(568) The Visitation - Part 3

It was obvious that the Doctor and Mace weren’t going to be decapitated partly because they are two central characters to the story and secondly the scythe that is used is too big to do any damage to the Doctor’s head. Once that is over the story sees the Doctor and Mace spend a little while locked up and then they have a scene with the Terileptil which does serve one purpose and that it explains just what the plan is and its simply to wipe out humanity and it does a great thing of using a real historical event (in this case the plague) for the purposes of television. Now that this has been explained it feels like the story can actually build towards something.

Sadly Adric does suffer from not doing very much because he goes from the house to the TARDIS and spends a bit of time there talking to Nyssa and not doing very much before leaving and then getting captured. Nyssa is slightly more productive but she’s stuck in the TARDIS for the entire episode making the sonic boom thing which may or may not work. Tegan perhaps has the best time during this episode although that is perhaps stretching the term slightly. She is still under hypnosis and by the end of the episode she is about let out the rats. Despite not really doing very much when its laid out like this, its surprising then that it feels like the story moved along as a good pace.

The episode is significant for being the last time that the sonic screwdriver would be seen in the classic era. The sonic screwdriver was first seen in ‘Fury from the Deep’ back on March 16^th 1968 and it was written out in quite a good way when its destroyed by the Terileptil. I don’t agree with JNT that it was a easy way out for the Doctor because its not like he used it literally for ever situation. Anyway it wont be seen on this marathon until April 11^th according to my list of dates and episodes. This is the thing that stands out about this episode which might sound like there wasn’t anything in this episode but I enjoyed it very much and the death of the Sonic screwdriver is the thing that stands out about this episode.

The cliffhanger is perhaps not as strong as it could have been because there cant have been that much peril from Tegan opening a box but at this point in the story I can forgive writer Eric Saward for this brief weakness.