Four to Doomsday

Conformity, the true freedom.

This is the first story filmed for the Fifth Doctor, though third shown. I've heard fairly mixed reviews on it with some people really loving it and others being rather meh on it. I do believe that it set the defining tone for how people remember the Fifth Doctor era, at least in the span with Adric if not also with Nyssa. Certainly the impression people have of Tegan and Adric as well seems to be heavily cultivated from this story.

Plot Summary

Attempting to get Tegan back to Heathrow, the TARDIS accidentally lands on a spaceship outside the solar system. Detecting a slightly toxic atmosphere, the Doctor grabs a breathing helmet and heads outside to explore, leaving the three companions in the TARDIS. Outside, he observes advanced laboratory equipment and a floating ball with a camera that tracks his moves.

The Doctor heads back into the TARDIS and gets the others out. Nyssa and Adric examine the equipment while the Doctor asks the floating eye if he can see the leader. A door opens and he and Tegan head down the corridor. At the end they meet three humanoid aliens: the leader, Monarch, and his two associates, a male called Persuasion and a female called Enlightenment. Monarch states that they are from a far planet and are heading to Earth for a visit. They ask the Doctor about his ship and his companions. Enlightenment specifically asks Tegan about the latest fashions of her time. A little surprised, Tegan takes paper from the Doctor and draws a man and woman in fancy dress.

After the talk, Monarch has the Doctor and Tegan taken away for some refreshment. Nyssa had already been taken away by a man in Athenian dress while Adric had followed a few minutes later. Reunited, the group sits down to fruit with their Athenian server, whose name is Bigon. As they eat, three other persons enter: an Australian Aborigine called Kirkutji, a mute Mayan princess named Villagra and a Chinese Mandarin named Lin Futu. The group is forbidden by Monarch to discuss why they are there so they sit and wait while the others eat. As they finish, two people walk in dressed and looking exactly like Tegan's drawing. They reintroduce themselves as Persuasion and Enlightenment.

Persuasion and Enlightenment tell the Doctor that they are from the planet Urbanka which was destroyed when it's sun went nova. Their ship in now on a journey to Earth with 3 billion survivors for resettlement. Adric is skeptical but the Doctor takes it in stride and they retire to their quarters with Monarch locking them in.

The Doctor blocks the camera with a hat and activates the sonic screwdriver to drown the microphones. He agrees with them that something odd is going on if for no other reason than the periods where the humans are from on the ship don't match with the Urbankan's story. He decides they should explore and unlocks the door with the screwdriver.

Monarch, aware of the Doctor's suspicions, attempts to find out more about the Doctor and Gallifrey but finds no information in his computer. He separates the Doctor and Tegan from Adric and Nyssa by closing a set of doors between them. The Doctor and Tegan enter a hall where the various humans put on cultural displays as entertainment for the others. Persuasion enters and keeps a close eye on them as they watch.

Adric and Nyssa enter other compartments and are forced to put on their breathing helmets as there is no air here. However, humans are seen working in the environment. The enter and leave several rooms, observing people performing tasks with both high technology, robotics and advanced biochemistry. In each room, they note the human workers have a silver disk on their hands.

Monarch calls Bigon in and warns him against telling the Doctor too much. Bigon protests as he has always told the truth but Monarch suggests he remain silent. Bigon goes to the Doctor and Tegan and arranges a meeting with them later. Shortly afterward, two Greeks have a sword fight with one of the Greeks seemingly killed in the duel. This upsets Tegan and she runs out, the Doctor close behind.

The "killed" Greek is brought into a chamber where Adric and Nyssa observe him placed in a bed with a dome and then healed of his wound. They also notices that although stabbed, he walked in and showed no blood coming from the wound. Monarch, aware of Adric and Nyssa's observations, orders them to be brought before him.

Tegan and the Doctor return to their quarters where Bigon is waiting for them. He calms Tegan down by demonstrating that the man was not killed as he and all the other humans on the ship are in fact androids. Bigon also reveals that Monarch actually destroyed Urbanka through overexploitation of it's resources and pollution and is planning to do the same to Earth. He notes that any android that has a silver disk on it's had is a slave while those that do not have free will so long as they do not cross Monarch.

