“Four To Doomsday” is an adventure of the nineteenth season of the classic “Doctor Who” series aired in 1982. It follows “Castrovalva” and it’s a four parts adventure written by Terence Dudley and directed by John Black.

The story

The Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) is trying to bring Tegan (Janet Fielding) back home but the Tardis materializes in an alien spaceship. While Adric (Matthew Waterhouse) and Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) remain near the Tardis, the Doctor and Tegan are guided to meet Monarch and his associates, who control the spaceship.

The Doctor and his companions also meet various humans from different eras and, despite everybody’s friendly behavior, they slowly realize that a long term plan to invade Earth is being carried out.

Extras

This DVD contains a fair amount of extras. There are typical contents such as a PDF file with the Radio Times Listings, production subtitles, a gallery of pictures from this adventure and the announcement of the DVDs to be published shortly.

There are comments in the adventure alternative audio track by protagonists Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton and Matthew Waterhouse and director John Black.

Recording Studio. About 27 minutes of recording on the first day of Peter Davison playing the Doctor. If it had been limited to a few minutes it would be an interesting curiosity but due to its length it looks like a filler.

Saturday Night at the Mill. An interview with Peter Davison in 1980.

Theme Music Video. A remix of the Doctor Who theme that includes the faces of the Fourth and Fifth Doctor.

“Four To Doomsday” was the first adventure of the Fifth Doctor filmed. The purpose was to allow Peter Davison to get into his role in a “normal” adventure to have a better basis to play the Doctor who had just regenerated in “Castrovalva”.

“Four To Doomsday” is the story of an attempt to invade the Earth planned over many millennia. The alien leader Monarch is one of the highlights of this adventure together with his assistants Enlightenment and Persuasion.

Often in “Doctor Who” there have been over the top baddies, instead Monarch always wants to appear civilized: he never raises his voice and he shows he’s always willing to listen to the Doctor’s requests. At the same time however with his calm manners he’s always ready to order the killing of anyone who attempts to oppose him and his plans for the Earthlings aren’t exactly friendly.

Monarch is clearly a megalomaniac as he even believes he’s God and this trait influences his quite complicated plan, at the same time he almost always looks good-natured. Thus he has a complex personality that enriches this adventure.

Bigon, one of the humans taken many centuries ago, is well developed too. Throughout “Four To Doomsday” he secretly helps the Doctor slowly revealing Monarch’s secrets when he can do it without being discovered.

One of the problems of “Four To Doomsday” is in the very slow development of the story even by the standards of the original series. On the other hand there are moments with good pieces of dialogue, too bad they get a bit lost among the continuous Doctor’s walks in the ship corridors.

The other big problem with this adventure is that Adric and Tegan behave as dumb and dumber. In fact Adric makes sexist comments but doesn’t show great intelligence being duped by Monarch: he may be young and naive but in this adventure he looks like a sucker. Tegan on her part seems really out of her mind trying to operate the Tardis on her own. It’s understandable that she wants to go home but at that time she’s supposed to understand that piloting the Tardis is a delicate operation and doing it at random she’s likely to end up anywhere in the universe at any time so doing it is absolute idiocy.

Nyssa, who instead has no personality disorders, is a bit sacrificed in “Four To Doomsday”. Unfortunately her character suffers from the fact that it was decided to make her a Doctor’s companion after seeing her in “The Keeper of Traken” but without any real planning. Later, Peter Davison had asked that Nyssa continued to travel with the Doctor thinking that she was the best companion for him. In essence she got added to new adventures in which her presence wasn’t originally planned and that prevented a true development of her character.

Overall, “Four To Doomsday” isn’t even bad, with some interesting elements unfortunately partly overshadowed by the negative ones. Considering the fact that the extras on the DVD aren’t particularly interesting, unless you’re a fan of this adventure it makes sense to buy the DVD only if you want to have “Doctor Who” complete collection, perhaps waiting to find it at a bargain price.