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.

It gives me time to wonder what the point of Richard Mace is in the story. He's a cracking creation, written and performed well, but he has no role to play beyond being the Doctor's guest assistant (as if he doesn't have enough already). Mace has absolutely no motivation to be with the Doctor, and as we saw in part 2, was ready to part company until he spotted the Terileptil pod. Richard Mace shouldn't be in the story at all, he's given no agency, which is such a shame.

After being rescued from the barn by the android - dressed as the Grim Reaper, and finally obtaining a scythe - the Doctor and Mace meet the Terileptil, and it's worth reiterating what a wonderful design the creature's mask is. That scarring on the left side of the monster's face is truly gruesome, acquired, it seems, not in the escape pod's crash landing as thought, but while a prisoner in the tinclavic mines on the planet Raaga. The Terileptil, and his two surviving buddies who are hiding somewhere undisclosed, are escaped prisoners in search of a new home. And that new home looks set to be a subjugated planet Earth.

Saward does well to build the Terileptils' background a little, something David Whitaker, Robert Holmes and Russell T Davies did so well by dropping information into dialogue which has no direct relevance, but adds colour and context. Tinclavic was mentioned again in 1984's The Awakening, where it is said to be used by the Hakolians, a race of aliens never seen on screen, and also features in spin-off fiction such as the book Seeing I and the audio Neverland. We've yet to see it, and may never do, but I can imagine maimed Terileptil prisoners mining for tinclavic in the mines of Raaga, oppressed by the mysterious warmongers of Hakol. All it needs is those few words to set the imagination off.

There's a fantastic face-off (excuse the pun) between the Terileptil and the Doctor, both adept in the art of debate. Every time the Doctor points out why the creature is doing wrong, the Terileptil has a solid rejoinder as to why he's doing it. The Terileptils have re-engineered the bubonic plague and made it stronger and more virulent and plan to infect the common black rat with the virus and release it in "a nearby city". This is going to be the Black Plague, but one that wipes everybody out and does not leave survivors. In 1666, the plague killed 100,000 (one third) of people in London alone, and about 750,000 (almost a fifth) across England. The aliens' scheme is a devastatingly effective one, particularly when viewed through a 2021 lens...

Michael Melia does excellent work making the Terileptil real. He has a great, silky voice for a start, and this is helped by the mask's animation during speech, but it's Melia's mannerisms and delivery which really make this creature miles ahead of the likes of the Nimon or Mandrels. Melia expresses so well from beneath that mask, making the monster a realistic, three-dimensional personality. This guy gets angry very easily, demonstrated when the Doctor says the alien's point of view is not an argument. "It's not supposed to be an argument," he roars. "It's a STATEMENT!"

Meanwhile, Nyssa is in the TARDIS very slowly putting together the Doctor's giant vibrating machine. She clears a large space on the floor of her and Tegan's bedroom (why do the girls share a room when the TARDIS is so vast?), a room populated with pot plants and teapots. There doesn't seem to be such a thing as a workshop in the TARDIS, or even a work bench. The scenes with Nyssa umming and aahing over this contraption are interminably dull. We have to watch for a full 33 seconds while she drags the device from the control room to the bedroom, and this is so arduous for her that she immediately flops onto the bed, exhausted. All the while, Paddy Kingsland's score toots away in the background. Again, this is Saward playing for time. He doesn't want to have the android vibrated to pieces until the final episode, so first we have to watch Nyssa make the machine.

Adric finds his way back to the Ship, but also finds that he is a bit of a gooseberry. He can't help Nyssa with the machine, can't help Tegan to escape, and doesn't know where the Doctor is. "I can't do anything for anyone," he moans. Poor Adric. As he says in part 1, he tries so hard, but since the Doctor regenerated and Nyssa and Tegan arrived, he's been sidelined, and feels a little left out. There are hints that Adric is missing his pre-Castrovalvan life. "Why is he never around when you want him?" he says, which could suggest he misses the Fourth Doctor, who seemed to take more notice of him, include him more, even if he was a spiky devil. Adric probably saw the Fourth Doctor as the father figure he didn't have, so when he morphed into more of an 'older brother' figure, he lost that paternal presence he needed. The Fifth Doctor spends more time telling him off or dismissing his ideas, and provides little by way of fatherly guidance.

At least Adric tries, he doesn't give up. Off he goes in search of the Doctor, against Nyssa's prim wishes, and although he gets captured by the villagers within seconds of leaving the Ship, I admire his chutzpah. Nyssa is happy to "wait for the Doctor" when she really has no idea where he is or even if he is still alive. Adric, who has a lot more invested in this man than either Nyssa or Tegan, refuses to sit twiddling his thumbs and decides to get involved. Good on him.

As for Tegan, she falls into the same trap as she did in Kinda, where she has virtually nothing to do or say in the third episode. Here, she is put under the control of the Terileptil with a polygrite bracelet and set to work transferring phials from one box to another. Very slowly.

The end of the episode sees the Terileptil callously destroy the Doctor's faithful sonic screwdriver, a handy device which he's had since Fury from the Deep 14 years earlier. Producer John Nathan Turner wasn't a fan of this device as it allowed the Doctor to get out of tricky situations too easily, so he was happy to see it go. It's a big moment in Doctor Who history, but JNT was right. Like K-9, it was a Get Out of Jail Free card which made things too easy for our hero. When Russell T Davies brought the series back in 2005, he argued that the sonic was essential because there was nothing more narratively dull than the Doctor being stopped by a locked door, and while this is true, there are other ways to get through doors (or just don't have locked doors?).

The sonic would make a comeback in the 1996 TV movie, but between The Visitation and Survival, the Doctor had to do without it, and use his wits to get out of tricky situations (and open doors). In the modern series, the sonic has become a tedious magic wand that can do anything (although it doesn't work on wood!) and is used far too much, practically every week. It's become part of the Doctor's DNA, and I sorely wish the Terileptils would come back and destroy the damned thing again.

But then, seeing as the TARDIS appears to be able to "regrow" new sonics, even that would be pointless.

First broadcast: February 22nd, 1982

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The destruction of the sonic screwdriver means the Doctor has to use his wits a bit more for the next seven years.
The Bad: If ever there was a Part 3 that treads water, this is it. Capture, escape, capture, escape...
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

NEXT TIME: Part Four...

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