Baker portrayed the character for seven consecutive seasons, which remains the longest tenure of any actor to portray the lead, counting both the classic and new series. Baker's tenure as the Doctor is highly regarded among fans of the show and he is considered as one of the most iconic incarnations of the character.
The Fourth Doctor appeared in 172 episodes (179, counting the regeneration in Part 6 of Planet of the Spiders and his untelevised appearances in the six-part aborted serial Shada) over a seven-year period, from 1974 to 1981. This makes him the longest-running on-screen Doctor of the series.
He also appeared in the specials The Five Doctors (via footage from the incomplete Shada), and made his final appearance as the Doctor in the charity special Dimensions in Time (aside from a series of television advertisements in New Zealand in 1997).[1]
This incarnation is generally regarded as one of the most recognisable of the Doctors and one of the most popular, especially in the United States. In polls conducted by Doctor Who Magazine, Tom Baker has lost the "Best Doctor" category only three times: once to Sylvester McCoy (the Seventh Doctor) in 1990, and twice to David Tennant (the Tenth Doctor) in 2006 and 2009.[2] The Fourth Doctor's eccentric style of dress and speech – particularly his trademark look of wearing a long scarf and having a fondness for Jelly Babies – made him an immediately recognisable figure and he quickly captivated the viewing public's imagination. The producer of Baker's early seasons, Philip Hinchcliffe, stated that the Fourth Doctor's bohemian appearance and anti-establishment style appealed to older, college-age students.[3] The Fourth Doctor's time enjoyed a significant boost in viewing figures, averaging between 8 and 10 million viewers in just his first year (20–25 percent of the entire viewing audience of Britain).[4] By 1979, the figures averaged between 9 and 11 million, going as high as 16.1 million for the final episode of City of Death (though this was during the ITV technicians strike of 1979 which meant the BBC was the sole broadcaster on the air for several weeks).[5]
After succeeding Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor, Baker's portrayal of the Fourth was not initially received enthusiastically by all of the critics. One writer in the Daily Mail complained in early 1975 that, "Mr. Baker makes Doctor Who look like Harpo Marx let loose from Horse Feathers." Baker himself responded by saying, "We are not playing Doctor Who for laughs. I am trying to stress his strangeness, that he is not of this world, not human, therefore his reactions will be different from ours. I take it all very seriously. He has to be genuinely lovable, not pleased by violence, and he must be honest. Humorous, but never comical."[6]
There are also novels and audio plays featuring the Fourth Doctor. Two early audio plays featuring Tom Baker voicing the Fourth Doctor date from Baker's television tenure as he had mainly declined to appear in any further audio plays since leaving the series. In 2009, however, it was announced that a new five-part series would be produced by BBC Audio (see below).
In his new incarnation, the Doctor is eager to leave Earth in favour of exploration, thus drawing back from continuous involvement with UNIT (with which he had worked closely as the Third Doctor). He has also grown tired of working for the Time Lords. Despite attempts to avoid them altogether, the Time Lords continue to send him on occasional missions, including an attempt to prevent the creation of the Daleks (Genesis of the Daleks), during which he also meets Davros. The Doctor travels with journalist Sarah Jane Smith, whom he had befriended prior to his regeneration, and, for a time, with UNIT Surgeon-Lieutenant Harry Sullivan.
After a battle with Zygons in Scotland, Harry (having just spent an entire season with the Doctor as they tried to get back to the TARDIS) decided that taking the train was safer than the TARDIS, which the Doctor and Sarah Jane chose to try to make an appointment in London. Instead they ended up on the planet Zeta Minor (Planet of Evil), located at the far edge of the known universe. From this point on, the Doctor and Sarah Jane travelled alone.
The Doctor's companionship with Sarah Jane came to an end when he received a telepathic summons to Gallifrey, as humans were not then allowed on the planet. The summons turns out to be part of a trap set by his enemy the Master. The renegade Time Lord has used up all his regenerations and has degenerated into little more than a withered skeletal husk. The Doctor is framed for the assassination of the President of the High Council of Time Lords and put on trial. To avoid execution, the Doctor invokes an obscure law and declares himself a candidate for the office, giving himself the time he needs to prove his innocence and expose the real culprit. This ultimately results in a climactic battle with the Master (The Deadly Assassin).
