The most historically significant episode of the Doctor series, in which Dr. Upton stays at a hotel and John Cleese's script tries out a few ideas that will get further developed in Fawlty Towers. Timothy Bateson's hotel manager shares some traits with Basil Fawlty - he's henpecked and exasperated with guests whenever they remotely put him out in any way - but he's an altogether more morose sort of character.
He's actually second fiddle to guest star Roy Kinnear, who plays a self-styled funny man, Mr Davidson. With his jests and quips and insistence that everyone joins in, Davidson is a memorably awful personality. If this was an episode of Monty Python, he'd be played by Eric Idle in "Wink, wink, nudge, nudge" mode, and the importance that he places on being perceived as funny make him a kind of uncle to David Brent. The story shares features with a lot of Monty Python sketches, in particular the nightmare situation of being buttonholed by a monomaniac making presumptions about you ("No ill feeling! Eh, Doc?") and a collective taking up a group insanity - the episode makes very good choric use of the other guests in the dining room, all laughing uproariously when Mr Davidson makes fun of Dr. Upton and then responding in appalled silence when Upson is compelled to tell a joke.
There's a surprising use of a handheld camera in the two filmed inserts in this episode, giving exterior scenes a strange verite-type feel. This works especially well when Dr Upton gets startled in the street by Mr Davidson calling out to him from an office window and causing Upton to walk into a lamppost. The shaky style gives the stressful scene a sense of real-life disorientation, rather than artificial comedy choreography.
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