 If
you ask a casual viewer to describe the Doctor, there's a good
chance the Fourth Doctor would be chosen. With his mop of curly
brown hair, broad toothy grin and his slightly scruffy outlandish
attire, with was exaggerated by his incredibly long multicoloured
trailing scarf, floppy wide brimmed hat, virtually bottomless
pockets - a potentially not untrue fact, given the Tenth Doctor’s
comment about the pockets being just as dimensionally transcendental
as the TARDIS itself - and a burgundy baggy jacket the Fourth
Doctor was the most visually imposing of them all.
His debut scene, just after his regeneration, is very reminiscent to Jon Pertwee's as he was seen wandering around in a nightshirt looking for his TARDIS. He even found the TARDIS key hidden in his shoe! But despite this similarity the Fourth Doctor was very different from his predecessors even though he possessed many characteristics from his former incarnations. At times he seemed to be unreliable and with his wide eyed penetrating stare those around him did not know at times if they could trust him or not. He had a strange mixture of contradictory qualities and he had a tendency to be very spontaneous with a bubbling eccentric vitality. He could be very cold, impersonal and rather aloof and then a moment later he would be brimming with enthusiasm for life. He had a brilliant scientific mind and he liked to demonstrate his enormous wealth of knowledge and past experiences. But at the same time he could be humorous and act like a buffoon and his basic approach to a new situation would be to walk boldly into them and say with abroad grin 'Hello, I'm the Doctor'. His whimsical sense of humour and unpredictability meant that you could never tell when he would suddenly whip out of his pocket a bag of Jelly Babies or his yo-yo.
He
had more of an alien detachment and this was perfectly demonstrated
during an attempted return, in the TARDIS, to UNIT when his companion,
Sarah
Jane Smith, chastises him for his pensive mood and that he
should be happy about returning home. His reply to her was 'The Earth
isn't my home, Sarah. I'm a Time Lord… You don't understand
the implications. I'm not a Human being. I walk in eternity' (Pyramids
of Mars). Despite his occasionally detached attitude, he seemed to
sympathise with humanity more than he had in past incarnations, praising
humanity’s indomitability in “The Ark in Space”,
and seeming almost reluctant when he told the mutating Professor
Sorenson that death was the only ‘cure’ for his condition.
His consistently ‘larger-than-life’ attitude towards
his adventures makes it somewhat apt that it was this Doctor rather
than any other that was selected to acquire the powerful artefact
known as the Key To Time to restore order to the universe, pitting
him against the Black Guardian of the universe itself. Even against
this powerful foe, the Doctor remained casual when confronting him,
nonchalantly informing the Black Guardian- after he tried to acquire
the Key to Time by posing as his White counterpart- that it would
be a shame to doom the universe because he was colour-blind, with
only the installation of a randomiser - a device that fed random
co-ordinates into the TARDIS, thus making it impossible for the Black
Guardian to track the ship - serving as a sign of how seriously he
took the Black Guardian’s threat to find him.
As
with all Doctors, he was never cruel or cowardly, and when required
he had a lot of warmth and charm. The Doctor was ready to risk his
life for a worthy cause especially against tyranny and oppression
and he would never give in however overwhelming the odds were stacked
against him. He believed in good and was always ready to fight evil
but he would always attempt to defeat his enemies and approach problems
with contemplation and diplomacy rather than using physical action
which made him seem a bit detached. His character did however, change
over time and he did become more physical in his approach so making
Harry
Sullivan's character virtually redundant. His more violent
enemies and his increased aggression was first demonstrated during "The
Sontaran Experiment" when the Doctor challenges Field Marshal
Styre to an unarmed combat so as to distract him so allowing Harry
to sabotage the Sontaran's space ship. However, his violent confrontations became even more
intense during latter stories. In "The Seeds
of Doom" the Doctor is seen breaking a chair over the head of
one of his adversaries and he was even seen wielding a gun- something
his predecessors never did. Also in "The Deadly Assassin" he
is again seen in hand-to-hand combat. Throughout his life, the only
constant thing about the Doctor’s personality was that he would
never be consistent; although jovial throughout the events of “Nightmare
of Eden”, when he learned that a scientist was trading in a
dangerous drug, he refused to even look at the man when he tried
to justify his actions, and cheerfully describing Scorby as a ‘mindless
plant’ in “The Seeds of Doom” despite his sombre
attitude for most of the adventure in question.