The Doctor is seen to travel alone for the first time, returning to a planet he had visited centuries before. During his previous visit, he had accidentally imprinted his own mind on a human colony ship's powerful computer, Xoanon, leaving it with multiple personalities. On his second visit the Doctor is now 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 cures the computer, one of the Sevateem, Leela, joins him on his travels (The Face of Evil). The Doctor brings the intelligent but uneducated Leela to many locales in human history, teaching her about science and her own species' past. In Victorian London, the pair encounters the magician Li Hsien Chang and his master, the self-styled Weng-Chiang (The Talons of Weng-Chiang). Weng-Chiang is revealed to be a time-jumping criminal from the Earth's distant future.
Later, the Doctor and Leela visit the Bi-Al Foundation medical centre, where they acquire the robot dog K-9 (The Invisible Enemy). While K-9 is malfunctioning, a time distortion leads the TARDIS back to contemporary rural England. While investigating the distortion, he and Leela are confronted by an ancient being that feeds on death from Time Lord history, called the Fendahl (Image of the Fendahl). Eventually, the Doctor returns to Gallifrey and declares himself Lord President, based on the election held during his previous visit. This is in fact a ploy to reveal and defeat a Vardan invasion plan, which led to the unexpected consequence of leaving Gallifrey open to attack by the Sontarans (The Invasion of Time). In the aftermath Leela and K9 decide to remain on Gallifrey. The Doctor comforts himself by producing K9 Mark II.
Shortly afterward, the powerful White Guardian assigns the Doctor the task of finding the six segments of the Key to Time, sending a young female Time Lord named Romana (as portrayed by Mary Tamm) to assist him. The two Gallifreyans travel to a variety of planets, encountering strange and unusual allies and enemies, gathering the six segments and defeat the equally powerful Black Guardian, who sought the Key for himself. After the conclusion of the quest, Romana regenerates into a new form (portrayed then by Lalla Ward) (Destiny of the Daleks).
In an effort to evade the Black Guardian, the Doctor installs a "Randomiser" in the TARDIS so that not even the Black Guardian can anticipate where they go. Ironically, the first place the Randomiser sends them is the home planet of the Daleks, Skaro (Destiny of the Daleks). Perhaps because of this, the Doctor begins frequently over-riding the machine, first travelling to Paris for a holiday, only to get caught up in an alien scheme to steal the Mona Lisa (City of Death). He eventually discards the device altogether, remarking that he's fed up with not knowing where he's going.
Shortly after this, the Fourth Doctor and Romana are projected outside the known universe and into a universe of negative coordinates, known as Exo-Space. The TARDIS lands on a planet called Alzerius (Full Circle), where they are joined by a young prodigy named Adric. It's in E-Space that the Doctor destroys the last of a race of giant Vampires who had once threatened all life in his universe. Eventually, the Doctor and his two companions find themselves in a white void with no coordinates, a sort of membrane between the two universes. A way out soon forms, but Romana and K-9 choose to remain behind to help free a race of enslaved creatures in E-Space (Warriors' Gate).
The Doctor and Adric have only just made it back when they're asked to help the people of Traken from a creature known as "Melkur." On Traken, Adric and the Doctor are introduced to the aristocratic teen Nyssa of Traken. Both Nyssa and her father, Tremas, assist the Doctor in stopping Melkur, who is in fact revealed to be another TARDIS that is controlled by the Master. The Master is narrowly defeated, but manages to take over Tremas' body, thus giving himself a new incarnation.
The Doctor decides to travel to Earth to scan a real Police Box as part of a plan to repair the "Chameleon Circuit", the shape-changing mechanism in the TARDIS. However, the Doctor soon spots a mysterious ghostly figure looking at him in the distance. He eventually confronts the figure, who warns him of future dangers.
As the Doctor prepares to travel to the planet Logopolis to get the Chameleon Circuit fixed, Tegan Jovanka appears in the console room (having previously gotten lost in the corridors of the TARDIS). The conduit between E-Space and our own universe is revealed to be a Charged Vacuum Emboitment (CVE) created by the mathematicians of Logopolis as part of a system to allow the Universe to continue on past its point of heat death. Nyssa shows up, explaining that she was brought to Logopolis by the same figure that the Doctor encountered. Logopolis soon falls under the Master's control, but the stasis field he is generating ends up releasing Entropy and eroding matter throughout the universe, threatening to destroy the entire universe.
