Four To Doomsday: Ranking - 187

  Four To Doomsday

(Season 19, Dr 5 with Adric, Nyssa and Tegan, 18-26/1/1982, producer: John-Nathan Turner, script editor: Eric Saward, writer: Terence Dudley, director: John Black)

‘So, we’ve just arrived at the coronation of a 'Monarch' whose big and green and oblivious to the plight of real people and obsessed with pointless traditions who doesn't like people questioning him…By my guess Tegan we’re not on a spaceship at all, we’ve landed in Britain in May 2023’

Ranking: 187

Well, that was an unexpected delay. I'd love to blame it on a causal temporal nexus relay time loop, but it was just my laptop doing laptop things. Anyway, technology depending, we should (just about) have time to get this website of reviews completed before the anniversary on November 23rd, so it's on with the show...

Directional cobalt flux! Sorry, I nodded off there and was having a surreal dream about…oh, it was all real (well, real in the sense it actually went out on telly). This episode is kind of hard to describe, even if you come to it last (and it was one of the last Who stories out on video in 2001; the seven year turnaround before the first DVD release is one of the shortest in the range) as I know to my cost. I still remember my second film studies lesson in Carlisle where we went round the room naming an actor we’d seen in the past week that we admired. I replied Stratford Johns because I reckoned there was enough information I could waffle on about: he was a lynchpin of television in the 1970s and 1980s, was a particularly good Magwitch in the Great Expectations series I’d been re-watching for my English class that week and one of those people whose always believable whatever they’re playing, whatever the context: for me the single most important thing you need as an actor. I wasn’t expecting the follow-up question though: what was the most uncharacteristic part I’d ever seen them play? Well that answer was easy, he was a giant green alien space frog King in Dr Who whose plan was to transport his spaceship back in time far enough to the point where the people of Earth would declare him a God. The room was slightly shocked, there were no follow-up questions and I stopped taking the class shortly afterwards, I can’t think why. Anyway, this is that story and it’s as bonkers as it sounds: the Urbankans are quite unlike any other race we’ve ever seen in Dr Who; it’s not just that they’re bright green and rather large (we’ve had that a few times), but it’s their whole pose and mannerisms. They don’t shoot people, they question them and, more often than not, turn people against each other. They don’t invade, they gather information. They don’t rant and shout when they don’t get their way, they connive. It’s actually a very Stratford Johnsy sort of part all round despite the frog makeup and what I told my lecturer, the sort of no-nonsense authority parts he always played, on the blurred edges between violently barbaric and lightly cultured where the plot revolves around him and his authoritarian ways without him having to life a froggy finger. He’s certainly a match for the new Doctor, this being the first story Peter Davison filmed in the role and it’s an interesting place to start as, far from being the obvious heroes, the Tardis crew feel like first years up before the Headmaster, their words twisted around them so that they end up looking foolish. Everyone is made to feel out of their depth, which they very much were: this is the first story with a new Doctor, the first with a new script editor in Anthony Root (his only full story before being commandeered for other series, barring two covering for Eric Saward when he became script editor and thus couldn’t edit his own works), the first time Terence Dudley wrote for Dr Who rather than directing it (though he was heavily involved with shaping Gerry Davis and Kit Pedler’s spinoff series ‘Doomwatch’), only the second story for Tegan as filmed and the third for Nyssa. The most experienced members of the crew are behind the scenes John Nathan-Turner, the young and inexperienced producer whose only been around a year and in front of the cameras Matthew Waterhouse on story number six as filmed and he’s an eighteen year old kid in his second ever telly job. 

