Doctor Who: The Visitation (Special Edition) by Peter Davison

England's green and pleasant land, spoiled only by rats, plague, the Grim Reaper and a giant alien fish lizard with attitude problems. Welcome to 1666!`Heathrow airport' never looked better. So what if the Doctor did arrive 300 years early, you can't please some people! Attractively filmed around leafy parkland and a manor house west of London, `The Visitation' is a good-looking `history meets the alien' outing for Peter Davison's Doctor in his second story (in filming order), he brought a welcome freshness and energy to the series. The interior sets and effects set a high standard and the animatronic `monster' design is unforgettable. Michael Melia performs a convincing alien even under several inches of latex.For once this is not a deliberate invasion; the three fugitive Terraleptils have crashed on Earth and have nowhere else to go. So, naturally, they decide to wipe out humanity and take the planet. No Terraleptil is going to win a galactic beauty contest but they do have a love of art (so the Doctor tells us), which must explain why their android looks like a glam-rock / disco art installation on legs! Like all the design work, it conveys high quality and adds to the very distinctive, glossy look of the story.`The Visitation' gives the Doctor more companions than you can waggle a gill-flap at (if you're a Terraleptil), no less than four. The fourth `companion' is the wonderful creation of Richard Mace, out of work 17th century "ac-tor" and part time highwayman, played with zest, flamboyance and a rich, rolling delivery by Michael Robbins. Mace has obviously spent so long treading the boards of Restoration England's temples of theatrical tradition (as he might say) that for him, "All the world's a stage" is literally true. Even when he's up a tree or faced with a bad-tempered extraterrestrial, the curtain never falls. ("You jest, Sir!") Brilliant, and an example of how comedy in `Doctor Who' can add to a story when it appears to come naturally from the character's own life.Three companions plus one does sometimes feel like too many roles with not enough action to go round, but the different characters play off each other well and Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) has a good story with something properly scientific to do and gets the result. Attractive as the woods and country settings are, a longer section in plague-ridden London would have added to the story, the sets are excellent and deserved more time on screen.`The Visitation' is a very enjoyable history plus monsters story with a memorable final twist and well worth a visitation of your own, I'll visit four stars upon it, plus a bonus star for the quality of the special edition extras. The special edition picture quality is sharp and colourful, displaying the fine location filming and sets.Best of the many extra features on the two special edition DVDs:The commentary is very entertaining, full of cheerful memories and anecdotes and a good deal of fun at their own characters' expense.`Grim Tales' where Peter Davison, Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton go for a light-hearted celebratory trip (pun alert) in the woods. Mark Strickson guides them round the locations and leads them to find the site of The Chemical Toilet (I'm not making this up) then it's off to the manor for tea. It's obvious that all concerned enjoyed the experience then and now and this sense of enjoyment comes across for us to share.`The Television Centre of the Universe - Part One' is a similarly jolly stroll through a day in the life of classic `Doctor Who' at the now deserted TV Centre.`The Apocalypse Element' - the story of `Doctor Who' on audio.NOTE: The DVD menu shows clips from the programme as background, so if you don't know the story already, press `Play' ASAP. And leave the PDF materials for later unless you want to know the whole plot!

Not a great story, but the extra features make its purchase worthwhile. Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton & Mark Strickson (no Matthew Waterhouse for some reason) are great fun in the various featurettes.The period setting (1666) is well dealt with in terms of costumes, locations etc. as you'd expect from the BBC in the Eighties, and the alien's HEAD is most impressive, a first at the time, with animatronic jaw. The rest of it less so.Michael Robbins goes way over the top as the one-note cowardly highwayman and becomes a little tiresome.I have to say that watching these Peter Davison stories for the first time in decades, I'm generally impressed. He really was a very good Doctor, his companions.....though very inexperienced young actors......are less awkward than I remember them being, and the majority of the stories are enjoyable.Which is more than can be said for much of what followed his departure.

One of the best stories from Peter Davison's tenure as the Doctor, led by a delightfully over-the-top performance by Michael Robbins as "resting" thespian and temporary highwayman Richard Mace. I hadn't seen this story for years, but it has lost none of its charm, with Robbins's scenes alone making this story worth watching. What came as a pleasant surprise was discovering John Savident lurking under a long wig (I had completely forgotten his brief appearance in episode 1). This makes a close encounter of two actors who would later appear in rival soaps, Coronation Street (Savident, as garrulous butcher Fred Elliott) and EastEnders (Michael Melia, who played ill-fated publican Eddie Royle), completely unrecognizable here in his rubber Terileptil costume. The biggest deficit, as always in Doctor Who stories from this period in time, is the bungling, whining, and ineffectual Adric, who mercifully is kept well out of the way by Eric Saward's script and Peter Moffat's direction.The "extras" on disc 2 of this Special Edition are a bit disappointing compared with some other recent "Classic Who" releases, though there are some nice moments in the 45-minute "Revisitation" reminiscence, presented by Mark Strickson (looking more prosperous today than when he played the emaciated, aging schoolboy Turlough, at a somewhat later point than this story), and featuring cast members Peter Davison, Sarah Sutton, Janet Fielding, Michael Melia, and Peter Van Dissel, as well as director Peter Moffatt.