Four to Doomsday Part Four

The one where the Doctor uses a cricket ball to propel him through space...

Stirring from her impassive state, Nyssa uses her scientific ingenuity to short-circuit the blade-wielding assistor's control device, as well as that for Adric's captor. This is the ideal way to demonstrate Nyssa's cleverness, rather than the usual method we get of her spouting on about everything she knows. Nyssa's ploy enables Adric to wriggle free and stand between the Doctor and Persuasion's gun, demonstrating a level of self-sacrifice akin to Jo Grant.

Persuasion laboriously itemises the contents of the Doctor's pockets, which shed some unexpected light on this new Doctor. He carries a magnifying glass because he's short-sighted in his right eye, which also explains the "brainy specs" he sometimes wears, while the cricket ball he carries urges him to remember the time he played for New South Wales. The moment where the Doctor boasts of bowling "a very good chinaman", and catches the eye of the Chinaman next to him, is hilarious! However, all this crickety talk compounds my opinion that it's not the Fifth Doctor who's the proper cricket fan, it's an earlier incarnation (see my discussion of this in Castrovalva part 1). This is so early in this Doctor's lifetime that he can't be talking about his current self.

Oh, and luckily Nyssa may keep the pencil.

The Doctor, Adric and Nyssa are brought before Monarch, who's understandably not very happy with this mutinous escapade. He berates the Doctor for meddling with his monopticons, which leads to the immortal line: "I wouldn't dream of interfering with your monopticons." How Peter Davison kept a straight face while delivering that line is a miracle!

A compliant Nyssa is sent off to the mobiliary to be sedated (but how will they tell?), while the Doctor is on a mission to convince Adric that Monarch is a megalomaniac. The idea that Adric thinks Monarch is a saviour rather than a crazy frog is an interesting direction for Terence Dudley to take. Adric has previous on this (his apparent siding with the vampires in State of Decay), so while it's not an ideal trait for a companion to display, at least it's known to be in his nature. Adric thinks for himself, and although he is easily led and influenced by powerful creatures promising the world (Aukon and Monarch), it shows he doesn't follow the Doctor blindly.

Maybe this is because of what's happened recently. His world has completely changed around him. He had a cosy little life travelling the universe with the Fourth Doctor, just he and him, and then suddenly the Doctor changed his entire appearance and personality, and two annoying young women turned up and tried to take his place as the Doctor's friend. After losing his brother and leaving both his planet and his entire universe behind to be with the Doctor, it's no wonder that he's feeling a bit put out by recent events. So it's natural that Adric is looking for alternatives in his life, whether he considers them genuine options or he's just trying to hit back at the Doctor.

The Doctor admonishes Adric for thinking like this. "Now listen to me, you young idiot," he says, directly channelling his first incarnation. "You're not so much gullible as idealistic. I suppose it comes from your deprived delinquent background." OK, now you're just demeaning him, Doctor.

Adric eventually comes round to the Doctor's point of view, particularly when he hears that Monarch has a stash of deadly poison. It's an interesting route to take with the relationship between the Doctor and his young friend, and the fact both Tegan and Nyssa are almost completely sidelined in this episode proves that there really are too many companions, and it's not easy to keep all four characters' plates spinning and have active main and sub plots.

The Doctor then manages to get Lin Futu on his side (at last, something for Burt Kwouk to do!) and a plan is hatched to abduct the de-chipped Bigon using the distraction of a Chinese dragon dance. This is unique in Doctor Who's history, and the juxtaposition of a Chinese dragon cavorting along a futuristic spaceship corridor is peak Doctor Who. You don't get this kind of eccentricity in Battlestar Galactica.

The renewed Bigon creates a massive distraction by activating all of the recreationals at the same time, leading to mad scenes of Chinese dragons mingling with Mayan dancers, and Aborigines mixing with Greek warriors. Oh, and there's a couple of wrestlers in there somewhere too. It's enough to do your head in, like the big finale of a stage musical where everybody comes on at the end to take a bow.

