Doctor Who: "The Visitation"

[Henry R. Kujawa]

From the blog...

 

 

Philip Sandifer:
"Doctor Who is spending more time figuring out how to get more captures and escapes into its format than it is on character-based storytelling. This while simultaneously trying to act more like a soap and have character conflict.....Nathan-Turner is actively offering a type of series where there should be plot arcs and character development. And then he's failing not just miserably but bizarrely at delivering them."

One of the most spot-on observations I've read all month.

Personally, I prefer stories that are "complete" and stand alone and aprt from those around them. You can still have character development with that!


Sean Daughterty:
"This is, IMO, the biggest problem with JNT's tenure. He's very good at identifying what doesn't work, but considerably less good at coming up with workable ideas of his own"

He ditched Romana, K-9 and the Sonic Screwdriver, and replaced them with Nyssa, Adric & Tegan. The mind boggles.


Exploding Eye:
"Without the tension, without the sense of danger - no matter how easily our cine-literate higher selves can dismiss it - the story serves no purpose."

Saw CLIFFHANGER in a theatre. I remember thinking, it was probably the only movie I ever saw where I found it very hard to believe that NOBODY got killed while making it. (It was also another in a series of "ultra-macho/ultra-violent" flicks where the villain was more "EEEEE-VIL!!" than any bad guy could ever possibly be in real life. Man, John Lithgow was scary.)


SK:
"The girl (I assume there's a girl) is falling past Sly? Use the jet pack."

They did that in STAR TREK 5. (had to say it)


C.:
"the utter dramatic failure of the scenes of Nyssa standing around in the TARDIS. It really kills the momentum whenever we cut back to her."

If not for those tight pants, it would be a waste. (And yet all thru his tenure, JNT kept insisting he wasn't involved in any "sexual exploitation". YEAH RIGHT.) How 'bout that? Sarah Sutton & Bonnie Langford do have something in common (and I never noticed it before).


5tephe:
"Baker generally used it was pretty much always as a tool"

I loved the line he had in one story, "New technology dates so quickly these days."


This story would have been SO much better to watch if Adric & Tegan weren't in it.

[The Baron]

1)Watched this one again - the commentary track on this one is one of the good ones: Moffatt, Davison, Sutton, Fielding, and Waterhouse brutally but amiably saving their own and each other's performances. Fielding is particularly obsessed with her hair - I can't blame her, it looks almost like PHB hair.  The commentary is often more entertaining than the story itself, it's like listening to them MST their own show.

 

2)And we get the lastest in a long line of goofy-looking Doctor Who androids.

 

3)I like how Tegan, Nyssa and Adric do a perfect Three Stooges knockdown on a peasant.  Hmm...Tegan as Moe, Nyssa a Larry and Adric as Curly?

 

4)Michael Robbins give us some nice Renaissance overacting as Richard Mace.

 

5)I'm not particularly overwhelmed by the Terileptils - although the lead Terileptil does get a pretty gruesome death at the end.

 

6)I was amused by the bit where Adric thumps the console.

 

7)I sure hope they went back and disposed of all the technology in the manor house (and the plague rats!) and the escape pod.

 

8)I don't know who's dumber: Team TARDIS, for falling for the "hiding behind the door" gag, or Team Terileptil, for successfully pulling the "hiding behind the door" gag, but still getitng the crap beat out of them.

 

9)Some fun quotes:

• "Strange lights in the sky seldom boast well for the future." Especially not in this show.
• "Though I must admit that I'm not entirely convinced that she likes me."  Adric, none of them like you!
• "The nobility will not take kinfdly to being knocked up and questioned about the contents of their barns."  I could see where they wouldn't be! (Makes me wonder what the Seth Rogen picture was called when it was released in the U.K.)
• "You're beginning to sound like Tegan."  What a thing to say to a person!
• "Why are Earth people so parochial?"
• "I feel as though you've just killed an old friend."  As Saward pointed out somewhere, for all we know, he has a box of the things in a cupboard somewhere.
• "How do you feel now?" "Groggy, sore and bad-tempered." "Oh, almost your old self."
• "G'day!" OK, that bit was amusing.
• "You know where he is?" "Yes, yes,  that's why I'm searching."

 

10)Cliffhangers:

• Part One: The android locks them in!
• Part Two: The Doctor's about to be beheaded!  "Not again!"
• Part Three: Tegan goes to open the cage!
• Part Four: The Doctor has started the Great Fire of London!  With Rome, that makes two "Great Fires" he's started. I wonder if he's ever been to Chicago.

 

Overall:

This one's OK, apart from the excess mopy companions.  Saward's actually not a bad writer, he just never should've been allowed anywhere near the overall direction of the series.