Day 290 — October 17th 2021
The Visitation Parts Three and Four
The Visitation — Part Three
Historicals aren’t the only thing making a welcome return with this story — it feels like ages since we’ve had a proper Doctor Who monster stomping around. Yes, Kinda has a giant snake at the end but it’s only for a single scene, and Four to Doomsday had a frog man, but he wasn’t really a monster as such. Before that the threats have been maths and entropy and the Master showing up again. We’ve not really had a traditional monster since Full Circle. As much as I complain about blokes in rubber costumes, sometimes that’s what I want from Doctor Who, rather than something more cerebral.
And luckily the Terileptil Leader looks brilliant! It’s a great design to begin with, but it’s been crafted with some genuine skill. There’s a point in this episode where you can see the creatures’ gills moving as it breathes, and I genuinely had to skip back to check if I’d imagined it. It’s a tiny little detail but it goes a long way towards making the whole thing look better. They’ve got some limited movement in the mouth, too, but sadly I think that’s the area where things fall down a little — it just doesn’t move enough in synch with the dialogue to quite work as intended. Still, that’s a minor quibble because this feels like it’s leaps and bounds ahead of the Marshmen costumes last season, and I bet it was really striking at the time. I reckon you could bring this design back now with some slightly updated animatronics and it would work brilliantly.
If anything, I think the Terileptil Leader looks even better when he puts on a black cloak in order to go out in public — somehow it helps to make the design stand out all the more because it looks so weird. I wish more was made of the incongruous image of a lizard driving a horse and cart because it’s just the kind of thing the show does so well, and I can’t help thinking the effect is a little lost by some seriously bland choices in the direction.
Sadly, I think that’s a pretty good description of The Visitation across the board — it’s so bland. There’s lots of nice elements in here — the monster costume, the location, the set designs — but none of them are grabbing me. It’s like I’m watching the story play out, but I’m not really engaging massively with anything in it. This feels a world away from the richness on display in Kinda.
4/10
The Visitation — Part Four
I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t actually like the Fifth Doctor Who very much as a person. That’s not a slight on Peter Davison, who’s been nothing short of brilliant since Day One, but the character is properly horrible to his companions isn’t he? It seems bonkers to me now that I ever thought this incarnation wasn’t very grumpy, because I’m not sure I’ve actually seen him happy yet, four stories in. My breaking point came in this episode, when Adric manages to pilot the TARDIS to the house in an attempt to rescue Doctor Who and Tegan. Doctor Who’s reaction isn’t to thank him, but rather;
Adric: ‘We made it. Doctor! Tegan! You’re safe!’
Doctor Who: ‘So, you got here at last.’
Tegan: ‘Come on, Doctor, be grateful. If nothing else, it saved us a long walk.’
Doctor Who: ‘I like long walks.’
He continues to gripe into the next scene, and manages to put down Nyssa in an attempt to compliment her successful construction of the Android-destroying weapon. I’m honestly baffled by the way the character’s being written at this point — he’s by far the one I’d least like to travel with based on all the episodes I’ve seen so far this year. No wonder Tegan’s so miserable and desperate to get home, I’d want to get away from this wanker too!
By contrast, this is the episode I’ve enjoyed Tegan in the most so far. Her entire role here is basically to spout sarcasm in Doctor Who’s direction and I am here for that. I had a proper chuckle when she first started up, even though Doctor Who looks ready to smack her (and bizarrely it’s played as such);
Tegan: ‘Oh, you think they’ll have left a forwarding address?’
This episode has clarified something else which has been bothering me throughout the story, and that’s why the Android hasn’t been working for me. As it battles its way into the TARDIS here Adric manages to tear off the black cloak it occasionally wears, and that’s when it hit me — this should be the first time we actually see the Android. It was there right back in the first scene of Part One, turning up in the country house like it got lost on the way to an outer space disco. Since then it’s occasionally donned the outfit of the Grim Reaper in order to terrify locals, but we’ve always known what it’s really like under the disguise.
I think it would have worked better had the residents in the house found themselves face-to-face with the Grim Reaper in Part One, and we’d stuck with that theory right the way through. Maybe Doctor Who could suspect it’s an android, but I feel like we need an actual reveal of the thing in this episode as something to add a little excitement towards the end of the story.
Tell you what, though, the Android has become the first entry into my log of ‘things which make it into the Fifth Doctor Who’s TARDIS’, as we see it storm the Control Room. Richard Mace becomes the second — we don’t see him inside, but he travels to London via TARDIS with our regulars, so he’s on the lit. Doctor Who offers to drop him off somewhere at the end, but he decides to stay and fight the fire instead.
The London scenes do showcase the one actually nice bit of direction in this one — we get some lovely glass shots to extend the height of the London street set and make the whole thing look much more impressive than it otherwise might. It’s something I praise director Peter Moffatt for in State of Decay, so it’s nice to see a return to the technique here. It’ something of a staple in the Davison era — there’s further examples in at least Castrovalva, The Five Doctors and The Awakening, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for others.
Sadly, The Visitation has been a massive disappointment, and I was so hoping I’d love this one. Doctor Who’s attitude towards his companions in this final episode has really soured it for me, and as a result I’m dropping to a 3/10 in spite the the bits I did enjoy.
