The Visitation Part Four

The one where the Doctor helps to start the Great Fire of London...

The Doctor discharging the Terileptil power pack to zap Mace's gun was nicely seeded in part 2, when he first demonstrated it. It's not 100% clear what the Doctor does unless you remember the power pack scene in part 2 - and remember, that happened a week ago in 1982 - but it's a nice solution to the Doctor's predicament.

Having overcome Tegan's trance-like state by hugging her, he asks how she's feeling. "Groggy, sore and bad-tempered," she moans. "Almost your old self!" replies the Doctor. Tegan may be some or all of these things from time to time, but she's also very practically minded, and is the voice of reason when they are trying to get the locked door open. Tegan suggests the sonic screwdriver (destroyed), then a flintlock (too noisy, she's told), but is having none of the fact Richard thinks he can pick a lock using a safety pin. The flintlock is the best option after all, and if they hadn't listened to Tegan they might have been there for ever!

The Visitation Part Three

The one where the Terileptil creates a super-infectious plague rat...

As the scythe hovers expectantly above the Doctor's neck, it seems all hope for the Time Lord is lost. Is this our hero's final end, the moment where his head says farewell to his body, when regeneration cannot save him? No, because his execution is derailed by a bad actor bursting in and proclaiming: "Wait!" This is the headman of the village, and he insists the Doctor is kept alive. Cliffhanger resolutions like this are always disappointing, like a pin bursting the bubble of a dramatic moment. The Doctor is about to be killed, until someone says "no" or "stop", and that's it.

Part 3 suffers, like many third episodes, from having not very much happen. In fact, not very much has happened since the end of part 1, and the story has spiralled into a sequence of captures and escapes which try the patience. The Doctor and Mace are imprisoned in the harness room for a good half of the story, then "rescued" by the android, before being taken to the Terileptil and imprisoned again. You can feel writer Eric Saward biding his time until he can get to the story's climax, treading water in the story's tertiary stage.

The Visitation Part Two

The one where we meet the creature that came down in the firestorm...

What a wonderfully glib continuation of the cliffhanger! It's less of a resolution, more of a visual gag, as Tegan calls out for the Doctor, and he leans in through the brick wall and says: "Yes?" The brick wall is an illusion, a barrier that you can step through to the other side. It might have made for an underwhelming end to part 1, but I do enjoy the way it pans out unexpectedly here!

On the other side of the barrier, the air smells musty and humid. The Doctor identifies it as soliton gas, and of course Nyssa can't help herself and has to chip in: "I thought I recognised it". Is there anything this teenage girl from Traken doesn't know or have experience of? She's insufferable sometimes (often). She gets away with things more than the other two too, such as when the Doctor tells Tegan not to disturb anything, but when Nyssa prods the soliton gas machine and it bursts into life, there's not a single word of admonishment.

The Visitation Part One

The one where the TARDIS lands in the time of the Great Plague...

The opening five minutes of The Visitation are sheer poetry, and a surefire pre-credits sequence if ever I saw one. It's a real shame the sequence wasn't treated as such, because it's a beautifully intriguing and affecting prelude to the story proper. We have five minutes of one innocent family being terrorised by an unseen creature in their own home, before we join the Doctor and co aboard the TARDIS for the traditional soapy kick-off.

We don't spend very long with the Squire, his two children and their servant, but the time we do spend really has an impact. They are a typical quarrelsome yet loving family unit (but where is mama?) who squabble over the temperature of the room and the amount of alcohol consumed. They don't get much screen time, but we do get to care about them by the time things start to go wrong.