(569) The Visitation - Part 4

The cliffhanger from the previous episode wasn’t the strongest one in the world so the episode didn’t start in a particularly good manner. In fact the thing is it takes about 10 minutes for things to really get going. Thankfully once it does then it really gets going. Going back to the beginning I must admit that the way the Doctor gets out of his situation was quite clever and I didn’t see it coming. Now once the story moves to London it seems to find its feet. This is the episode where Nyssa finally gets to active her sonic boom thing that she spent so long of the previous episode putting together.

The funniest sight in the entire episode and perhaps story is that of Adric kicking the android to stop it from getting inside the TARDIS. It’s just a ridiculous sight and it’s a funny moment just before the android is blown to pieces.

The companions are all working quite well together and Adric’s best moment (apart from kicking the android) is when he actually pilots the TARDIS. This is something that is a bit of a burning issue because really the Doctor should be the one piloting the TARDIS. Plus the old short hop thing is something that never really got done before Tom Baker’s final set of stories and yet its done with regularity during the Davison era.

When the story moves to London I thought that the sets were really good and the film look to it worked really well and I wish that the story had moved to London earlier because the quality is much better. This is where a fire starts which suggest that the Doctor started the Great Fire of London. I like the idea that the Doctor causes historical events. I seems like it was all meant to be and well thought out and not just added on as a last minute thing.

I really liked this story but felt that certain parts of it didn’t work quite as well as I thought it did in the past. The crowded TARDIS thing wasn’t as much of a problem as it has been so far this season but as a four part story I thought that it worked rather well and I liked the location filming and the writing has been rather good. Eric Saward gets a bit of stick from time to time but I thought that the historical aspect helped the story. Peter Moffatt directed this story with a nice sense of enthusiasm and even made the TARDIS scenes to be interesting which is quite an achievement bearing in mind how static they can be from time to time.