The Visitation (TV story)

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The Fifth Doctor manages to get Tegan back to Heathrow as per his promise. Problem is the TARDIS has arrived in 1666, over 300 years in the past. The Doctor then realises something is wrong when the Grim Reaper literally stalks the countryside.

Summary

At the manor home of a 17th century family, an unwelcome visitor arrives.

In the console room, the Doctor is talking with Adric about the events of their previous adventure on Deva Loka (Kinda). The Doctor then notices that there is a fault in the console. Meanwhile, Nyssa is assisting Tegan Jovanka in getting ready to leave as they are preparing to land at Heathrow right after she left (Logopolis). Tegan and Nyssa enter the console room to find that they have landed at Heathrow… just 300 some years early. Tegan is distressed and storms out of the TARDIS.

The four gather outside the TARDIS and immediately smell sulphur and head off to find the source. They are then attacked by villagers, but escape. In the confusion, Adric dropped his homing device to find the TARDIS and the group is separated. A highwayman and proclaimed thespian, Richard Mace next encounters the group and takes them to safety inside a barn.

While questioning Mace, they find out that some kind of comet recently landed nearby. The Doctor knows it was no “comet” and immediately takes interest in the necklace Mace is wearing. It is actually a bracelet used for prisoner control. The group begins searching the barn and comes across several power packs, and since they are far more fragile than the necklace, it means there were survivors. And so they set off to the nearby manor of the person who owns the barn.

No one answers the front door, so the Doctor and Nyssa find a way in through a window. While searching the manor, they find more power packs, gunpowder, and a mark from a high energy weapon. The Doctor also notices that there is a wall where there shouldn’t be one. And while he continues his investigation of the wall, Nyssa heads to the front door and lets the others in. But when they return to the wall, the Doctor is no where to be found. And as the four stand there trying to figure out where he’s gone, a figure shuts and locks the door behind them.

The Doctor then appears through the wall and explains it is a holographic energy barrier. The group walks through and joins the Doctor. Once in the cellar, they notice the place smells of Soliton gas. Also in the cellar are several caged rats and the device emitting the Soliton gas. While the five are searching the room, the figure from before, an android, sneaks up on them. It succeeds in “stunning” Tegan and Adric, while the Doctor, Nyssa and Mace are forced to retreat.

The survivor is a Terileptil fugitive and interrogates Tegan and Adric about the Doctor. Meanwhile, the Doctor and the others find the Terileptil’s ship near the manor while they plan on how to deal with the android: A sonic booster set up in the TARDIS might just deal with it. As they leave the ship, a group of villagers, all wearing the same device Mace found, approach them. They demand that the Doctor come with them, and when he refuses they attack. The three run back into the ship, now under siege by the villagers. The Doctor blasts open the rear hatch of the ship and the group escapes into the forest to find the TARDIS. The controlled villages follow them at a distance.

Back in the manor, Tegan and Adric have been placed in a locked room. And while Nyssa heads back to the TARDIS to work on the sonic booster, the Doctor and Mace go to appropriate a horse from a nearby mill to make their way back to the manor. Tegan and Adric eventually escape from the room and head up into the manor proper. Adric succeeds in jumping out a window before Tegan is recaptured by the android. And just before leaving the mill, the Doctor and Mace are confronted by real villagers and are about to be killed for being “plague carriers”.

But the Terileptil still needs the Doctor and sends his controlled villagers in to stop them. The villagers then throw the Doctor and Mace into a room in the mill. At the manor, the Terileptil has placed one of the bracelets on Tegan. And back at the TARDIS, Adric arrives and assists Nyssa in setting up the sonic booster. The Doctor suceedes in disabling two of the bracelets and the Terileptil dispatches the android to retrieve them.

Minutes later, the android, in the guise of the Grim Reaper, bursts into the mill, frightens off the villagers, and takes the Doctor and Mace back to the manor where they find Tegan under the control of the bracelet. The Doctor encounters the Terileptil and his offer to take him away from Earth fails. The Terileptil instead plans to kill everyone on Earth and take the planet over. Mace is also equipped with a bracelet and the Doctor is thrown in a room where the Terileptil destroys his sonic screwdriver. The Terileptil brings in a cage with a rat and explains his plan: he is going to use genetically enhanced plague carried on the rats to devastate the population. The Terileptil leaves the room and the controlled Tegan prepares to open the cage.