 It’s a clever idea to put a story like this so early on so we can see how these relatively new characters re-act to a menace that doesn’t come with guns or tentacles: the new Doctor tries to be polite and reasonable in a way that Tom Baker’s regeneration would never have been patient enough to try, while Tegan gets angry, Nyssa gets rational and Adric, always the most easily influenced of companions, ends up doing what no companion had ever done before barring sub-plots of brainwashing or dopplegangers or parallel worlds - taking the Urbankan’s side against the Doctor. Without even trying it the Urbankans have used our differences and turned everyone against each other, keeping the Tardis crew squabbling and fighting each other instead of thinking to question them. Most of the story is spent unravelling this box of frogs-tricks and trying to put things right, but it’s notably more of a struggle to put things right than the usual ‘press a button on the sonic screwdriver and bring out the robot dog’ tactics the show had come to rely on. It’s a good story for coming to understand these people, while at the same time the Urbankans are shadowy figures who barely speak and who seem at a distance from our friends throughout in their grand regal chairs. They’re not really part of the action at all; they monitor it, with their portable manoptican CCTV cameras keeping everyone under surveillance at all times, a idea that had been done in Dr Who a few times before (starting with the Daleks in the second ever story) but was still reasonably new in the ‘real’ world. 

 They’re above us in more ways than just their high thrones this lot: Monarch, for instance, is convinced that he’s been granted right to rule through the divine right of Frogs (or words to that effect), visiting Earth every 2500 years to see how we’re getting on and plundering our resources (Monarch wants our silicon and carbon, though goodness knows what he plans to do with them) and taking some slaves for entertainment and study in the same way an emperor visits the furthest-flung reaches of their empire every so often. Writer Terence Dudley died comparatively young (in 1988 while in his sixties) so didn’t talk about his Who stories as much as some authors so we don’t know for certain what his idea for this story was and it’s subtler than some. However I’m convinced he’s damning the archaic idea of a Royal Family in the modern age when we no longer have a use for him now we have politicians elected to represent us more directly (sort of) and no longer need rulers to lead us into glorious battle against the French (another lot of frogs). Monarch (the clue is in the name) is kind of the British Royals in the future, surrounded by technology but using it to keep people trapped, not enlightened. Monarch himself is from the Prince Andrew charm school, assuming everyone is there to do things for his benefit. Even the fact the Urbankans are giant green lizards fits with the idea of a fairytale in reverse, the idea that as a country we have to go through cycles of kissing princes before finding out that underneath the whole lot are frogs (there’s also been a long standing rumour that the Royals are from a bloodline of alien lizards, which in any other context would be ridiculous but honestly explains a lot about the whole weird tradition altogether). These creatures are so removed from ordinary people (if a timelord, an Alzarian and a Trakenite count as ‘ordinary people’…) that they don’t understand even the basic concepts, getting Tegan to draw a really quite impressive portrait of the men’s and women’s fashions in her time and looking at it with the detached amusement of Charles and Camilla in one of their foreign visits. They don’t understand all the things our societies have built up since 50BC, the concept of families and love in our modern age. We’re just trinkets to them, holiday souveniers ton be filed away on microfilm, a few souls taken out of their lives and cloned for safe=keeping, fooled into thiking they’re still at home and performing their great cultural heritage for the amusement of these onlookers in much the way the Royals have performances put on during state visits just for them. There’s a part where Monarch looks as if he’s about to say ‘and what do you do?’ to Tegan in part one when she’s talking about her stewardesses uniform, just like Prince Phillip. It’s a wonder Stratford Johns doesn’t start copying the dancing, just like Prince William doing the New Zealand haka the other year. 

