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.

Something comes to Earth in a fiery explosion of colour and spark (a nicely yet obviously overlaid modern fireworks display), and this beckons death to the Squire's house. We get one of those wonderful camera shots from the point of view of the monster (echoes of Doctor Who and the Silurians) as it gurgles and growls its way toward the house, heavy-breathing like a lecherous cold caller. Ralph, the hard-done-by servant, has made his master a posset for bed, but when he sees a terrible something at the foot of the kitchen stairs, the lank-haired lackey screams and hurls his hot posset at the intruder. But to no avail, as he's cut down by a keenly aimed green laser.

The house is under attack, so out come the pistols and flintlocks as the Squire and his son Charles shoot to kill, cutting down the mysterious creature before it can claim more lives. But it's not over yet, as a giant white fist punches its way through the door, and as the Squire, Charles and simpering Elizabeth cower in terror, a magnificent disco robot smashes its way into the house, resplendent in its multi-coloured bejewelled glory. What a fantastic design it is too, despite the blinged-up cricket gloves.

There's a spooky cross-fade of various shots of the house upset and abandoned, before we cut to the TARDIS control room, but those few shots show the house as a Mary Celeste, all occupants gone. We don't see them killed, but presume that the day-glow robot has done for them. Wonderful, affecting stuff, a fantastic debut from script editor Eric Saward.

Meanwhile, trouble's afoot among Team TARDIS. Adric's being reprimanded by the Doctor for trying to control the clunky TSS machine in Kinda part 4, but although it's all quite soapy and bickery, it continues to add character and dimension to the relationships between these four travellers. Adric feels like he's being singled out when all he's trying to do is his best ("I try so hard", bless him) and voices his concern that Tegan doesn't like him. It's sweet that the Doctor, who's just been telling Adric off, recognises the boy's vulnerability and tries to buoy him up. There's some lovely moments from Peter Davison here as he gives Adric the odd side-look, demonstrating that the Doctor has a fondness for the boy even if he struggles to show it.

As for Nyssa, she continues to be an annoying prig, flicking primly through her magazine, then dealing the patronising summation: "Poor old Adric, always in trouble!" Yeah, why not just push off, Nyssa?

A lot of time is given to what the four regulars are thinking and feeling, which makes a nice change after years of largely ignoring our heroes' innermost thoughts. The Doctor is preparing to finally drop Tegan back at Heathrow, half an hour after she left in February 1981, so that she can resume her life and start that new job at last. Tegan is still haunted by the experience of having her mind taken over by the Mara, and it's great to see that reflected rather than forgotten, even if poor Janet Fielding is handed one of the most unsayable lines of dialogue in Doctor Who history: "While you were enjoying 48 hours peaceful sleep in the delta wave augmenter, my mind was occupied."

There is a touching melancholy to Tegan's desire to return home, but not wanting to leave behind her friends. Note, she doesn't say she'll miss the travelling and adventures, the danger and heartache, just the people, rather like how it feels when you leave an old job for a new one. You always miss the people, rarely the job! Smearing on her lippy in the campest moment to hit Doctor Who since Season 17, Tegan expresses regret at having to leave Nyssa and the others ("I'll miss you, all of you"), her newfound family. But when she returns to her old life, there'll still be no Aunt Vanessa to go home to...

There are more fireworks when Tegan finds out that the Doctor's landed the TARDIS at the site of Heathrow, but 315 years too early, in 1666 (appropriately, for Doctor Who's 566th episode!). Fielding is great when Tegan's riled, and delivers some seriously shady dialogue to perfection ("They've certainly let the grass grow since I was last there!" and "Perhaps I can go out, file a claim on the land. When they get round to inventing the aircraft, I'll make a fortune!"). Tegan talks like a proper human being, and I love her for that.

Tegan storms outside for some fresh air, followed by the others, and everybody makes up, which is lovely. It's the perfect dysfunctional space family, and there's somebody we can all relate to or see ourselves in. The soapy aspects of the Davison era might have gone a bit too far on occasion, but at least it develops the characters and makes them more truthful.

Our heroes explore the verdant woodland they've landed in, Nyssa being frustratingly strait-laced by asking whether it's "sensible" to go on. That's Nyssa in a nutshell, isn't it? She's 'sensible'. She's the bookish swot everybody sneered at at school, the smug Little Miss Goody Two Shoes who would always be the one to "tell teacher". Nyssa has to be "sensible", not fun or carefree, not a risk-taker or someone you can have a giggle with. She's so crushingly dull and boring to be around.

Running away from cudgel-wielding locals, Adric somehow manages to trip over nothing in particular and sprain his ankle. It's refreshing that it should be a male to do the pathetic tripping, rather than the usual female companion (see: Susan Foreman), but Matthew Waterhouse does not execute this very convincingly at all, making it rather laughable.

Up in a tree, taking it all in, is a fruity former thespian by the name of Richard Mace, played with wonderful volubility by Michael Robbins. He takes Team TARDIS back to his temporary base of a nearby barn, where he tells the Doctor that this is a time of plague, which is why the villagers, all masked up and decidedly unwelcoming, were chasing them away. This is a time of plague, pestilence and paranoia, of face coverings and self-isolation, a time when actors have been forced out of work by the closure of the theatres. Sound familiar at all?

Despite the fact this is 1666 and the bubonic plague is rife, nobody seems particularly concerned. I mean, if anyone would recognise the dangers of their predicament, it should be Tegan, but she seems unmoved by it all, although she does (wisely) want to return to the TARDIS and get on with the trip to 1981. I do like Mace though, he's a colourful guest character played with gusto by Robbins, an actor inextricably associated with ropey 70s sitcoms like On the Buses and How's Your Father? He delivers his lines with a resonant thespian charm, and I love the moment where he says he'd risk anything for an hour's good conversation, only to be met by the tumbleweed of silence from the Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan!

Searching the barn, our heroes come across an alien pendant made of polygrite, as well as a handful of power packs clearly not native to the 17th century (the way Nyssa holds the power packs out in her palm with such self-satisfied glee rankles with me!). It's obvious that something otherworldly came down in that explosion of light and fire we saw at the start of the episode, so it's up to the Doctor to trace them and offer them a lift home if need be. They make for the Squire's abandoned house (the sight of the Doctor ringing the front doorbell tickles me for some reason), with the Doctor and Nyssa breaking in through the ever-convenient open window. It's interesting that the Doctor chooses Nyssa to come with him on this jaunt, as he must see her as the most reliable (compliant?) of the three companions. He'd be right, and although they admittedly work well together as an investigative duo, there's no avoiding the fact Nyssa is by far the blandest and least engaging of the three.

The cliffhanger is very disappointing after what is a lovely, well-structured and written first episode. Essentially, it ends with everybody finding a brick wall but assuming something terrible has happened to the Doctor, just because he happens not to be there. It's an empty staircase and a wall, everyone. Get a grip!

So far, so good. It's great to have a story set in a historical time period for once, after too long where history had become a cursory flirtation for the series. A few scenes in City of Death aside (16th century Florence), Doctor Who hasn't had a period setting since Horror of Fang Rock almost five years previously. It's been too long, because it's clear period history works well for Doctor Who, and can be done well by the BBC. Through the 1980s we'd thankfully get more historical settings (almost every season).

First broadcast: February 15th 1982

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: That post-credits pre-credits sequence. Love it!
The Bad: Adric tripping and spraining his ankle is both unnecessary and laughable.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★☆

NEXT TIME: Part Two...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part Two; Part Three; Part Four

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site.

The Visitation is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Visitation-Special-DVD/dp/B00BEYWWES