The Visitation ( TV story ) The Visitation was the fourth serial of " Doctor Who " s 19th season . It featured " Doctor Who " s explanation for the starting of the Great Fire of London . The story also contained the last appearance of the sonic screwdriver under John Nathan - Turner ' s tenure as producer . On television , the screwdriver would not return until the 1996 TV movie , and would eventually become a regular feature of the show again after BBC Wales revived the series in 2005 . Behind the scenes , it was important for being Eric Saward ' s first contribution to the show . Unlike most other cases where the script editor received credit for writing an individual serial , here the script submission came " prior " to Saward ' s ascension to the script editor ' s office . It was essentially the script that landed him the job as script editor , rather than the job which necessitated or allowed his writing of the script . It was also notable for its high ratings . It ' s one of the very few stories told in the serial format to improve its ratings with every episode . Excluding " Dimensions in Time " , the final episode is one of only five produced by JNT to have achieved a rating of 10 million viewers or better . Perhaps more tellingly , that episode was the 40th most - watched episode of the week – one of only four occasions when JNT - produced " Doctor Who " broke into the top 40 . Indeed it was the joint third - highest - ranked episode of JNT ' s tenure , tying with the final episode of " Earthshock " . Synopsis . The Fifth Doctor tries to take Tegan back to Heathrow Airport but the TARDIS arrives in the 17th century instead of the 20th . The time travel lers find a space capsule has crash - landed nearby and that its alien occupants , three Terileptil prison escapees , intend to wipe out all indigenous life on Earth by releasing rats infected with an enhanced strain of the great plague . The creatures are also using a sophisticated android to strike terror into the local villagers . Aided by itinerant thespian Richard Mace , the Doctor tries to unravel the evil plot . Plot . At the manor home of a 17th century family , an unwelcome visitor arrives . In the console room , the Fifth Doctor is telling off Adric for being so reckless with the TSS during the events of their adventure on Deva Loka , pointing out that the whole Kinda tribe could have been wiped out . Tegan is unsure if she is free of the Mara . The Doctor notices a fault in the console . Nyssa is helping Tegan get ready to leave as they prepare to land at Heathrow right after she left . Tegan and Nyssa enter the console room to find that they have landed at Heathrow . . . three centuries early . Tegan storms out of the TARDIS . The four gather outside the TARDIS . They smell sulphur and head off to find the source . They are attacked by villagers , but escape . In the confusion , Adric drops his TARDIS homing device and the group is separated . A highwayman and proclaimed thespian , Richard Mace , encounters the group and takes them to safety inside a barn . While questioning Mace , they find out that some kind of comet recently landed nearby . The Doctor knows it was no comet and immediately takes interest in the necklace Mace is wearing . It is actually a bracelet used for prisoner control . The group begins searching the barn and comes across several power pack s . Since they are far more fragile than the necklace , there were survivors . They set off to the nearby manor of the person who owns the barn . No one answers the front door , so the Doctor and Nyssa find a way in through a window . While searching the manor , they find more power packs , gunpowder , and a mark from a high energy weapon . The Doctor also notices a wall where there shouldn ' t be one . While he continues his investigation of the wall , Nyssa goes to the front door and lets the others in . When they return to the wall , the Doctor is nowhere to be found . As the four stand there , trying to figure out where he ' s gone , a figure shuts and locks the door behind them . The Doctor appears through the wall and explains it is a holographic energy barrier . They walk through and join the Doctor . In the cellar , they notice the place smells of Soliton gas . Also in the cellar are several caged rat s and the device emitting the Soliton gas . While they search the room , the figure from before , an android , sneaks up on them . It stuns Tegan and Adric . The Doctor , Nyssa and Mace are forced to retreat . The survivor is a Terileptil fugitive . He interrogates Tegan and Adric about the Doctor . Meanwhile , the Doctor and the others find the Terileptil ' s ship near the manor . They plan how to deal with the android : A sonic booster set up in the TARDIS might just deal with it . As they leave the ship , a group of villagers , all wearing the same device Mace found , approach them . They demand the Doctor come with them . When he refuses , they attack . The three run back into the ship , now under siege by the villagers . The Doctor blasts open the rear escape hatch of the ship and the group escapes into the forest to find the TARDIS . The controlled villagers follow them at a distance . Back in the manor , Tegan and Adric have been placed in a locked room . Nyssa heads back to the TARDIS to work on the sonic booster . The Doctor and Mace go to take a horse from a nearby mill to make their way back to the manor . Tegan and Adric escape from the room and go into the manor proper . Adric jumps out a window before Tegan is recaptured by the android . Just