Fourth Doctor: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 02:28, 28 March 2006
| The Fourth Doctor | |
|---|---|
| Doctor Who character | |
| File:Bakert.jpg Tom Baker is the Doctor | |
| First regular appearance | Planet of the Spiders |
| Last regular appearance | Logopolis (regular) The Five Doctors (archive footage) |
| Portrayed by | Tom Baker |
| Preceded by | Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) |
| Succeeded by | Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) |
| Information | |
| Tenure | 1974 – 1981 |
| No of series | 7 |
| Appearances | 41 stories (172 episodes) |
| Companions | on television: Sarah, Harry, Leela, K-9, Romana, Adric, Tegan, Nyssa in spin-offs: Sharon |
| Chronology | Seasons 12 to 18 |
The Fourth Doctor is the name given to the fourth incarnation of the Doctor seen on screen in the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who. He was portrayed by Tom Baker.
Overview
The Fourth Doctor's eccentric style of dress and speech — particularly his trademark long scarf and fondness for jelly babies — made him an immediately recognisable figure and he quickly caught the viewing public's imagination. This incarnation is generally regarded as the most popular of the Doctors.
The Fourth Doctor appeared in seven consecutive seasons over a seven-year period, from 1974 to 1981, making him the longest running Doctor on screen. He also appears in the specials The Five Doctors (via footage from an unbroadcast episode) and Dimensions in Time (his only on-screen appearance as the character since 1981). There are also novels and audio plays featuring the Fourth Doctor. Both audio plays featuring the Fourth Doctor date from Baker's television tenure as he has declined to appear in any further audio plays since leaving the series.
Biography
Template:Spoiler The Third Doctor had contracted radiation poisoning on the planet Metebelis 3. Dying, he made his way back to UNIT headquarters, where the Time Lord K'Anpo Rinpoche aided him in regenerating (Planet of the Spiders).
Early on, the Doctor drew back from continuous involvement with UNIT (with which he had worked closely during his third incarnation) and the Time Lords. UNIT had little control over the Doctor, but the Time Lords continued to send him on missions occasionally, including an attempt to prevent the creation of the Daleks (Genesis of the Daleks), during which he also met a new adversary, Davros. The Doctor traveled for some time with journalist Sarah Jane Smith, whom he had befriended prior to his regeneration. They were also joined for a time by Surgeon-Lieutenant Harry Sullivan.
The Doctor's travels with Sarah were interrupted when he received a telepathic summons to Gallifrey and decided that it would be too dangerous to take Sarah there. It turned out that the summons was part of a trap set by the Master, who had used up all his regenerations and become little more than a withered husk. The Master framed the Doctor for the assassination of the President of the High Council of Time Lords, and in order to avoid execution the Doctor declared himself a candidate for the now-empty office. The Master had hoped to use the Eye of Harmony on Gallifrey to restart his regenerative cycle (an act which would have destroyed the planet), but the Doctor prevented him from doing so. (The Deadly Assassin)
The Doctor then traveled alone for the first time in many years, and returned to a planet he had once visited before. During his previous visit, he had accidentally imprinted a human colony ship's powerful computer, Xoanon, with his own mind, leaving it with multiple personalities. Centuries later, the Doctor was remembered as an evil god by the descendants of the colonists, some of whom had become a warrior tribe called the Sevateem. After the Doctor cured the computer, one of the Sevateem, Leela, joined him on his travels (The Face of Evil). Leela was intelligent and inquisitive, but uneducated. Teaching her about science and her own species' past, the Doctor brought Leela to many locales in human history, including Victorian London, where the pair encountered the magician Li Hsien Chang and his master, the self-styled Weng-Chiang (The Talons of Weng-Chiang). Later, the Doctor and Leela visit the Bi-Al Foundation medical centre, where they acquired the robot dog K-9 (The Invisible Enemy).
The Doctor returned to Gallifrey and declared himself Lord President, based on the election held during his previous visit. Eventually it was revealed that this was a ploy to reveal a Sontaran invasion plan. With the help of Leela and K-9, the Doctor defeated the Sontarans, but his two friends decided to remain on Gallifrey. The Doctor was saddened, but comforted himself by producing K-9 Mark II (The Invasion of Time).
Shortly afterwards, the powerful White Guardian assigned the Doctor to find the six segments of the Key to Time. To aid the Doctor in his quest, the Guardian sent a young Time Lady named Romana to join him. The two Gallifreyans were able to find the six segments and defeat the equally powerful Black Guardian, who sought the Key for himself. After the conclusion of the quest, Romana regenerated into a new form (Destiny of the Daleks).
