Episode #119 : The Visitation

"I have appeared before some of the most hostile audiences in the world. Today I met death in a cellar. But I have never been so afraid until I met the man with the scythe."

Episode 119: Visitation.
Companions: 5th Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa and Adric.
Air Date:       15th to 23rd February 1982.

The Doctor attempts to take Tegan back to Heathrow Airport but the TARDIS arrives in the 17th Century instead of the 20th. The time travellers discover that a space capsule has crash-landed nearby and that its alien occupants, three Terileptil prison escapees, intend to wipe out all indigenous life on Earth by releasing rats infected with an enhanced strain of the great plague. The creatures are also using a sophisticated android to strike terror into the local villagers. Aided by itinerant thespian Richard Mace, the Doctor tracks the Terileptils to their base in Pudding Lane, London. The creatures are ultimately destroyed when a fire breaks out and the Terileptil leader's weapon explodes - also setting off the Great Fire of London.

The Visitation is a welcoming and refreshing story that leaps up in both terms of story and production value over the prior 5th Doctor stories. It's quite a masterpiece to watch and is so well done that you don't notice the dodgy reptile man suits. We haven't had a proper historical story for a while and this one gives us alien's, a robot dressed as Death, the Great Fire of London, and some excellent acting all round.

There are some great moments in this story such as the interaction between Tegan and the Doctor about whether he can get her home or not, the thespian come highwayman Richard Mace in pretty much every scene, and the Terileptil leader explaining his plot to destroy humanity with an engineered "black death" plague. The 5th Doctor starts to show a grumpy stubborn side to his nature in this story which both seems to fit and feels out of place at the same time.

We lose another important companion in this story too. The Terileptil leader destroys the sonic screwdriver! It doesn't reappear until the 8th Doctor movie. The sonic was removed because then producer John Natan Turner felt that the writers were relying on it too much to get the Doctor out of scrapes. This way they had to write his escapes not just rely on a gimmick.

Of the Peter Davison storie, The Visitation is definitely one of the best and well worth a watch.