We're back with another edition of Doctor Who Is CLASSIC!, my recurring series of posts about Doctor Who episodes from the classic era.
Today's post takes us back to 1982 with Peter Davison as the 5th Doctor as the TARDIS lands in 17th century England where they have to fend off an alien invasion. This is The Visitation written by Eric Saward which originally aired from February 15 to 23, 1982.
Here's something that doesn't come up a lot in time travel stories to the distant past but it stinks.
Literally. The past smells bad.
There's animal shit everywhere.
And there's the matter of humans who have not discovered deodorant, toilet paper, indoor plumbing and scented soap.
But it even by those standards, it smells really bad when the the Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan, and Adric exit the TARDIS and smell sulphur.
The Doctor's latest attempt to get Tegan back to Heathrow Airport in the 20th century has bolloxed up and landed them in Hell.
Or...
Local villagers are in a tizzy of a snit that people coming from London might be carrying the plague. So the these strangely dressed visitors might have the plague and must be destroyed.
The Doctor and the gang get help from Richard Mace, a highwayman and self-proclaimed thespian, who leads our intrepid travellers to safely inside a barn.
Besides the fear of plague, the village is also worked up over the "comet" that landed nearby.
OK, it's not a comet. That's not how comets work.
Forgive the poor people of the 17th century who have not invented deodorant, toilet paper, indoor plumbing and scented soap.
It's a spaceship inhabited by a Terileptil fugitive who is using alien tech to mind fuck the villagers to do his bidding.
The Terileptil plan to use rats infected with a genetically enhanced plague to devastate the population and conquer the planet. Getting to point A to point B with this plan involves some fucking around with villagers and using a nearly indestructible android.
The Terileptil can't be ALL bad. He mind controls Tegan so she doesn't talk anymore.
So that's on the plus side. But destroying all human life on 17th century Earth? That's a deal breaker even if means breaking the Terileptil's hold on Tegan so she can complain about things again.
Using the TARDIS (which goes where the Doctor wants it to go for once but then he needs to get there, right?), the Doctor, his companions and Mace (who I remind you knows nothing of deodorant, toilet paper, indoor plumbing and scented soap) follow the Terileptil to London where the Terileptil's ray gun weapon starts a fire in the building he's using as a base.
It's a big old fire that consumes the Terileptil and his mutated plague rats (and over in a corner, a box of imported scented soaps from France? Dammit!).
The Doctor actually invites Mace to join the TARDIS crew but he elects to stay behind to help fight the fire. Which according to a nearby sign is on Pudding Lane which is where the Great London Fire got it's start according to something I looked up on Wikipedia.
The serial saw the destruction of the sonic screwdriver, marking the last major appearance of the device until the 1996 TV Movie. John Nathan-Turner wanted the sonic screwdriver gone as it made things to easy for the Doctor. In modern Who, the damn thing is a virtual magic wand. What would JNT think about that?
A big stand out performance in the story is by Michael Robbins as Richard Mace. Mace can be as dumb as a 17th century rock at times but he is willing to go with the flow with whatever bizarre shit comes his way while in the company of the Doctor. Robbins makes Mace charming and relatable even when he says 17th century nonsense like "It cannot be from another world because there are no other worlds."
As always the biggest drag is finding something for the oversized cast to do. Nyssa is sent off to the TARDIS to technobabble up a thingy to take out the Terileptil's android.
Tegan spends a lot of time mind wiped, staring blankly and doing manual labor for the Terileptil.
Adric is as always whiny and useless, either getting into or causing trouble.
Peter Davison stated that The Visitation is one of his three favorite stories from his time on the series and it does provide some good Doctor moments for him to be whimsical and weird but also intense and serious.
I'm not sure I was very appreciative of The Visitation when it first aired. I recall I was particularly irked by the loss of the sonic screwdriver. But on re-watching it recently, I like it very much more than I remembered, particularly for the performances of Michael Robbins and Peter Davison.