For a time, the Fourth Doctor and the second incarnation of Romana travelled in another universe known as E-Space. There, they were joined by the young prodigy Adric. When the Doctor found a way to leave E-Space, Romana and K-9 Mark II chose to remain behind. Adric and the Doctor were joined by the aristocratic orphan Nyssa of Traken and, in the Fourth Doctor's last adventure, by the opinionated Tegan Jovanka.
The conduit between E-Space and our own universe was later revealed to be a Charged Vacuum Emboitment — created by the mathematicians of Logopolis as part of a system to allow the Universe to continue on past its point of heat death. As he investigated this, the Fourth Doctor began experiencing feelings of foreboding, and also spotted a white-clad entity observing him. After succeeding in stopping the Master from disrupting the CVEs and destroying the universe, the Fourth Doctor was mortally wounded when he fell from the Pharos Project radio telescope control tower. The white-clad entity, referred to as "The Watcher" was revealed to have been a manifestation of the Doctor's future incarnation. Before the eyes of the Doctor's companions, the Watcher merged with the Fourth Doctor, regenerating him into the Fifth Doctor.
Personality
What characterised the Fourth Doctor from the beginning was his eccentricity and almost unpredictably manic behaviour. He could switch gears from being serious to silly, sometimes in mid-sentence; neither friend nor foe could be quite sure which way he would turn next. This always kept those around him off their guard and surprised by his actions. He was the most Bohemian of the Doctors, witty but with an alien aloofness and detachment. His casual atittude to the sometimes horrific situations he was placed in was often a point of contrast used for humour. Under all that, however, he was still the Doctor and just as heroic as his other incarnations.
The Fourth Doctor also differed from his earlier incarnations in not bothering to conceal — and sometimes emphasising — the fact that he was not human, but a Time Lord with much larger concerns than Earth. Unlike his previous incarnation, who had continued his ties to Earth even after his exile had been lifted, the Fourth Doctor was eager to return to wandering the stars. He accepted companions almost grudgingly, and seemed more inclined towards a solitary existence. The fact that this incarnation has the only solo Doctor story in the series, "The Deadly Assassin," would support this idea.
Story style
The early stories of the Fourth Doctor were characterised by a strong "horror" theme. The combination of writer Robert Holmes and producer Philip Hinchcliffe consciously took well known themes such as Frankenstein (The Brain of Morbius, Robot), transformation (The Ark in Space, Planet of Evil), alien abduction and even included some elements lifted directly from Universal horror movies, such as the mummies in Pyramids of Mars, although they were given a science fiction explanation, rather than the typical magic.
This horror element attracted much criticism, notably from Mary Whitehouse, and Hinchcliffe was moved on to police drama Target in 1977. The fourth season of Baker's run was produced by Graham Williams who was given specific instructions to lighten the tone of the stories, thus playing to Baker's strengths.
During the Fourth Doctor's run, in Season 17, the science fiction author Douglas Adams was script editor and his distinctive style can be seen in the dialogue and stories of some of the serials such as City of Death and The Pirate Planet. Adams' tenure is controversial with fans, some of whom believe that the humorous stories are uncharacteristic of the series, and others who contend that the diversity of the storytelling was one of the series' strong points.
In Season 18, John Nathan-Turner became the series' producer. He instituted a number of changes to the show, including toning down the humour. During this season, the Fourth Doctor became very much subdued and, on occasion, melancholy. At the time, Baker was also suffering from an undisclosed illness from which he eventually recovered. Both the actor and character seemed noticeably older in this season, due to Baker's gaunt appearance and greying hair; many of this season's stories also had an elegaic tone, with entropy and decay being a recurring theme.
Other appearances
Novels
- Evolution by John Peel
- The Romance of Crime by Gareth Roberts
- System Shock by Justin Richards
- Managra by Stephen Marley
- The English Way of Death by Gareth Roberts
- The Shadow of Weng-Chiang by David A. McIntee
- A Device of Death by Christopher Bulis
- The Well-Mannered War by Gareth Roberts
- Last Man Running by Chris Boucher
- Eye of Heaven by Jim Mortimore
- Last Man Running by Chris Boucher
- Millennium Shock by Justin Richards
- Corpse Marker by Chris Boucher
- Tomb of Valdemar by Simon Messingham
- Heart of TARDIS by Dave Stone
- Festival of Death by Jonathan Morris
- Asylum by Peter Darvill-Evans
- Psi-ence Fiction by Chris Boucher
- Drift by Simon A. Forward
- Wolfsbane by Jacqueline Rayner
- Match of the Day by Chris Boucher
- Ghost Ship by Keith Topping
Audio dramas
- The Pescatons (1976)
- Exploration Earth: "The Time Machine" (1976)