The Master agrees to help the Doctor stop the spread of Entropy by adapting the Pharos Project radio telescope on Earth so that they are able to reopen the CVEs. However, when the Master tries to take control of it, the Doctor runs out under the upturned radio dish to sever the cable linking the Master to the CVEs. The Master makes the dish start rotating so that the Doctor will fall to his death. Before he falls, he manages to tear out the cable, only to leave his companions watching as he clings to the cable. As his grip begins to slip, he sees visions of all the enemies he's faced over the years, then falls. Adric, Nyssa, and Tegan gather around the mortally wounded Doctor and call out his name. The Doctor begins seeing visions of all his companions and even the Brigadier calling his name.
He then looks up at the three of them and utters his last words: "It's the end-- but the moment has been prepared for..." He then motions to the white-clad figure of the Watcher, who begins approaching the Doctor. The Watcher, a manifestation of the Doctor's future incarnation, merges with the Doctor and triggers his regeneration. "He was the Doctor all the time," remarks Nyssa, as the three watch him transform into the Fifth Doctor.
The Fourth Doctor appears again in the 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors (1983). A renegade Time Lord attempts to pull the first five incarnations of the Doctor out of time, inadvertently trapping the Fourth Doctor (and Romana) in a "time eddy" from which they are later freed. The Fourth Doctor also had a small cameo at the beginning of Dimensions in Time, warning his Third, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh incarnation to watch out for the Rani. Brief holographic clips of the Fourth Doctor appear in "The Next Doctor" (2008) and "The Eleventh Hour" (2010).
In the fiftieth anniversary special, "The Day of the Doctor" (2013), the Fourth Doctor appears again in clips as past and future incarnations come together to assist in the saving of Gallifrey. Tom Baker also appears in the final scene of the episode, as a mysterious elderly museum curator who appears right after the Eleventh Doctor remarks he would like to hold this job some day. He alludes to his resemblance to the Fourth Doctor by talking about revisiting "old favourite" faces and hints that he too might be or have been the Doctor.
Appearance
Painting of Aristide Bruant by Lautrec, which inspired the Doctor's famous look.
Imposingly tall, with eyes that seem to constantly boggle, a mass of curls for hair and prominently displayed teeth, the Doctor favours an outfit that usually consists of a white shirt, waistcoat, cravat, trousers, a frock coat (with pockets containing a seemingly endless array of apparently useless items that would nevertheless suit the Doctor's purposes when used), a fedora and, most famously, his impractically long, multi-coloured scarf, which was apparently knitted for him by Madame Nostradamus (whom he refers to as a "witty little knitter"). When it is damaged in The Ark in Space (1975), the Doctor declares with regret that it is "irreplaceable."
According to Baker, the Doctor's scarf was the idea of costume designer James Acheson. Knowing little about knitting, Acheson procured large quantities of wool in various colours and commissioned Begonia Pope, a friend of his, to create a colourful design. She proceeded to use all of the wool provided, resulting in the absurdly long, but iconic, accessory.[7]
Producer Philip Hinchcliffe had wardrobe create three distinct coats for Baker to wear depending on the type of story, the first being a rust safari jacket that he wore throughout all of his first season; the other two (full-length) coats were of dark brown velvet (for the darker horror stories) and taupe tweed (for more action-packed stories). The Wardrobe Department also provided a brown wide-brimmed felt fedora. The rest was often picked from his own clothes (like neckties, trousers and a waistcoat). A wider, brighter-coloured scarf debuted with Baker's fourth season and a light brown coat was introduced late in his fifth season. Baker also appeared in a one-off Sherlock Holmes-inspired costume in The Talons of Weng-Chiang.
According to both the creators of the show and Baker, the character's look was originally based on paintings and posters by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec of his friend, Aristide Bruant, a singer and nightclub owner whose trademark was a black cloak and long red scarf.[8]
Two variants of the Fourth Doctor's costume.
When John Nathan-Turner became the show's producer in Baker's last year, the Fourth Doctor was the first to sport an item of clothing adorned with question marks as a motif, in this case, above the points on his shirt collars. His overall costume was redesigned, changing the colour focus from brown to burgundy. Designer June Hudson later revealed in an interview that Nathan-Turner had even given her permission to remove the scarf altogether if she wanted to.[9] Hudson opted to keep the scarf, as it was such an iconic part of the character, changing it to crimson with violet purple stripes.
