Doctor Who Week: Peter Davison

Hello all and welcome to Day 5 of Doctor Who Week and we shall end this endeavor on the final entry of the week playing catch up with the Doctor and his on growing collection of companions from here and there.  When we last left the Doctor he had taken on 3 new companions Adric (Matthew Waterhouse of To Serve Them All My Days and The Killing Edge), a brilliant mathematician from an dimension outside of normal space and time known as E-Space, Nyssa (Sarah Sutton of Menace, Play for Today, Oil Strike North and The Moon Stallion) daughter of an aristocrat consul Tremas (later to become the Master’s new life vessel) and lastly Teegan (Janet Fielding of Hammer House of Horror, Shelley, Minder and Jim’ll Fix It), an aspiring flight attendant from 1981…she got roped in by faith playing silly buggers with everyone.   The Doctor (Tom Baker of The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, Nicholas and Alexandra, Max Bear, And Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising) and the Master were required to join forces in order to stop total universal entropy from occurring.  In doing so, the Doctor pummeled to his death…or did he?  So grab your cricketer outfit, dust off the TARDIS and ordain your lapel with a decorative vegetable.  This is Dr. Who: The Visitation.

 

The Doctor has joint custody of the universe.

Try to understand, Spoiler: because you can get away with something, it doesn’t justify it.

After escaping the insane paradise planet Deva Loka and the indigenous tribes and colonists squabbling, it is time to get Teegan back for her career as an air hostess.  Yeah she is a striver that one. The Doctor (Peter Davison of A Very Peculiar Practice, Mystery!: Campion, All Creatures Great and Small and The Complete Guide to Parenting) calculates his trusty TARDIS and heads back to Heathrow Airport only to be a bit off in his time coordinates…by three hundred years.  Probably due to nothing more than a temperamental cellanoid on the lateral balance cones.  Nothing one should get their feathers ruffled about.

The four gather outside to scoop things out and then are almost overwhelmed by the smell of sulphur and proceed to investigate like some space and time traveling Scooby gang.  

Oh your singing wasn't that bad Teegan.

Adric of sound mind brings a homing device to find the TARDIS.  No sooner as they mill about in the lust forest they are attacked by villagers but manage to escape only to break up the group.  A highwayman name of Richard Mace encounters the Doctor and companions, leading them to safety inside a disused barn.   It is there that the Doctor proceeds to question a few things for example: Richard tells the Doctor of a comet that landed nearby and the rest of the team notices power packs for laser weapons and a scorch mark embedded in stone.  All accounts most peculiar for medieval England.

And now comes the part where I amaze and annoy you with fun filled facts.  Writer Eric Saward’s first writing for Television experience is this episode and went on to write 83 more episodes afterwards.  The initial story arc feels similar to some of the Tom Bakers at the time but over the course of the four episodes serial mark you get the feeling that Adric and Nyssa actually get more depth in their collective characters and they both become closer. 

NEVER QUESTION THE CELERY!!!!

In fact the only creature of this party that needs to be taken out in the street and drawn and quartered is Teegan.  She is virtually useless apart if you need a scream queen, gets captured more often than Daphne of Scooby Doo and frankly has a voice that feels like nails on a chalkboard.  The Doctor’s adventures shall continue on but not this week…perhaps in the future or maybe the past.