 Of course the real question this episode is asking is what do they do? Not a lot when you think about it, but that’s not how they act these Urbankans. Monarch has an interesting backstory as Who baddies go: he rules not because he’s greedy for power or because he wants money but because he feels entitled to it. He doesn’t care if he turns human beings into mindless drones play-acting for his amusement: they’re people to study, not subjects meant to thrive. In his eyes he’s a God so impossibly long lived he’s convinced he existed at the beginning of time and one day he wants to go back in time and meet himself (as far as I know King Charles has yet to claim this, but its surely only a matter of time). He rules not because he wants to gain anything but because he believes its already his. How do you defeat a being like that? The answer is, in typically Who fashion (spoilers) bringing him down to size, by returning him to being one of the ‘little people’ again by turning his own poison against him and shrinking him (everyone thinks the Doctor vapourises him to nothingness at the end but it’s just a dodgy effect; in the script he’s a tiny egg). And what of the other two Urbankans? Their names are interesting. Enlightenment and Persuasion. They were two of the ministers in Lenin’s government over in Russia near the start of the 20th century, a period in time where we came as close to having a true democratic equal system as we’ve ever had in the history of humanity – for which they had to wipe out the Russian family first. Nowadays when people think of Russia and communism they think more of dictatorships, of Stalin and gulags (Putin hasn’t helped in this regard whatsoever). This seems to be what Dudley was thinking of too: after all these people are not like their job titles, Persuasion is very unfriendly and Enlightenment is utterly oblivious as to how humans live. ) It’s like ‘Animal Farm’, George Orwell’s damning take on Stalinist Russia when Joe basically made himself a King all over again: they believe in everybody being equal just as long as they’re first amongst equals. Just look at what these Urbankans say: ‘conformity is the only freedom’ (the story’s best line) which is very much contradictory Orwellian doublespeak (Adric will be saying ‘Brexit means Brexit’ next. However if so that’s a little unfair: that all came later, Russia was as successful an experiment in people helping people as we’ve ever had, right up to the point when Trotsky ended up with a pick-axe in his head. 

 The script describes the Urbankans as American Poison Frogs. Though this seems to have been ignored by the costume department (the Urbankans are dark green-brown while the frogs are bright and colourful coming in lots of different vibrant shades and spots) it is there in the script. The frogs for instance, excete posion subliminally against their foes, killing them by degrees. Is that what’s happening to Adric in this story – is he more susceptible than the others for some reason and breathing all the poison in? is it a comment on how right-wing dictators hypnotise people and excrete poison into the atmosphere to make people do their bidding? Another side point to this: the Urbankans have evolved to the point where they can kill each other (or themselves by accident) with their own poison. While in evolutionary terms that seems like a no-go it would explain just why they’ve ended up the way they are, subservient to the one that happens to be in charge at any one time. Everyone in this culture is, on the face of it, nice to everyone, even if their words are often dripping in sarcasm. They don’t fight, they don’t squabble, they don’t bicker – not like the Tardis crew who are particularly human in that regard (and spend the first Tardis scene doing nothing but). Their race has evolved as quickly as it has precisely because they haven’t had to break off for the silly little wars that wiped half of civilisation out the way mankind did: because any fight is all over the minute one of them start sweating their own poisons out. These people can’t get emotional – if they did they’d die. That’s killed them off in a slower death kind of a way though because, like the Cybermen and a few others, they don’t really know what it is to be alive, to feel. They’re a culture built on fake politeness where people are too afraid to confront their ruler even though he’s clearly barking mad. Even the surveillance fits the idea of someone who needs to know that people aren’t about to disagree with him and kill him in anger: by having people watched at all times nobody can sneakily built up revenge against you. As conceited as this makes the Urbankans, who feel they’re above everyone really it’s an evolutionary black hole; until the Doctor intervenes they’re doomed to understand nothing about the worlds they take over, because nobody is ever brave enough to question anything – and as you know from practically every Who story the whole point of the universe is to learn and grow and make things better. Adric, for instance, dismisses the Doctor for being as young nd navie as he looks and sides with Monarch because he’s been around forever and knows a lot about a lot of things; except he doesn’t really – learning things without questioning them, or having anyone challenge your world view, isn’t wisdom it’s just long-lived ignorance that never had a chance to be altered. Or something like that anyway: maybe I got stung with a touch of the Urbankan poison myself. 