The Hinchcliffe Era (1974–1977) is one of the most controversial in the classic series run, the increasing horror elements and depictions of violence attracted much criticism from Mary Whitehouse, who had previously attacked the Barry Letts era for serials like Terror of the Autons (1971). The controversy led BBC Director General to apologise to Whitehouse for the ending of one episode of The Seeds of Doom (1976).[10] Hinchcliffe was moved on to police drama Target in 1977 at the conclusion of his third year. Graham Williams – who had been developing Target – was brought on to take over as producer for Baker's fourth season.
Williams was given specific instructions to lighten the tone of the stories, thus playing to Baker's strengths. However, the first three stories (which were geared towards the previous style) had already been commissioned. Robert Holmes had agreed to stay on to edit them, but he ended up leaving after only doing the first two, Horror of Fang Rock (1977) and The Invisible Enemy (1977). The task of editing Image of the Fendahl (1977) fell to his successor Anthony Read. The season was only narrowly finished. With the cast and crew suffering from burnout and lack of resources, the season finale The Invasion of Time (1978) was completed largely by virtue of it having been written to make use of preexisting sets, props, and costumes.
For their second season, Williams and Read had planned out an overarching storyline that would run through the whole of the season. With more editorial control, it was also decided that the writers would put more emphasis on elements of fantasy and humour. Holmes wrote the first story, The Ribos Operation (1978), and the writing team of Bob Baker and Dave Martin handled what would be the final story of the season, The Armageddon Factor (1979). Douglas Adams wrote the second story, The Pirate Planet (1978), while another newcomer, David Fisher, wrote the third and fourth stories. Again, difficulties began to arise when the fifth story fell through. Robert Holmes consented to writing what would become The Power of Kroll (1978–79).
Williams' third and final year on the show is considered a high point in terms of ratings and stories for the entire series. However it proved even more difficult for Williams behind the scenes, as he found Tom Baker increasingly hard to cope with. The most watched episode ever of Doctor Who was "Part 4" of City of Death (by Fisher, Adams, and Williams) which drew 16.1 million viewers. Douglas Adams became script editor and his style can be seen in the dialogue and stories. For example, in Destiny of the Daleks (1979), Adams included a scene of the Doctor trapped under a boulder that resembles a similar scene in the second series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. His time as script editor was beset by problems; Adams often ended up having to greatly edit and even rewrite stories. Once again, facing burnout and lack of funds, Adams eventually agreed to write the final story Shada. Production proved difficult and ended up being unfinished due to a strike at the BBC. Williams left the show, dissatisfied with having left on what he considered to be a low note.
In Season 18, John Nathan-Turner became the series' producer. He instituted a number of changes to the show, including toning down the humour and introducing more science fiction concepts.[11] During this season the Fourth Doctor became very much subdued and, on occasion, melancholy. Baker began the season in poor health, though he eventually recovered. Both the actor and the character seemed noticeably older and tired, due to Baker's gaunt appearance and greying hair. Baker had been finding the role harder and harder to maintain and the previous season had been particularly draining on him. Many of this season's stories also had an elegiac tone, with entropy and decay being a recurring theme.
New script editor Christopher Bidmead found himself faced with a serious problem from the outset of his time on the show. He ultimately deemed many of the stories left to him by Adams to be unusable, being too close to the humour-driven stories of the previous season. The only one he ended up using was The Leisure Hive (1980), though only after heavily editing it. Bidmead asked a pair of writing friends to come up with what would be the second story of the season, Meglos (1980), which ended up being regarded as one of the weakest shows in the series' history up to that point.[12]
Bidmead only began to gain some momentum by the fifth story, Warriors' Gate. The story is notable for the Doctor's sombre mood and seeming death wish, as well as the surprisingly adult nature of the story. The surreal, even dream-like elements, such as time shifts and walking through mirrors, also earned the story some distinction. At John Nathan-Turner's insistence the Master was brought back. This was accomplished by Bidmead changing the villain in The Keeper of Traken (1981) into the Master.
The overarching theme of decay reaches its conclusion in Baker's final story Logopolis (1981), which Bidmead personally wrote. The story is particularly sombre, even grim at times. Themes of decay and death are constant in the story, personified in the ghostly Watcher, effectively a harbinger of the Fourth Doctor's 'death'.
