4 replies to this topic

[Lantern7]

All Tegan wants to do is go home. Of course, the Doctor screws things up, landing in Heathrow . . . in the year 1666. And, natch, the TARDIS gang (Doctor, Tegan, Adric and Nyssa) run afoul of a mutated turtle and his robot assistant, which is mistaken for the Grim Reaper by the locals. Oh, and there's charming highwayman/actor Richard Mace, who probably scores an 85 on the Companion Aptitude Test . . . or whatever standards English people use.

This is a decent story, in the sense that it's the Fifth Doctor before shit started piling up around him (death of Adric, adventures ending with double-digit body counts, bad guy wearing a stunned bird on his head, etc). Actually, I think one sign did come up, when his Sonic Screwdriver got blown up. In one of the DVD extras, writer Eric Seward figured the Doctor had a drawer full of those, but John-Nathan Turner decided to eliminate it altogether. The Terileptil suffers in comparison to the CGI monsters of today, but they made an honest go of it (*koff*Myrka*koff*). And seriously, while the Doctor goes for the fairer sex more often than guys, Richard stole a lot of scenes in the story. Meanwhile, I got the understand why some would consider Adric to be the ancestor of Wesley Crusher. I kept waiting for a faraway shot of the TARDIS, where the doors open and a tiny figure in a jumpsut gets kicked out. The haters would get their wish granted three weeks later with "Earthshock."

What do you guys think of "The Visitation"?

PS: I hate how the search engine is more or less dead. All I wanted to do was type in "Visitation" and see if somebody put up a thread already.

[Last Time Lord]

This was one of my first Dictor Who Classic DVDs. I haven't seen it in a while, but I remember really liking it.

Ended up getting a number of Five, Adric, Nyssa, Tegan DVDs, mainly because of the commentary their actors did were all so entertaining. Quite possibly my favorite Doctor/Companion(s) team.

[HauntedBathroom]

I like this story, especially Richard Mace. The only problem with introducing one story only companions, which the Devison era had a habit of doing, is that the regular companions are left twiddling their thumbs. Here there was enough to keep Tegan and Nyssa busy, even with Mace around. Sadly Adric is still a bit of a waste of space, but I get the impression that nobody in the production team really liked him (other than JNT), so the script editor and writers tended to forget to do things with him.

It was the script for this story that got Eric Saward the script editors job - looking back, I wonder if it might have been better if he'd stayed as a regular contributor, and someone else had been script editor. Eric himself might have been happier, but we'll never know.

[Pooki]

I liked this story quite a bit - I often like the stories where the TARDIS crew go into the past, and it was good to see a different period being explored, and a fun one-shot character with Richard Mace.

As has been noted, it was good that mostly the regular companions had stuff to do rather than being sidelined. Even when Nyssa is left in the TARDIS she still gets to destroy the android, and I liked the moment when even as she does so she regrets having to destroy such a beautiful piece of machinery. Tegan was on good form too, and I love in the final confrontation in the Pudding Lane bakery when she picks up the musket and just belts the Terileptil with it!

Ended up getting a number of Five, Adric, Nyssa, Tegan DVDs, mainly because of the commentary their actors did were all so entertaining. Quite possibly my favorite Doctor/Companion(s) team.

I love the Five crew's commentaries too, they're hilarious! There's a real kind of family feel to them, with them taking the piss out of each other. I thought it was funny in this one where they're talking about how dismissive the Richard Mace actor was of being in the show, even though he was best known for being in On the Buses!

[Lantern7]

Remembered that this story was getting the "Special Edition DVD" treatment. Question: why? Like I said in August, it's a good story . . . but I don't know if it's good enough to get some new bells and whistles.