120: The Visitation

8/7/08

120: The Visitation

The Doctor ends up in England in the year 1666, the time of the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London. A pod containing 3 reptilian aliens, called Teriliptils, has crashed there and the aliens have escaped from a mining prison, scarred and damaged. Rather than try to solve their situation, they opt instead to eradicate humanity so that they can survive. Enter the Doctor.

I really enjoyed this story. It’s the first story written by one of my favorite Doctor Who writers, Eric Saward, who went on to write some of my favorite Cybermen and Dalek stories. There’s not too much to say about this. It’s a solid episode, but it’s also really simple. There’s no particularly great mystery, nor is there a scientific concept that requires deep thought. It’s just good old Doctor VS. Monster, just like it had been in days past. It was refreshing after the bad taste left in my mouth by Kida.

We get to see another room in the TARDIS, which is always nice, and Nyssa actually is starting to grow on me. I still want to throw Adric to the wolves, but soon enough….he’ll get his. Tegan actually has begun to grate on me as well. I like her in the stories I’ve seen, but watching her stories in order point out what a whiner she was in those early days.

I’m a sucker for historical stories, and Saward did a great job on this one tying in both the plague and the great fire. The Doctor comes in, does his thing, beats the bad guy (who I felt very bad for…they ended him in a particularly gruesome way) actually starts the fire, and then when questioned, says “this is one fire that must be let burn.” Now, let’s think about that for a second. This fire killed how many? Moreover, the plague killed how many thousands of people? This is a great example of what we have explained to us in the fourth season of the new show as time that is fixed and time that is in flux. Some things can be changed, some things can’t. Clearly, I guess these two events can’t be changed, but the Doctor seems so cold about it all. Now, back in those classic Doctor Who days, there wasn’t any deep characterization, no deep thoughts or feelings, and certainly no time spent on emotional drama. So I’m not surprised that the Doctor seems so blasé about the whole affair, but if this story had taken place in the newer incarnation, we’d have a companion begging him to save some of those people.

*Sonic Shenanigans: I’m very sad to announce that in this episode, the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver is destroyed, and left that way for a very long time. Alas, we hardly knew ye…well, that’s not true, you used it nearly every episode to get out of stuff that writer’s couldn’t bother explaining…but still…I’ll miss it.

I rate this episode 7/10