The Fourth Doctor's stories saw fewer recurring (or returning) enemies than in previous eras. The Daleks only appeared twice and the Cybermen only had one story, Revenge of the Cybermen (1975). UNIT, which had featured in most of the Third Doctor's adventures, only appeared in four early Fourth Doctor stories, playing a minor role in its last appearance, season 13's The Seeds of Doom (1976) in which none of the regular UNIT staff appeared.
At the same time, stories such as The Deadly Assassin (1976) established most of the mythology surrounding the Time Lords and the Doctor's home planet Gallifrey and that would remain a key feature for the rest of the classic series and still be felt in the revived series. For example, it is established that Time Lords only have a limited number of regenerations, which is a driving plot point in the stories Mawdryn Undead, The Five Doctors, The Trial of a Time Lord, the 1996 television movie and the 2013 Christmas special "The Time of the Doctor".
For audiences in the United States, who saw the show only in syndication (mostly on PBS), Tom Baker was the incarnation of the Doctor who is the best known, since his episodes were the ones most frequently broadcast stateside. The first four seasons of these Time Life distributed stories added narration by Howard da Silva at the beginning and end of each episode. Also in Italy, where most of the classic series of Doctor Who were never broadcast on television, the only episodes to be broadcast were those of the Fourth Doctor.[13][14][15]
The Fourth Doctor's distinctive appearance and manner have made him a target for affectionate parody. The character has appeared several times on The Simpsons and twice on Robot Chicken. He also had a cameo on Futurama emerging from the stomach of a space whale, and another episode, where he is briefly seen running into the TARDIS. On TheBig Bang Theory, Stuart dresses as The Fourth Doctor at a party in the episode “The Justice League Recombination”. In the computer game Hugo II, Whodunit?, the player can save the Fourth Doctor from a Dalek in return for his sonic screwdriver. He is frequently impersonated by impressionist Jon Culshaw on the radio and television series Dead Ringers, who also voiced the Doctor for the Big Finish audio The Kingmaker. Archival footage of the Fourth Doctor's first title sequence was used in the Family Guy episode "Blue Harvest" to parody hyperspace from Star Wars. In American Dad! some Whovians were shown, with several of them dressed as the Fourth Doctor. As the narrator of Little Britain, Tom Baker has himself alluded to Doctor Who. In the 24th episode of the series Epic Rap Battles of History the Tenth Doctor is in a rap battle with Doc Brown from Back to the Future when he is shot by a Dalek and regenerates into the Fourth Doctor (played by George Watsky).[16]
A background character appearing in one episode of Toast of London portrayed by Lewis MacLeod highly resembles the fourth incarnation of the Doctor, and is heavily implied to be him in the episode itself. Peter Davison, who played the fifth incarnation, also appears in the series as himself.[17]
Advertising
In 1979 and 1980, Tom Baker played the Fourth Doctor (alongside Lalla Ward's Romana) in a series of four television commercials for Prime Computer.[18] Disliking the scripts he was given, Baker agreed to film the advertisements only if he could rewrite them himself, and added a scene where the Doctor follows the computer's instruction to marry Romana.[19] In 1997, Baker reprised the role once again in a spot for New Zealand's National Superannuation insurance company.[20]
Tom Baker also recorded narration, in character as the Fourth Doctor, for a 1976 audio release of Genesis of the Daleks, which was subsequently re-issued by the BBC on cassette and CD as a radio drama. Baker returned again to Doctor Who for the 1990s audio cassette releases of "lost" Doctor Who stories. For some of these stories, he is in character as the Doctor. For others, he merely provides descriptive narration.
Big Finish audio dramas
The Kingmaker (cameo voiced by Jon Culshaw—see above)
Timewyrm: Genesys by John Peel (appears as a holographic message for the Seventh Doctor, warning his future self of danger before his memory of the threat is lost)
Heart of TARDIS by Dave Stone (Also features the Second Doctor, although neither Doctor meets the other, each Doctor simply tackling a different end of the same crisis with only the Fourth aware of his other self's involvement)
Wolfsbane by Jacqueline Rayner (Also features the Eighth Doctor, although neither are aware of the other's actions due to the Eighth Doctor's current amnesia, the Fourth simply tying up loose ends left by the Eighth)
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