And then there's the problem of the TARDIS, and where Tegan's put it. It's materialised hovering in space just beyond the Urbankan ship's hull, so the Doctor decides that the only way to retrieve it is for him to go out and get it. He dons a space helmet, but no other protective clothing at all, and says that he has just six minutes to reach the TARDIS before he succumbs to the sub-zero temperatures. In space, no one can hear you shiver, but when it's reportedly -455 degrees Fahrenheit out there, you have to wonder where Dudley is getting his scientific advice from. I suspect his imagination.

The Doctor space-crawls out to the hovering police box on the end of a length of rope, while Adric stands in the airlock doorway fending off an attack from gun-toting Persuasion. The Doctor spots the panic, and space-crawls all the way back to help Adric remove Persuasion's circuit, hurling it into the depths of space (prompting a fantastic "Noooooooooo!" from a devastated Monarch). The Doctor then resumes his space-crawl until the point where his rope proves too short, but not to worry: Enlightenment's here to free him, and she unties the rope and casts the Doctor loose.

It's all very silly, the sort of thing that makes sense if you think about it quickly, and maybe in a children's picture book, but it fails to convince on any reasonable level. Adric manages to deactivate Enlightenment, and the Doctor comes up with a clever ruse (for 'clever' read 'ludicrous'): throw the cricket ball at the ship's hull, which will bounce back at him and the momentum will propel him towards the TARDIS. This works, as it should, but ignores the fact that him throwing the ball would also propel him backwards.

Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor is a flurry of activity and urgency, choosing not to admonish Tegan for disobeying him, endangering the TARDIS and putting him through this treacherous space-walk, but instead focusing on the task at hand. This is very Fifth Doctor, but I do like how Davison maintains that underlying frustration his Doctor often displayed. When Tegan tries to question what he's doing, he snaps: "Just do what I say and do it quickly!" It feels like this Doctor is in a constant state of mild frustration, which he successfully suppresses but which is often poked by his trying travelling companions.

The finale is a rush of muddled activity. Monarch removes the atmosphere from the ship, so everybody who's in the Flesh-time has to don space helmets, but there's not enough helmets for everyone so the Doctor descends into a fit of pained heavy breathing which I found quite distressing to witness. Davison sounds genuinely unable to breathe and I'm glad when it's over!

The Doctor asks Bigon if he can alter the course of the ship (which must now be less than four to doomsday), and he does this very easily. It's a little unbelievable to think Bigon has this ease of access to the ship's controls, and can do it as simply as a few flicked switches. The Doctor and crew scarper back to the TARDIS, but Monarch awaits with a ray gun for a final showdown!

Suspecting Monarch is not all he seems, the Doctor hurls the Urbankan poison at Monarch, and the froggy dictator is reduced to tiny size as the matter-eating effect of the poison takes hold. But Monarch isn't completely eaten away, because, as the Doctor surmised (but kept to himself), Monarch is part-organic, part-synthetic, so only his non-fleshy bits remain. Popping a helmet on top to keep him "safe", the Doctor bids farewell to Bigon, Lin Futu, Villagra and Kurkutji, who have decided to take the Urbankan ship to another planet and start again. This reminds me of the end of Ghost Light, where Control, Nimrod and Redvers opt to make off in their stone spaceship and voyage across the galaxies together. I always wanted that as a spin-off, and although the characters in Four to Doomsday are nowhere near as well drawn or engaging, a spin-off might be interesting. They could call it Bigon's 4.

Inside the TARDIS, Nyssa collapses to the floor, unconscious. A cliffhanger into the next story!

Four to Doomsday is often overlooked by fandom because it falls between two more significant stories, but I love it, especially that first, slightly spooky episode. It's true that it degenerates considerably, and is written with the pace and energy of a sloth, but I quite like its introspective, more thoughtful approach. It foregrounds the developing relationship between the four regulars, and along the way gives you evil frogs, a Chinese dragon dance and space cricket. I'm altogether very fond of it.

First broadcast: January 26th, 1982

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The whole sequence with Adric, the Doctor, Persuasion and Enlightenment in the airlock, and the Doctor's space-walk, is so crazy that it's brilliant...
The Bad: ... It's also really silly, and so qualifies as both the best and worst aspect of the episode all at the same time!
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (story average: 6.8 out of 10)

NEXT TIME: Kinda...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Two; Part Three

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site.

Four to Doomsday is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Four-Doomsday-DVD/dp/B001ARYYUE/