The Visitation (TV story)
The Visitation was the fourth serial of Doctor Who's 19th season. It saw Doctor Who's take on the events surrounding the Great Fire of London.
This serial saw the final use of the sonic screwdriver in the classic series until its return in the TV movie 14 years later, as producer John Nathan-Turner thought the writers were relying on it too much to get the Doctor out of tight situations.
Synopsis
The Fifth 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 tries to unravel the evil plot.
Plot
At the manor home of a 17th century family, an unwelcome visitor arrives.
In the console room, the Fifth Doctor is talking with Adric about the events of their previous adventure on Deva Loka. Tegan is unsure if she is free from the Mara. (Kinda) The Doctor then notices that there is a fault in the console. Meanwhile, Nyssa is assisting Tegan 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 villagers 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 succeeds 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 rematerialises 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.
Cast & Characters
- The Doctor - Peter Davison
- Tegan Jovanka - Janet Fielding
- Adric - Matthew Waterhouse
- Nyssa - Sarah Sutton
- Richard Mace – Michael Robbins
- Terileptil Leader – Michael Melia
- Android - Peter Van Dissel
- The Miller – James Charlton
- The Poacher – Neil West
- The Headman – Eric Dodson
- The Squire – John Savident
- Charles – Anthony Calf
- Ralph – John Baker
- Elizabeth - Valerie Fyfer
- Villager - Richard Hampton
Crew
- Studio Lighting - Henry Barber
- Film Editor - Ken Bilton
- Film Cameraman - Peter Chapman
- Costumes - Odile Dicks-Mireaux
- Title Music - Ron Grainer and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop
- Theme arrangement - Peter Howell
- Incidental Music - Paddy Kingsland
- Studio Sound - Alan Machin
- Special Sounds - Dick Mills
- Make-Up - Carolyn Perry
- Production Assistant - Julia Randall
- Production Associate - Angela Smith
- Designer - Ken Starkey
- Assistant Floor Manager - Alison Symington
- Visual Effects - Peter Wragg
- Script Editor - Antony Root
- Writer - Eric Saward
- Director - Peter Moffatt
- Producer - John Nathan-Turner
References
- Tegan assumes that the Terileptil's interest in the TARDIS means that, like Monarch, he wants to "ride in it".
- Whilst in the TARDIS prior to landing Tegan is talking to Nyssa about her recent possession by the Mara on Deva Loka.
Species
- The Terileptils are very intelligent semi-reptilian creatures who have a heightened appreciation of aesthetics and warfare.
- These Terileptils have escaped from the Tinclavic mines on Raaga, where they have been sentenced to life imprisonment.
- Terileptils cannot last for long without breathing soliton gas: the substance is volatile when mixed with oxygen (it smells a bit like sulphur).
London
- The explosion of the Terileptil leader's weapon is the cause of the 1666 Great Fire of London beginning in Pudding Lane.
TARDIS
- The TARDIS' lateral balance cones are "playing up" (probably "temperamental solenoids"), foiling the Doctor's attempt to get Tegan back to 1981 Heathrow.
- Adric drops his TARDIS homing device in a fight.
- When the Doctor is searching for the Terileptils' London base, the scanner shows a 'brown and white' 17th century print of London's streets.
Technology
- The Doctor's sonic screwdriver is destroyed.
- The Doctor finds the Terileptils' escape pod half buried.
- Adric and Nyssa are able to pilot the Doctor's TARDIS on their own.
- The Terileptils construct an energy barrier to hide their workshop from the rest of the house.
- The Terileptils' control bracelets are made of polygrite: the substance, and the power packs, are found in many parts of the Universe. Their usual form of lighting - Vintaric crystals - is also common.
- The Terileptils have developed advanced androids.
Story 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, after which it became ubiquitous during the BBC Wales production of Doctor Who.
- 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.
- Eric Saward attributes the name 'Terileptil' to the words "territorial reptiles" in Doctor Who: The Making of a Television Series.
- 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.
- One part of the Terileptil's laboratory re-uses a Hymetusite crystal from The Horns of Nimon.
- Director Peter Moffatt strongly disliked Paddy Kingsland's incidental music for this serial, saying it was replete with "turgid chords". (DCOM: The Visitation) However, Kingsland called Moffatt his "favourite director to work with". (DOC: Scoring The Visitation)
Ratings
- Part 1 - 9.1 million viewers
- Part 2 - 9.3 million viewers
- Part 3 - 9.9 million viewers
- Part 4 - 10.1 million viewers
Myths
to be added
Filming locations
- Black Park, Black Park Road, Fulmer, Buckinghamshire
- Tithe Barn, Hurley High Street, Hurley, Berkshire
- Ealing Television Film Studios (Stage 2), Ealing Green, Ealing
- BBC Television Centre (Studio 3), Shepherd's Bush, London
Production errors
- When the doors open in the interior of the crashed ship, you can clearly see that the forest in which the craft is supposedly located is not there.