Monarch admits to Nyssa and Adric of his conversion of humans and his people to android state. Nyssa is appalled but Adric is impressed and begins answering Monarch's questions about the Doctor and the TARDIS. Eventually, Monarch asks Adric to bring him the Doctor so that he might see the TARDIS. After he leaves, Monarch has Nyssa hypnotized by Enlightenment and then taken away to be converted.

Bigon and the Doctor leave the Doctor's quarters to destroy the poison supply that will kill the people of Earth and to free the people from Monarch's tyranny. Tegan meanwhile has become hysterical and wants nothing more but to go back to the TARDIS to warn the people of Earth. The Doctor manages to calm her down a bit but she gets amped back up when Adric comes to collect the Doctor. Angry at him, she shoves him aside where he bangs his head against the bed and is knocked out. Tegan storms back to the TARDIS and opens it with the TARDIS key. Inside, she begins to press random buttons, trying to get it to take off.

As they pass through each section, the Doctor disables the monitors in each room, allowing Bigon to speak freely. This does alert Monarch to their progress, though he initially dismisses it as Bigon giving the Doctor a tour. In the android room, Lin Futu, in the middle of processing Nyssa, overhears the Doctor and Bigon talking about overthrowing Monarch and leaves to warn him. They spot Nyssa and free her before the conversion is complete.

Adric awakes and stumbles up after the Doctor, eventually discovering them in the android room. He argues on Monarch's behalf until Persuasion enters with Greek guards. They restrain both Bigon and the Doctor and sentence him to death for attempting to overthrow Monarch. Adric tries to intervene but is restrained as well. The Greeks force the Doctor down, intending to cut off his head. Nyssa, who had borrowed the Doctor's sonic screwdriver and a pencil earlier, uses the combo to create a surge in the silver plates on the hands and short circuits the androids holding Adric and the Doctor. Persuasion then tries to shoot the Doctor but Adric leaps in front of him. Monarch, not wanting Adric killed, orders the lot be brought to him.

Tegan, after mashing a ton of buttons, manages to activate the TARDIS and dematerialize it off the ship. However, the magnetic field of the ship forces it to rematerialize just outside the ship and hover in space. Tegan then pulls out the manual, trying to figure out how to get the TARDIS to either return to the ship or get back to Earth.

The Doctor denies trying to overthrow Monarch, though Monarch is skeptical. He has Bigon's personality chip removed while Nyssa is taken away and sedated as a hostage for the Doctor's good behavior. Monarch himself spares the Doctor's life and allows him freedom to further convince Adric of his benevolence.

The Doctor and Adric head back to their quarters where the Doctor pretends to see Monarch's side, much to Adric's delight. They head to the entertainment area where the noise of the performance drowns out their speech and the Doctor rebukes Adric for his folly. He forces Adric to choose to be with him or Monarch and Adric reluctantly chooses the Doctor.

Feigning tiredness, the Doctor and Adric leave the entertainment but sneak down to the android repair section. The monitor has not yet been repaired from the Doctor's earlier disorienting of it and he further knocks it out with a bit of cobalt. He then convinces Lin Futu of Monarch's plan to subjugate and destroy the Earth. They recover Bigon's personality chip and Lin Futu sends out Chinese dancers to perform the Dragon Dance in the entertainment area.

The Doctor and Adric enter the entertainment area and sit next to Bigon's soulless body, which had been placed in the seats on the floor. Under the guise of the Dragon dancer's leaving, they sneak Bigon's body back to the repair room where Lin Futu reinstalls Bigon's chip. Lin Futu also speaks to the leaders of the other factions and convinces them to join the Doctor while the Doctor wakes Nyssa.

A restored Bigon activates an override circuit in the slave androids and they all come out to perform entertainment at once. Knowing he has to recover the TARDIS, the Doctor has Adric put on a life suit while he dons his breathing helmet. They head down to a launch bay where the Doctor propels himself out on a tether, knowing he only has six minutes before his body succumbs to the cold.

Monarch, now aware of the uprising, sends Persuasion to stop the Doctor. He attacks Adric but Adric knocks the gun out of his hand. Adric repeatedly fires at Persuasion, but the gun has no effect on his android body. He overpowers Adric but the Doctor pulls himself back on the tether and yanks out Persuasion's personality circuit and tosses it into space. Furious, Monarch sends Enlightenment to help. She walks past a still stunned Adric and unties the Doctor's tether before he can come back a second time. Adric rises and rips out her personality circuit as well.