 That’s the beauty of this story though: nobody knows, so it’s open to any interpretation you’d like to give it. There really isn’t a lot of action in this story and a lot of exposition which means that everything is really slowly, something which drives other reviewers mad but I really like – especially the effective way the big set pieces are delayed each episode with something linked-but-different, whether it’s the time-stalling showdown in episode one where for ten minutes of exploration the only communication between friends and foes is the use of surveillance equipment (in an era long before such things were commonplace) or the dances by different civilisations. Yes that’s right ‘Four To Doomsday’ is the only Dr Who story to date that takes a breathe and stops for a dance in episodes two and three featuring Earthlings captured during one of the Urbankan visits to the past (though I’m sad we only got three, with 10,000 years about as far back as our history goes: it would have been fun to see some cavemen or Neanderthals, and why not dancing dinosaurs?) There’s stereotypical aboriginal dances of the captured Australians in their ‘natural’ habitat here presumably so token Australian Tegan can re-act in horror (I’d love to think there was a cut scene where a group of Englishmen go ‘What ho, this is a bally mess isn’t it, old bean? Would you like some tea?’ and start discussing the weather just to make things equal). Janet Fielding was looking on in horror when she read the script: Dudley’s notes just read ‘talk some gibberish aboriginese’ in a very offhand Monarch type way; she knew enough Australian history to know that there wasn’t such a thing as one aboriginal language but multiple ones from multiple tribes because, unlike Britain, no one tribe ever took over the whole of the country (Australia is rather larger than us after all). In the end the production team settled on Tiwi, the tribe that lived on the north coast. The Who team placed an advert for aboriginal dancers in the ‘Stage and television Today’, the usual paper BBC productions used when looking for extras but only one replied (the other two dancers are West Indians in makeup. Which makes a change from people in West Indian makeup). The Chinese contingent were rather easier to cast; they were hired from the local restaurant near to TV centre and even came with their own authentic-looking dragon from their Chinese New year celebrations. The result is more Dr Who extras than perhaps any other story of the 20th century, all of them in period costume and most of them choreographed. Though it ends up being a bit of an under-rehearsed shambles on screen, full marks for commitment and even thinking of attempting something this big. 

That just leaves the Ancient Greek who is our exposition eyes and ears this story, with the unfortunate ‘Carry On’ style name ‘Bigon’. He delivers the great twist that (spoilers): none of these people are technically human anymore but they’ve been programmed not to care. We’ve had androids before in Who lots of times but this version is particularly creepy: its emphasised that technically every human on board is dead, their free will replaced with programming that reduces them to their lowest common denominator, your personal characteristics reduced to a mouthpiece for the culture you come from. Whenever the Urbankans take people they put them under hypnosis to recall their whole life to a memory chip, then discard the majority of the bits that aren’t needed and the body is then thrown away. Like many of the worst Dr Who deaths that’s worse than death somehow: it’s an erasure of one’s life, not merely the end of it. Given the context, of big rulers oblivious to the little people they tread on, is this Dudley’s comment on how we’re living our lives for other people who sit above us instead of for ourselves? There are lots of references to freedom in this story but clearly the people in this story aren’t free – everyone is here to serve Monarch in some way. The fact that the humans we meet are, Tegan aside, all illusions, reduced from real complex people with multiple relationships to being dancers or fighters who come out and do their star turns is making another point about how these people see us I think. That idea of aan alien race returning every few years is a strong one hampered by the budget too: we only get to see a small handful and there’s no sense that there are more hidden in the script. The dating is way out too (Dudley wasn’t one of those writers who loved doing research): Mayan culture is said in the script to be 8000 years old but really it’s more like a thousand: they should be too new for Monarch’s last visit. The androids taken from China look and dress as if they date from the Futu dynasty: that ran between 1800BC and 500BC. Only the Ancient Greek is accurate – and that’s the most recent trip.