The Doctor manages to disable the bracelets and stop both of them. The Terileptil leaves for his base in the nearby city and sends the android to take control of the TARDIS. The Doctor, Tegan, and Mace escape from the room and search the Terileptil’s lab to find it completely empty. Mace tells the Doctor that the nearby city the Terileptil was referring to was London. The android arrives at the TARDIS but is successfully dealt with by the sonic booster Nyssa finished. Adric and Nyssa then move the TARDIS to meet the Doctor and the others at the manor.

Using the TARDIS scanner, the Doctor locates the Terileptil in London. The TARDIS rematerializes there and the five enter the building. With the Terileptil leader are two other Terileptils who get the jump on the Doctor and Mace. They manage to stop them, but of the Terileptil’s weapons become overloaded and detonate. The resulting explosion destroys the building and starts a raging fire. Mace stays behind to fight the blaze as the Doctor, Tegan, and Nyssa leave in the TARDIS.

It is revealed that the fire is at Pudding Lane, the location where the Great Fire of London started.

References

Cast & Characters

Crew

Notes

The working titles for this story were The Invasion Of The Plague Men and Plague Rats.
The opening sequence in the TARDIS follows on directly from Kinda. Since The Visitation was filmed before Kinda, the cast had to act out their characters' responses to the events of Kinda based solely on the script.
In use since the 1968 Second Doctor serial, Fury from the Deep, the Doctor's sonic screwdriver was destroyed by the Terileptil leader. This was on the direction of producer John Nathan-Turner, who felt that the tool was too easy a way of solving the Doctor's problems, vetoing a scene at the end of the story where the Doctor would simply get a replacement from a room full of the devices in the TARDIS. This was the last time the sonic screwdriver was seen in the series before its next appearance in the 1996 Doctor Who television movie.
The Terileptil mask marks the first use of animatronics in the series.
Features a guest appearance by John Savident, some years prior to his achieving fame as one of the cast of Coronation Street.
During the fight in the first episode, the Doctor apparently loses his trademark stalk of celery from his lapel. But a short time later inside the barn when he goes behind a pillar, a replacement stalk appears in his hand.

Influences

Writer Eric Saward originally created the character of Richard Mace for several radio plays broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in the 1970s. The initial idea for this story was suggested to Saward by a former girlfriend who had recently read about the plague and the fire.

Much of what is known about both the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London is derived from the diary of Dr. Samuel Pepys.

Ratings

Episode 1 - 9.1m viewers
Episode 2 - 9.3m viewers
Episode 3 - 9.9m viewers
Epsiode 4 - 10.1m viewers

Statistics on Repeats and non UK Broadcasts

Myths

To be added.

Location Filming

Filmed at Black Park near Iver and at the the Tithe Barn in Hurley, with interior scenes filmed in studio.

Continuity

When the Doctor is about to be beheaded by the scytheman, he groans, "Oh no, not again." He is alluding to the events in "Four to Doomsday," in which he was nearly beheaded by Monarch's androids.

The explosion of the Terileptil leader's weapon is the cause of the 1666 Great Fire of London. The Fourth Doctor alluded to being accused of starting the fire in Pyramids of Mars. The short story, "The Republican's Story" attempts to explain this apparent contradiction.

The Terileptils are mentioned again in "The Awakening." The Master destroys their home planet in the Missing Adventures novel, "The Dark Path."

Quotes

Tegan: "Call yourself a Time Lord? A broken clock keeps better time than you do. At least it's accurate twice a day!"

Richard Mace: "Thievery, sir, is a matter of stealth, not hearty greeting."

Story Arcs

Tegan Jovanka

Heathrow

28th February, 1981

Discontinuity

Believing the Doctor and Richard Mace to be warlocks, or male witches, the villagers attempt to burn them by setting fire to the mill. This is somewhat historically incorrect, as while persons accused of witchcraft were burned on the Continent, in England and Scotland they were more often hanged.

More Info

Story Novelization

Public Releases

This story was released on DVD in the United Kingdom on 19 January 2004. It had previously been released in 1994 in VHS format together with "Black Orchid" as part of a two tape set.