before leaving the mill , the Doctor and Mace are confronted by real villagers and are about to be killed for being " plague carriers " . Yet the Terileptil still needs the Doctor . He sends his controlled villagers in to stop them . The villagers throw the Doctor and Mace into a room in the mill . At the manor , the Terileptil has placed one of the bracelets on Tegan . Back at the TARDIS , Adric arrives and assists Nyssa in setting up the sonic booster . The Doctor and Mace disable two of the bracelets and the Terileptil sends the android to retrieve them . Minutes later , the android , in the guise of the Grim Reaper , bursts into the mill , frightens off the villagers and takes the Doctor and Mace back to the manor . They find Tegan under the bracelet ' s control . The Doctor encounters the Terileptil and his offer to take him away from Earth fails . The Terileptil plans to kill everyone on Earth and take over the planet . Mace is also equipped with a bracelet and the Doctor is thrown in a room where the Terileptil forces the Doctor to drop his sonic screwdriver and then destroys it with his weapon to make sure the Doctor cannot escape . As his ruined tool burns to cinders , the Doctor sadly remarks , " I feel as though you ' ve just killed an old friend . " The Terileptil brings in a cage with a rat and explains his plan : he will use genetically enhanced plague carried by the fleas on the rats to devastate the population , stating that he is merely paralleling humankind ' s slaughtering of lesser life forms to ensure their survival . The Terileptil leaves the room and the controlled Tegan prepares to open the cage . The Doctor disables the bracelets and stop both of them . The Terileptil leaves for his base in the nearby city and sends the android to take control of the TARDIS . The Doctor , Tegan and Mace escape from the room and search the Terileptil ' s lab . It is empty . Mace tells the Doctor that the nearby city the Terileptil referred to is London . The android arrives at the TARDIS but is dealt with by the sonic booster Nyssa finished . Adric and Nyssa move the TARDIS to meet the Doctor and the others at the manor . Using the TARDIS scanner , the Doctor locates the Terileptil in London . The TARDIS rematerialises there and the five enter the building . With the Terileptil leader are two other Terileptils who get the jump on the Doctor and Mace . The Doctor drops a torch taken from the building into a pile of hay , which catches fire . The Doctor & Mace stop the Terileptils , but one of the latter ' s weapons is dropped into the fire , where it overheats and explodes . The explosion destroys the building and escalates the fire into a raging inferno , into which the Doctor and company throw the plague serum . The fire also violently burns the Terileptils , presumably to death . Mace stays behind to fight the blaze as the Doctor , Adric , Tegan , and Nyssa leave in the TARDIS . Inside the TARDIS , the Doctor ' s companions ask him why he is simply running away , rather than helping fight the fire . The Doctor responds by stating that he has " a sneaking suspicion that [ they ] should let this fire run its course " : the fire is at Pudding Lane , where the Great Fire of London started . A sonic farewell . In use since the 1968 Second Doctor serial , " Fury from the Deep " , the Doctor ' s sonic screwdriver was destroyed here by the Terileptil leader . It ' s done without any special fanfare and is only marginally important to the plot . Modern audiences , used to seeing the sonic destroyed and almost instantly replaced in stories like " Smith and Jones " and " The Eleventh Hour " would probably imagine that the Fifth Doctor gets a new one in the next story . Even contemporary audiences would have had cause to expect a replacement was at least easy to craft , since they had seen Romana II make one only a couple of years earlier in " The Horns of Nimon " . Instead , this incidental destruction is indeed the end of the sonic screwdriver in the show ' s original run . It wasn ' t the original plan , though . Eric Saward ' s script initially carried an ending scene where the Doctor would simply get a replacement from a room full of the devices in the TARDIS . Producer John Nathan - Turner nixed the scene because he actively wanted to get rid of the drive , which he thought of as a narrative crutch that writers should be forced to avoid . Accordingly , the sonic didn ' t come back on television until the next story " not " produced by JNT . Narratively , however , the apparent permanency of the sonic ' s destruction wasn ' t explained on television until " Time Crash " , where the Tenth Doctor implied that the Fifth Doctor failed to replace it simply as a matter of personal choice . Meanwhile , in print , the Virgin New Adventures restored the sonic to the Seventh Doctor even prior to the release of the 1996 tele - film , but a variety of confusing and contradictory explanations were given . Of greatest relevancy to " The Visitation " however , was the notion that the Doctor got the screwdriver back because he successfully " sued the Terileptil s for criminal damage " . ( PROSE : " GodEngine " ) Home video and audio releases . DVD releases . This story was released as " Doctor Who : The Visitation " . Released : Contents : Notes : Video releases . This story was released as " Doctor Who : The Visitation / Black Orchid " with " Black Orchid " as part of a two tape set . Released : Doctor Who Illustrated Guides . " The Making of a Television Series " is a guide to the production of this story .