 ‘Four to Doomsday’ (Four what’s by the way? Not a clue – Days? Civilisations? Cricket ball tosses?) really isn’t perfect though and what hits it most is the way the regulars are written and, as a consequence, the acting - Stratford Johns aside. In short: The Doctor’s overawed and snappish, tegan’s whining about eanting to go home every few minutes, Nyssa’s missing in action and Adric is irritating beyond belief. In detail: Peter Davison’s never the most dynamic of Doctors but here, before he knows what he’s doing, he’s all at sea and a guest actor even in a series that’s named after him, while the continual splitting up and parking of companions now there are four characters to juggle soon gets annoying. The first draft of this script was written for the 4th Doctor but goodness knows what Tom Baker would have done with this script: this is a story that needs the Doctor to be fallible, the opposite to Monarchg’s long lived learning who takes things seriously and questions everything; a flippant Tom Baker Doctor would have been too similar all round. John Nathan-Turner picked this story as the first to record partly because Dudley was one of the few Who writers who got his re-drafts in on time but also because the Doctor was written with such a blank slate: the producer figured it would give Davison plenty of room to put his stamp on the serial. Only he doesn’t, because he doesn’t know who the Doctor is yet along with everybody else. We don’t know this Doctor any better by the end of the story than we did at the start and after ‘Castrovalva’ found him so out of it that’s a brave if not foolish move; we only really begin to know who this new Doctor is in next story ‘Kinda’. Janet Fielding gets to do little else except bitch and moan and declare that she’d rather be in Heathrow: natural enough given everything she’s been through since ‘Logopolis’ but there comes a moment you wish the Doctor would send her back to the Tardis for her sake and ours. Poor Nyssa keeps being left behind: she spends most of the story tinkering with machinery and trying her best not to get as emotional as the others. She gets one scene where she stays calm enough to disable an android with a pencil. Really though as a consequence of not being in the original plan for this season (and not in the original draft of this script) she’s parked to the side and forgotten about. 

 Adric is perhaps more irritating in this story than any other, basically telling tales on his friends and passing on their second-hand warped political ideas as if they’re his own. Back in ‘Full Circle’ Adric was a something of a breath of fresh air, a posh dude who rejected his entire legacy to go and live with the outliers because he’s a bit of a rebel who believed that institutions deserved to be taken down and part of the youth revolution on Alzarius even before it turns out Alzarians are living their lives in evolutionary cycles so there’s no such thing as a hierarchy. Here he’s awful, rewritten to seem like the ‘old school’ establishment, chauvinistic in episode one and positively a gammon Brexit right winger by episode three. What’s more even when found out he never says sorry or admits he got carried away believing everything Monarch told him too: Dudley clearly read in the notes that Adric was young and naïve and figured with so many companions around (Nyssa wasn’t in his original scripts and didn’t get much to do) he’d be the one who would go over to the ‘dark side’, but that’s not true: yes it happened in ‘Castrovalva’ (transmitted earlier but filmed afterwards) but that was due to The Master’s torture. Adric never gets to learn from it either: he’s a sucker for any wise-talking alien buttering him up from now on. As a result you spend most of the story wanting someone to punch some sense into him, which is a very un-Dr Whoy feeling to have. To be fair to Matthew Waterhouse he knew as a Who fan how wrong this was and pointed it out but nobody listened to him (even though the entire theme of this story is to listen to your underlings from inside your ivory towers!) and he’s really good at playing people smug and annoying. Even an actor the level of Stratford Johns would struggle to make that part endearing the way Adric’s written here, as someone whose just got into a pyramid selling scheme and can’t talk about anything else to you, even though they know you know that they know deep down it’s a scam. Which has always made me wonder: behind the scenes JNT felt betrayed when script editor Christopher H Bidmead walked out on him without much leaving: that’s why there’s such confusion over who the new script editor is, with Anthony Root only ever temporary and Eric Saward hired on the promise of a few bits of radio drama and one promising storyline. Adric is Bidmead’s character (though Andrew Smith wrote for his first story Bidmead sat down and designed the character and shaped ‘Full Circle’ quite a bit) and resembles him in many ways: a mathematical prodigy happier with computers than people. Is this story JNT’s revenge on someone he felt had betrayed him, sending him over to the ‘dark side’? (Is that why Adric gets killed off a few stories later?) This wouldn’t be the first time a producer had tried this (I’m convinced ‘The Invasion Of Time’ was Graham Williams’ plea to Tom Baker to tone down the tantrums a little bit). Enlightenment and Persuasion don’t get much to do either, while the acting of Phillip Locke as Bigon is one of those roles that’s the butt of all the fan jokes (to be fair to him he obviously read the script and took on board that these are ‘simulation’ beings and played Bigon more like a robot; it’s the director who should have stepped in and told him to gee his part up a bit). Worst of all the story completely wastes Burt Kwouk, one of Britain’s finest actors, reducing him to the sort of ethnic stereotype I really hoped Who would have outygrown by 1982.

