Pyramids of Mars vs The Daemons

That's a really tough one, but Pyramids of Mars is the one I found most memorable - so much so that it's still a 4th Doctor favorite.

Its like being asked if I would prefer a Roast Beef joint or Roast Pork. It depends on which I fancy more that week.
My favourite 3rd Doctor tale vs my favourite 4th Doctor tale. My two favourite Doctors too.

What edges it is that Pyramids of Mars is my favourite story overall and probably equals The Five Doctors as most watched.
I could play it out in my head quite well, but still gain pleasure for watching it again and not get bored.

Music, pretty location work, atmospherics, memorable dialogue, small supporting cast excels and Tom & Lis sparring together like a perfect double act.

But then again the Daemons has plenty of the same too, but with a bigger cast. Hmmm......

This is the toughest one yet! Unless I come back tomorrow and edit this post I'm leaning slightly towards The Pyramids of Mars, but ask me on another day and who knows? They are both really fine Doctor Who stories and the best of their respective eras. 

For once this one is too difficult to choose. I cant separate them

My brain has been juggling back and forth between the two so much, it's now kind of homogenised into this... Pyramids of the Daemons hybrid. I think I'm okay with this?

Actually, let's see if I can put my money where my mouth is, Pyramids of the Daemons...

Let's go half-and-half. It's an adventure for the Third Doctor and Sarah Jane. Something's wrong with Professor Scarman's cargo. Something malevolent, reigning like another man's shadow, items from a tomb that the locals begged him not to open. He's always had a fondness for his home village of Devil's End and so, thanks to his contributions to the Royal Society, he's been allowed a special boon. Artefacts from his excursion to north Africa will feature first in an exhibition down at the local church run by Mr Magister before travelling to London. A special treat and a security nightmare. The whole thing is being kept tightly under wraps. Fortunately, an old friend of the Scarmans, Dr Warlock, has drawn attention of his own.

The barrow, known as the Devil's Hump, is set to be opened by his archaelogical team for the first time in centuries. The BBC have already set up a camera crew and it promises to be quite a show. A deadly one, the local white witch, Olive Hawthorne, believes. Sarah wants to go visit the site, she's been asked by the BBC to provide a story, and the Doctor is only too obliging to take her there in the Whomobile. The trip is far from uneventful as they cross the flightpath of a Heathrow plane travelling back out to Egypt, but also, what the Doctor hypothesises to be a psychospore. A remnant of an immeasurably powerful intelligence leaving an impression in the open air. Something from one of the planes? It appeared to be drawn to a particular point down below. Together, they decide to investigate... The trace leads them to Devil's End. The Doctor decides to scout out the church with Lawrence, while Sarah finds Olive trying to inveigle herself as her aide to approach the news crew at the dig.

During that fateful night, the wind howling and shrieking, a coven assemble in the crypt beneath the church to summon the Devil and return a sense of stability to the village. Magister won't answer why the sarcophagus from Scarman's expedition is so important. Indeed, it becomes the centrepiece of their ritual. Was he expecting its arrival? The power builds, grows... Lawrence introduces the Doctor to his radio telescope, an amateur effort done with considerable enthusiasm, aimed at Mars. It picks up on the energy resonance and begins to run away until it combusts. The traveller deciphers the signal as: "BEWARE THE DAEMON SUTEKH". The psychospore from earlier. He gets onto Sarah and Hawthorne via the radio. Warlock mustn't open the barrow. They bolt towards the dig, but they're too late.

The energy is released and both Sarah and Warlock are buried alive. In the catacombs, the Doctor and Lawrence observe the final stages of the ritual. The sarcophagus opens and a figure steps, wisps of smoke trailing in its wake, from the corridor stretching impossibly within. Magister claims to be the being's servant, but when he looks up, he discovers the features... are not that of Sutekh, as anticipated. The servant of Sutekh is Marcus Scarman. He's come home. He reaches out, hands on the Master's face and burns him to death...

---

After that point, we start meshing the two stories a lot more freely with one another. The Master's "dead" until they leave the crypt, at which point his body disappears for Benton and Olive's return. When we next see him, he's none the worse for wear. He can control Bok, aside from the presence of Scarman and the mummies in the village, he seems to have complete control... It's another one of his masks. A tidy riiiip from the Doctor reveals the scorched features beneath. The vendetta between him and the thing that was Scarman is now personal.

At the end of the story, the final visitation from Sutekh restores the sarcophagus's time corridor. Down... down... down... To the pyramid of Mars. Linking Sutekh directly with the church in Devil's End.