The
Fourth Doctor had eleven different companions, some of the most that
has ever been possessed by a Doctor. Of these K9 was the first mechanical
companion and Leela was the first "alien" since the Doctor's
very first companion, Susan. The Doctor was very protective towards
his companions especially Sarah Jane Smith. Even though Sarah thought
that she could stand up for herself the Doctor soon realised that
she needed a bit of protection. And the Doctor in his own way was
able to protect and comfort her 'The worse the situation, the worse
your jokes get' she commented once. After Sarah Jane Smith left,
due to the Doctor having to return to his home planet, there was
one story in which the Doctor had no companions at all (Done on Tom
Baker’s request to give him a chance to stand on his own in
the series). However, this was soon rectified when he was joined
in the TARDIS by Leela, a leather-clad savage who lived on a planet
where society’s development had been manipulated by an insane
supercomputer that the Doctor had unintentionally created. Leela’s
character led to more violent confrontations against some of the
monsters and villains the Doctor faced, as her savage upbringing
made her have a tendency to kill first and then ask questions later.
Despite his attempts to civilise Leela, the Doctor soon realised
that he was fighting a losing battle, which was very frustrating
for him as he continually observed her tendency and preference to
kill. Despite this, however, the two of them became close, with the
Doctor aware that he could always rely on Leela to help him when
he needed it, and acknowledging the benefits of her instinctive attitude
when it allowed him to develop a cure for the sentient virus known
as the Swarm.
During
this time a great deal more about the Time Lords was revealed and
he had two visits to his home planet Gallifrey. The first was when
he received a message calling him back but it turned out that this
was a trick by The
Master who wanted to involve the Doctor in an
assassination plot on the president. Falling into The Master's trap
the Doctor soon finds himself implicated by The Master and so inside
the Matrix in an attempt to not only prove his innocence but to also
discover who the real villain is. His second visit was caused by
his attempt to defeat the Vardans by aiding in their invasion - thus
stopping a less scrupulous Time Lord from helping them - but in doing
so he not only became the Lord President of the Time Lords, but he
also accidentally allowed a Sontaran invasion force to penetrate
Gallifrey's defences. Having defeated the Sontarans and departed
- leaving Leela and K9 on the planet, although he later built a second
K9 for company, - the Doctor was subsequently joined in his travels
by the young Time Lady Romanadvoratrelundar, known as Romana for
simplicity’s sake, who provided a unique foil for the Doctor
in being one of the few companions who could at least equal the Doctor
in several areas (It was sometimes hinted that she could actually
surpass him in some fields, although his independent personality
still put him at an advantage in their adventures).
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The
Fourth Doctor
(1974 - 1981 & 1983) |
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The
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The Best Doctor
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if I am your favourite Doctor |
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Nearer
to the end of the Fourth Doctor's era he was, at times, more
sombre and brooding. His costume had also become darker and
more subdued, perhaps a hint that he was aware that his death
was coming soon, and that his attitude towards life reflected
his desire to cram as many experiences into his too-short long
life as he could. His fourth regeneration was caused while trying
to foil The Master's latest attempt to rule over the universe,
resulting in the Doctor falling from a deep space radio dish
when he tried to transmit a signal that would drain away the
entropy threatening the universe. Luckily for the Doctor this
event had already been prepared for when his companions witnessed
a mysterious being, who had been following them around, called
the Watcher merge with the dying Fourth Doctor just as he starts
to regenerate into the much younger looking Fifth Doctor.
Right
from the start the Fourth Doctor became an instantly recognisable
television figure both in the United Kingdom and around the world.
Being the longest-running he was arguably the most popular of all
of the Doctor's incarnations. |
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