As brilliant as a lot of these ideas are, as lovely as it is to have a change of pace from all the gung-ho action sequences, there just aren’t enough ideas to carry this story through to the end. It’s not every Dr Who story that effectively stops the action multiple times an episode for a dance, but there we are: ‘Four To Doomsday’ is not like other stories. Those dances, at first so entertaining, soon become obvious padding and the dialogue doesn’t fizzle and crackle to keep the story moving, being more a series of people asking each other questions. There are no fights, no real moments of jeopardy or terror beyond a botched spacewalk that makes no sense (although the second episode cliffhanger, when Bigon reveals himself to be made up of circuits, is quite tasty), no real tension or drama. For all the good work, for all the grand ideas, however much you go ‘ooh’ at the set and ‘ah’ at some of the bigger ideas and laugh at the best lines in the script, there’s not enough story to get hole of and it all looks utterly ridiculous (I mean, griant green space frogs in a giant spaceship is the perfect idea on paper but less so when people actually have to envision it on a shoestring budget). When BBC controller Michael Grade said on room 101 that he got rid of Dr Who because it looked cheap and silly (nothing to do with Colin Baker being the ex of his wife Liza Goddard, no sirree) fans wondered which story he might have been thinking of. My guess is it’s this one. If you’re enough of a fan you can see past how it looks to what this story says and we’re well practised in that by now, but if you’re new to this series and this is the first sight of it you see?...Oh dear. 

 That’s a shame because, technology-wise, this is a story way ahead of its time. The story makes good use of Qauntel for the first tome, the brand new computer software that enabled people to be moved about against more than one background, so that we get to see Peter Davison against a model spaceship against stars and sometimes with a manoptican trailing him, shots that require them to combine live action and two or more separate model shots not just statically as before but when moving. It almost feels like you’re really in space and is one of the few times ‘old’ Who has a special effect that could have been used in the new series with no changes whatsoever (well, give or take the odd fuzzy line). Unfortunately it’s a sign of this serial that even there they mess up: originally the spacewalk was going to be even more slow and ponderous than it was, with the Doctor and Adric walking fast but having the scene slowed down to make it feel as if they were floating using the machine used in all the BBC sports broadcast ‘slow mo replays’. Only in post-production the scene took forever so they simply left it as it was – much to Matthew Waterhouse’s horror, whose doing his best ‘I’m in slow motion’ dancing on the spot. 

 The technology doesn’t disguise how old-fashioned this story is at times though. A lot of reviewers compare this story to a Hartnell era one: the languid pace, the exploration of a culture before we reach the plot and the extraneous padding. But at least the Hartnell era, more often than not, kept the stories flowing with their clever wordplay or character moments; this story doesn’t really have any of that. Well not much anyway: there’s a playful scene where persuasion confiscated the sonic screwdriver but tells the Doctor ‘you may keep the pencil’ as if he’s being really gracious and another where Enlightenment dismissed love as ‘an exchange of fantasies between two people’, which isn’t the most romantic line I’ve ever heard but is one people would be falling over themselves to praise if it was written by, say, Shakespeare. That’s kind of it though: most of the dialogue is just people talking without any of them learning anything valuable, for them or us and while the dances are fun they’re distracting. You can tell, I think, that Terence Dudley trained as a producer/director rather than a writer: his ideas are visual, the sort of thing to put in pres previews and trailers to make you go ‘ooh’ rather than a fully functioning plot where every lines serves a purpose (‘Black Orchid’ and ‘the King’s Demons’ are his other two Who stories and they’re both very similar in that regard; you might note that both are two part stories rather than four as here). The idea itself is a strong one though, the idea of a race who influenced Earth not by creating the planet and staying there buried but returning every few years and poking us with a stick to see how we behave is a clever one. It’s probably not what fans were expecting either: ‘Doomwatch’ may not have been Terence’s baby but he was the midwife to Davis and Pedler’s ideas and largely took over when they bored to the point where he’s the only one of the trio still there for series three. That series’ reason for being was to make plausible science stories that could come true in our near future if we carried on the same reckless path playing God with nature; ‘Four To Doomsday’ isn’t realistic in any sense, being one of the most imaginative (i.e. weird) stories of the 1980s, but it does follow on that theme at least, just with an alien playing God to ‘us’. 