- When the Doctor decides that Nyssa should go to the TARDIS alone, while he and Richard Mace go to see the miller, she leaves back in the direction that they had walked into the clearing from.
- When Nyssa says "We should go and get ANDRID and Tegan" She says Andrid instead of Adric. This is probably beacuase she is thinking, android.
- Adric says "The Doctor and THE Tegan." This is probably beacuase he is thinking, the doctor.
- The Doctor pulls the bracelet off the leader of the village, but when it shows the leader again, he is still wearing the bracelet.
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 DW: Four to Doomsday, in which he was nearly beheaded by Monarch's androids.
- Arriving shortly before the departure of his future self, the Fourth Doctor was wrongly accused of having started the Great Fire. (DW: Pyramids of Mars, ST: The Republican's Story) During this visit to 1666, he and his companion Sarah Jane Smith were nearly run over by an oddly dressed figure in a heavily loaded court. Unbeknownst to either of them, this was, in fact, the Terileptil leader who was being pursued by the Fifth Doctor. (ST: The Republican's Story) The Doctor's involvement in the fire remained a source of embarrassment for him in his sixth incarnation. (BFA: Point of Entry, BFA: The Marian Conspiracy, BFA: Doctor Who and the Pirates)
- During the Doctor's first incarnation, the TARDIS had materialised in London, specifically outside the burning house of George Mortimer, shortly after the Great Fire began. The First Doctor proceeded to rescue George, his wife Helen and their children Ida and Alan and took them on a trip to the Andromeda Galaxy in the far future. It is possible that, for a brief period after the First Doctor's arrival in 1666, that there were three separate incarnations of the Doctor co-existing in the same timeframe and in close promixity to one another. (DWAN: Doctor Who and the Invasion from Space)
- The renegade Time Lady Iris Wildthyme would later claim to have been present for the Great Fire. (BFA: Excelis Dawns)
- In November 1688, King James II mentioned to the Second Doctor, Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot that the English Catholics were blamed for having started the Great Fire during the reign of his elder brother Charles II. (CC: The Glorious Revolution)
- The Terileptils are mentioned again in DW: The Awakening and DW: The Big Bang.
- The Master destroyed their home planet of Terileptus in MA: The Dark Path.
- The sonic screwdriver, introduced in DW: Fury from the Deep, is destroyed here. It would not be seen on screen again until the 1996 TV movie, with new designs being introduced in DW: Rose and DW: The Eleventh Hour.
- In DW: Time Crash, the Doctor's future self references somewhat derisively that the Fifth Doctor chose to work "hands free" after losing his screwdriver here.
Timeline
- This story takes place after ST: First Born
- This story takes place before PDA: Divided Loyalties
Home video and audio releases
DVD releases
Released as Doctor Who: The Visitation.
Released:
- Region 2 19 January 2004
- PAL - BBC DVD BBCDVD1329
- NTSC - Warner Video E2157
Contents:
- Directing Who: Peter Moffatt - The Director looks back as his time on Doctor Who.
- Writing a Final Visitation - Writer Eric Saward talks about the origins of his first script for Doctor Who.
- Scoring The Visitation - Composer Paddy Kingsland discusses his score.
- Film Trims - Additional shots and dialogue that were cut before transmission.
- Music-only Option
- Photo Gallery
- Production Subtitles
- Commentary: Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton, Matthew Waterhouse, and Peter Moffatt
Notes:
- Editing for DVD release completed by Doctor Who Restoration Team.
DVD Region 4 UK cover
DVD Region 2 Australian cover
DVD Region 1 US cover
Video releases
Released as Doctor Who: The Visitation / Black Orchid with Black Orchid as part of a two tape set.
Released:
- PAL - BBC Video BBCV5349
- PAL
- NTSC
VHS UK cover
VHS US cover
VHS AUS cover
Doctor Who Illustrated Guides
The Making of a Television Series is a guide to the production of this story.
Novelisation and its audiobook
- Main article: Doctor Who and the Visitation
- Novelised by Terrance Dicks in 1984.
- Novelised as Doctor Who and the Visitation in 1982 by Eric Saward. It is the only Fifth Doctor novelisation to use the Doctor Who and ... title format.
External links
- The Visitation at the BBC's official site
- The Visitation at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
- The Visitation at Shannon Sullivan's A Brief History of Time (Travel)
- The Visitation at The Locations Guide