The Doctor, stuck about halfway between the ship and the TARDIS, pulls a cricket ball out of his pocket and hurls it at the ship. It bounces off the hull and he catches it. Retaining it's momentum, the ball and the Doctor hurl towards the TARDIS where the Doctor manages to snag the door and let himself in. He ignores Tegan and pilots the ship back into the entertainment area.

Enraged, Monarch cuts the life support for the rest of the ship. The Doctor gives his helmet to Tegan while Lin Futu repairs another helmet and gives it to the Doctor. With all four of them able to breathe, the Doctor pulls Monarch's poison out, giving it to Adric for safekeeping.

With no other options, Monarch grabs a gun and heads down to the TARDIS to kill the Doctor himself. The Doctor however grabs the poison and smashes it on Monarch. The poison causes his flesh to sink in upon himself and he shrinks to only a fraction of his size. The Doctor reveals that he was still mostly flesh as his ideas about faster than light travel and his own godhood could only be the product of organic thinking. The Doctor traps the shrunken Monarch in the borrowed space helmet, Monarch having turned the life support back on when he left the control room.

Bigon thanks the Doctor and tells him that they intend to fly the ship to a new planet and establish themselves there rather than try to reintegrate with Earth. The Doctor and crew reenter the TARDIS and prepare to try and get to Heathrow again. However, as they take off, Nyssa collapses.

Analysis

I can see how some fans might like this story, especially if they saw it when they were younger. After the dourness of Logopolis and the slow pondering of Castrovalva, this story, especially in Episode Four, would have seemed faster paced and more exciting. Throw in the highly metaphorical Kinda as the chaser and a younger person would have easily glommed on to this story as something fun an exciting. However, watching it in isolation, I can't say that I liked this one very much.

Looking over things as a whole, I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm just not fond of the Fifth Doctor era that much. The Fifth Doctor himself isn't the problem for the most part. The problems tend to lie in production, storyline and especially, the companions.

I don't think it will be a shock to say that my antipathy for Tegan and Adric has never been higher than in this story. In others, the negative aspects of their personalities have either been mitigated by more positive elements, a balance of their character against something else, or a simple lack of screen time. In this story however, Adric and Tegan are very front and center and the worst aspects of their personalities are brought front and center.

Probably more so than any other story I can recall, the Doctor is playing babysitter. It doesn't help that Monarch repeatedly calls them children and Adric's obnoxious comment to Tegan indicates that he clearly still thinks of Nyssa as underdeveloped in her femininity. I find this ironic as Nyssa is easily the most mature acting of all of them. She is still stiff in her performance, but at least she shows gumption, is never taken in by Monarch and works with the Doctor to stop the situation. Her only real drawback is that because she is aware, she is sidelined as the hostage for most of the story.

Adric is a naïve prat through most of this story. He is openly insulting to Tegan and rather dismissive of Nyssa. He buys in to Monarch with almost no prompting, proving himself exceptionally gullible as well as hardheaded as he still wants to believe in Monarch, even after Monarch orders the Doctor's initial execution. The only positive aspect of his buying in wholesale to Monarch's schlock is that the Doctor is able to exploit it and hide his intentions from Monarch. But, to me, that reflects more poorly on Monarch than it does offer any positive aspect to Adric.

Tegan, I felt like slapping for a good portion of the story. She is single-mindedly obsessed with getting back to Heathrow. Fine, we get it. She doesn't appreciate the opportunity in front of her and I can get past that. But the volume of whining she does about it does get annoying. On top of that, nothing she does is useful. In fact, she is the opposite of useful the entire story. She gets hysterical upon learning of Monarch's plan; a trait I hate in any character who displays it. Then she goes and mucks things up royally by actually moving the TARDIS. If she had fled to the TARDIS for a good cry and some isolation, she would have been far more useful. Instead she becomes so obsessed in her own hysteria that she abandons the three people she has traveled with, all of whom have some degree of expertise in piloting the TARDIS, and plops the TARDIS in a location where she can't move it and nearly gets the Doctor and Adric killed trying to recover it. I believe the Doctor would have been well within his rights to leave Tegan on the ship and leave it up to Bigon's benevolence to simply get her back to Earth, let alone get her to Heathrow.

