Doctor Who - The Visitation (Episode 120) | Peter Davison, Mathew Waterhouse

Doctor Who - The Visitation (Episode 120) | Peter Davison, Mathew Waterhouse | Great Story and Great sci-fi.

DVDs:

Doctor Who - The V...

	Doctor Who - The Visitation (Episode 120) Peter Davison, Mathew Waterhouse BBC Warner, 2005 average customer review:based on 20 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

An attempt to return Tegan to Heathrow Airport fails, and the Doctor (Peter Davison) and his companions arrive in 1666 England in the darkest days of the Great Plague.

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
Deleted Scenes
Interviews
Music Only Track
Photo gallery
Production Notes

Where is Kinda?

This is a well written and acted episode hurt a lot by the effects, which by this time in Doctor Who, should not have been a factor, but which sadly it remained an issue until the series demise. The aliens at first, when barely glimpsed were quite effective, but later....ugh. Davison as always shines! Still, every new release of the Fifth Doctor begs the question? Where is Kinda???? Bring on Kinda!!!!

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Great Story and Great sci-fi.

The visition is a very interesting story and it has great scenery a perfect DVD.

Visitation: Among-Top Five Best Peter D's Episodes- No lie

Visitation

This episode was great, great, great, and really great. You just can't say that this episode is great once and leave it at that. Like I usually do, if you havent purchased this movie I wont say too much. ( where's the drama if I tell ya everything?) Its got a babe, actually two of them. Tegan the hotty with a body... put simply. And Nyssa the nice, sweet, intelligent girl, with a cute little figure. Its got a historical earth setting; which I particularly like. I believe its the 17th century. Aliens; you just cant have a good episode without aliens. (you ever notice?) -To ellaborate on the aliens briefly.- The aliens are fairly cunning and actually surprising well made costume wise. One of the first DW episodes to feature animatronics on an alien costume.

The story also has Likeable Characters. I gaurantee youll thoroughly enjoy the "thespian" character. He's laugh out loud funny for just about everything he says. "To be or not to be." -doggonit. Last but not least is the story. It has a good plot though somewhat weak in some areas. A standard Alien Takeover DW script. All said and done. If you really like doctor who, or you couldnt give a rats fuzzy behind about DW(small hint on the story). You'll still like this episode.

-Sir Josh

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Humans are so parochial....and sometimes... so are stories.

The Doctor arrives at Heathrow Airport, only it's a few centuries too early, have the TARDIS and crew materializing just as the Plague is ravaging England. As the mystery unfolds, we learn that stranded reptilian-aliens, who are also escaped convicts, are accelerating the Plague in a typical half-baked fashion. As the newly regenerated 5th Doctor, played here by young Peter Davison, joins forces with Richard Mace, an actor turned highwayman. Keeping in the classic mold of the series, there is lots of running, capture, escape and escaping again, but very little story to tie up the historical elements.

Significant story points: THE DEATH of the SONIC SCREWDRIVER
(don't worry kids, it'll be back, check out the new season one DVDs in July)

With so many companions in the TARDIS a common flaw with the first Davison season is trying to find something for everyone to do, this is partly why Nyssa ends up in the TARDIS on a superfluous tech detail. Inspite of this I am still disappointed when Michael Robbins's Richard Mace remains behind, rather than add another mouth the feed (in the dialogue sense). The costumes are awkward, but performances bridge the gap. Locations are ok here and Peter Davison is so charming on screen that this below average concept becomes a very watchable piece of Dr. Who history. Unfortunately, Davison is less charismatic on the DVD commentary, filled with pauses and no real revelations, making for a is a less than interesting extra.

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"I have appeared before some of the most hostile audiences in the world."

Well now, it seems like ages since we've had a good old pseudo-historical tale on "Doctor Who" and it's about time! Indeed, combining as it does a straightforwardly good science fiction plot (crash-landed aliens on the lam terrorizing Earth) with a temporally exotic setting sometime in Earth's historical past (in this case, England in 1666), "The Visitation" is almost a textbook example of stories in this mold. This is especially so since the writer, Eric Saward, has thoroughly integrated into the plot several known historical events of the time period in question (the plague, the Great Fire of London) so that late 17th-century England is more than merely a fancy backdrop for a story that could happen anywhen. On top of that he expertly weaves many little references into the dialogue (the Puritans' closing down of the theaters, for example) and masterfully depicts popular attitudes and anxieties of the time--deftly avoiding the pitfall of having characters who think and act just like we do only in funny old clothes. But as for the latter, well, the BBC's indisputable expertise when it comes to period drama is taken full advantage here. Everything looks, sounds, and feels authentically like England in 1666, which strangely enough makes the reptilian criminals and their snazzy android that much more believable.

Unfortunately, the main flaw in this enjoyable and well-written storyline is its main characters. There just seems to be no real chemistry between the Doctor and his three companions here, and the companions themselves are dangerously close to becoming two-dimensional caricatures with each sort of instantiating a single mood to the exclusion of all else. For confrontational and dense we have Tegan, for annoyingly pouty and trouble-prone we have Adric, and for good and helpful we have Nyssa--whereas before, even with prior "crowded" Tardises, the companion or companions exhibited a range of these and other emotions and tendencies, depending. You know, the way main characters are supposed to. And it just doesn't help that Peter Davison's Doctor is, well, bland. Don't get me wrong, Davison is a fine actor, and he definitely brings a certain bumbling, boyish charm to this role, but somehow he seems to be a few ounces short of the kind of charisma the role demands. It's a bad sign when a supporting character (the thespian-turned-highwayman Richard Mace) starts upstaging him on this score. There are other problems too with the acting, the most damaging of which is the lackadaisical, ho-hum manner with which Nyssa sets about building the machine capable of destroying the android before it kills them all and jacks the Tardis--supposedly this is a desperate race against time, but none of that urgency is communicated to the viewer, and if she doesn't care, why should we?

Of course, if you look around hard enough you can always find flaws and faults to nitpick. That doesn't mean we should disengage our critical thinking nor turn a deaf ear to our impressions and opinions, of course, but it is best to keep it all in perspective. So while perhaps not the high-point of this long-running show's history, then, "The Visitation" is still a very intelligently-written and wonderfully-produced adventure, a cleverly fun pseudo-historical yarn in the tried-and true traditions of "Doctor Who."

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

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