 While Stratford Johns was, in the end disappointed in a part that he’d actively pleaded for (getting his agent to request the most outrageously out-there part they could possibly give him, after years stuck playing Inspector Barlow in ‘Z Cars’ and its spin-off series) because he was under so many layers of makeup nobody believed it was him and he continued to get typecast despite being the only actor in equity to have ‘giant green space Frog King’ on his CV he still acts his green slimy little socks off. The scenes when he’s on the screen, more often than not facing off against the Doctor, are the ones that come to life: everything else feels like the plot ticking over till they can have another row. The trouble is, though, there’s no one to match him. This was a bad idea to pick as the first episode for Davison’s Doctor because he’s blatantly not Straford’s equal in gravitas yet and the Doctor is written as the focal ‘normal’ point of a story where everything else is slightly out of kilter with usual Who practices: the tyrant doesn’t rant for instance he quietly assumes, one of the companions turns out to be a monster even without obvious signs of brainwashing, the supporting cast are spaced out zombies who aren’t quite ‘right’. Had they filmed this story later and especially with Turlough more believable in the ‘betraying the Doctor’ part than Adric, I reckon it would have been rather good. After all it has the brains and the imagination, two things necessary for great Dr Who and nearly has a third; had the story stayed brave right up to the end (when the Urbankans revert from curious scientist philosophers to yet more green alien Dr Who monsters who want to take over the universe) and thrown in a few more examples of abducted cultures all jumbled up together then I would rank this story higher purely for its courageous absurdity. Sadly though this story wastes a lot of its strong potential and its sheer weirdness trying to tell a ‘normal’ Dr Who story that ticks all boxes by the end. By the end nobody has really learned anything: Monarch gets his comeuppance but we don’t know what happens next, whether he’s dethroned or goes back home his froggy tail between his legs or lives out his days as a tadpole; equally for all the interaction between them we don’t know the Doctor or his companions any better than we did when the story started. In the end, then, ‘Four To Doomsday’ is a big waste of time. However, at least it’s a classy, visually impressive waste of time and there’s certainly no other TV out there like it, including other Dr Whos or indeed other programmes starring Stratford Johns as a giant green space frog, so ‘Doomsday’ will always gets extra bonus marks for that from me. 

 POSITIVES + The spaceship set is great: its huge, taking up all room in the studio bar the tiny Tardis control room and comes in lots of different levels that make it feel as if it is a fully functioning real place that these characters use. Though most of the action (such as it is) takes place in the large throne room with its giant chairs the other rooms all have their own functions and are all quite different to each other, with lots of small little worlds to discover behind each door where the ‘specimens’ are kept. It feels really alien and strange, particularly in episode one which is easily the best of the four before all the any interesting questions this story asks are answered, often a tad clumsily. 

 NEGATIVES - That embarrassing cricket ball scene. Almost the only thing the writers of early Davison stories knew about this regeneration was that he liked cricket, because that’s what the costume was going to be (if you don’t know the story when John Nathan-Turner knew that Tom Baker was leaving the part he glanced at his notice-board where he’d been pinning actors he’d worked with and spotted Davison at a charity match in cricketing gear). So in this story, when the Doctor’s been flung out into space and has no way of getting back on board the spaceship, how does he make his return? By chucking a cricket ball off the side of the Urbankan shuttle and using the momentum to propel him. All my life I’ve been waiting to see a real astronaut keep a cricket ball in their pocket when out in space for just such an emergency, but so far nothing. You know, I’m starting to think that it’s as if the science behind this scene might just be a little bit dodgy... There was, indeed, a big debate that broke out in the producer’s gallery while filming as to whether this was plausible or not; in the end everyone agreed that this was down the ‘fiction’ end of ‘science fiction’ and this wasn’t a documentary so it was left in.

BEST QUOTE: Monarch: ‘He's a philosopher. A doubter. We need doubt. It's the greatest intellectual galvanizer’. 

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