Speaking of Bigon, he's a bit of a problem in this story as well. He is so eager to help the Doctor and overthrow Monarch that I can't understand why Monarch has permitted his existence to continue. Yes, Bigon was punished by being kept in isolation for one hundred years, but that didn't seem to take so why not destroy Bigon. If Monarch is as brutal a dictator as we are meant to think he is, why not fully crush all opposition? The man on the inside who makes the rebellion work, has too much power available to him. This makes Monarch seem naïve and incompetent.

In a similar vein, Lin Futu is a bit too easily convinced for my taste. Granted, he might have already been suspicious of Monarch, but he does rat out the Doctor very quickly when he frees Nyssa. He's been working for Monarch for thousands of years so why should he buy the Doctor's hasty argument that Monarch is mad and will destroy them all upon reaching Earth? It would be one thing if Bigon had mentioned that unrest had been growing but they were too scared to move against Monarch. But Bigon instead says that Lin Futu and Villagra are loyal to Monarch because of his promise to make them rulers of their people. I found it to be rather lazy and frustrating writing.

Now the villains. Enlightenment is fine, albeit a bit bland. She is at least good at her job. Persuasion is also not bad, although I would have expected a bit more competence from him in monitoring the Doctor. But you could argue that after thousands of years of docility, he got a bit lax with regard to a sharp mind like the Doctor.

As for Monarch, I'm so torn as I can't help but like Monarch. I think he is well acted and he sits high and mighty as you would expect a dictator to be. He is pompous and convinced of his own infallibility, which I suppose leaves him vulnerable. But he is too benevolent to match the description of crazy given by Bigon. He grants the Doctor too much freedom and he puts far too much trust in both Bigon and Adric. A ruler who makes those kind of shoddy decisions should have been overthrown long ago. Several times, Monarch could have easily stopped and/or destroyed the Doctor but he turns a blind eye, believing in their belief in him rather than with the keener eye of someone at the top for as long as he has been. Perhaps it is a function of his own belief in his deity, but it looks more like the combination of plot contrivance and dictatorial naivety.

Circling back around, the other primary performance I enjoyed was the Doctor. He is quiet, controlled and clearly using his head to try and get out of the situation they are in. He even goes so far as to call Adric the idiot he is in order to get him back around to thinking properly. He has a clear respect for Nyssa and far more patience with Tegan than she deserves. In fact, the limitations of the Doctor are generally through his companions. Left to his own devices or perhaps only with Nyssa, Bigon and the Doctor could have overthrown Monarch with relatively few complications. Instead, he wastes time acting as a babysitter to at least two people acting like brats. That the companions personalities improved a bit in other stories helps a little, but the fact that the Fifth Doctor is so much better when paired with older pseudo-companions in stories like The Visitation, Kinda, or The Awakening, speaks to how limited the Fifth Doctor is by these shackles.

Episode Four was something of an improvement for the story as it got away from the set up of ideas and actually got some action going. Once there was action, the story buzzed along. The fight and effects may not have been that great, but the Doctor's battle with Persuasion and Enlightenment as well as his cricket ball physics are the clear highlights of the story. Even people who enjoy this story cite that scene first when talking about it. Aside from the action, I think one of the main reasons it works so well is that it puts all the focus on the Doctor. Tegan is absent in the TARDIS, Nyssa is with the androids and coming out of her sedation and Adric can't say anything in his space suit. So the Doctor and his actions drive all the story at that point and that is where things shine. The Doctor should be the focus as much as possible. When stories don't, they tend to fall apart.

As far as the production, I don't know that I can say much. I thought the direction and effects were decent. Certainly the floating cameras were a pretty good effect for the day. I won't say that I thought there was anything groundbreaking or especially drawing on the production side, but it did well for what it was an what was available to them.

I feel a little bad dumping so hard on a story that I think is generally well regarded (or at least given indifference to), but I can't that I was bored or irritated by most of the story through the first three episodes. It had a slight pick up in Episode Two after a lackluster start but sank badly in Episode Three. Episode Four worked reasonably well but still had significant plot holes that just sat wrong with me. I think a younger audience would enjoy this story more. But the volume of bad simply outweighs the good for me in this one.

Overall personal score: 1.5 out of 5