't make a shred of sense". Despite praising the "magnificent" characters of Hawthorne, Horner, and Fergus, he thought that other characters including the Doctor and the Master were "continually acting in a completely absurd way". Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping were also unimpressed by the serial, noting its popularity but stating "The Dæmons isn't really very good. Its denouement is risible, and even the much praised church explosion effect looks cheap." They did, however, consider the final scene to be "charming". In a more positive review, "Doctor Who Magazine" said that the story was "lavishly filmed and well characterised" and gave particular credit to Roger Delgado as the Master. Although the review was less favourable about the climax to the story, it described the closing scene as "perfection". Arnold T. Blumburg of IGN gave "The Dæmons" a score of 10 out of 10, describing it as "a high point of this Doctor’s time on the show, a classic of the entire series in general, and an amazing document of a particular kind of fantasy horror adventure storytelling so wonderfully '70s and British that it just never loses its charm". In 2010, "SFX" named the resolution to the plot as one of the silliest moments in "Doctor Who" history.