Though 1981’s Castrovalva was the first Peter Davison Doctor Who adventure to be shown, Four To Doomsday was the first one that he actually shot, the notion being that his first official adventure should show him very comfortable in the role of the Galifrean. This is ironic, since Castrovalva finds our hero suffering from his not-unfamiliar post-regeneration confusion, lapsing into Troughton and Baker et al, and might have actually been the ideal place to start. But caution prevailed, and Davison is eased gently into Who canon in this spaceship-bound tale of robotic doom heading Earthward…

Trying to rid himself of the endless laments of displaced air-stewardess Tegan Jovanka (Janet Fielding), the Doctor misses Terminal 3 at Heathrow by several million miles and instead ends up in the gargantuan space-cruiser of the Urbankan people, who are mean, green and a bit crusty. They’ve made several trips to Earth in the last twelve thousand years, each time picking up a representative of a major culture, like Top Trumps. So far they have a Chinese mandarin (Burt Kwouk), a Greek philosopher (Philip Locke), a Mayan princess and an aboriginal tribal leader.

Now they’re on their way for a last visit to our sceptred planet – only this time they’re planning to stay. All three billion of them. They have also developed a race of robots to attend to the functioning of the ship during the long odyssey, and these are also intended for action in coming campaign. For that matter, the Urbanka themselves seem to have a touch of cybernetic longevity about them…

As you might guess, we have to imagine the three billion extra Urbanka; for the most part the race is represented by the unimaginatively-named ruler Monarch (the excellent Stratford Johns), and his ministers Enlightenment (Annie Lambert) and Persuasion (Paul Shelley).

Some retro-fashion fun is to be had when Enlightenment asks Tegan to describe the apparel of the Earth-people of her time; Tegan’s unfeasibly professional drawing is pure New Romantic swish, the more interesting as the two ministers decide to use it as the basis of a ‘V’-style transformation into a friendlier shape for the 1982 earthlings that they will be eating errr meeting in four days.

Four To Doomsday is standard Who-soup from series stalwart Terence Dudley – we’ve seen it all before and we were destined (indeed, remain destined) to see it all again: the under-trodden hordes waiting for a light to lead them; the despotic villains curiously obsessed with conquering our insignificant planet; the derring-do it will take to thwart them…

In such cases, it’s the humour and the innovation that can lift the story up, and Doomsday has just enough of each to carry the task off; no more. That said, the long ‘entertainment’ sequences featuring Chinese dragon-dancing and gladiatorial spectacle between robot Spartans feels like what it almost certainly is – another raid on the Beeb’s vast historical wardrobe-closet. Inasmuch as the story gathers together historical figures such as Philip Locke’s Plato-like philosopher, it does very little with them in that regard, and the notion that the four captured tribal leaders – now turned into robots – will beguile and lead the Earth’s people when the Big Landing comes is never really addressed in terms of its unfeasibility and anachronistic understanding of 20th-century culture.

This is perhaps the most crowded period in the history of the Tardis, with Tegan, Nyssa and Adric jostling each other for something to do. They are peremptorily split up by the Urbanka and used at various points for coercion purposes, arguably persuading the Doctor to travel lighter in his later adventures.

Adric is particularly annoying, and yet again proves a turncoat in these adventures, which snake-like function was later passed on to the Turlough character (Mark Strickland). Tegan moans like never before and Nyssa continues her turn as a (most enchanting) fairytale princess. In the midst of this, Davison had to carve out the shape of his character. As mentioned earlier, there was no real need to shoot this, Davison’s first Who outing, out of sequence – the man’s a professional; whatever decisions he made about playing the Doctor, he stuck to and demonstrated from the outset in Doomsday.

The unconvincing life-support helmets are good for a laugh, clearly being adapted motorcycle helmets to which hair-dryer tubes have been attached, and the fairly well-done sequence where the doctor has to pass six minutes in space in his cricket overalls is hamstrung by the absurd science of the sequence. However, the floating ‘monopticon’ camera is a marvel of simple camera trickery that really sells the Urbankan culture, and the rendering of this device is divided between an on-set prop and surprisingly effective matte-work that was done ‘live’ during filming.

Tony Burroughs' production design is as good as any Who of the period, and better than many; it’s aided as well by suitable chiaroscuro lighting and an effective purple lighting motif that not only gives Four To Doomsday a distinctive look, but matches Tegan’s air-stewardess costume…

Extras

Commentary
Four To Doomsday features a typically lively commentary with Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton, Matthew Waterhouse and director John Black. Matthew Waterhouse remains in character as Adric, it seems, while Janet Fielding gets her claws out on more than one occasion; but the endless good nature of Peter Davison keeps the whole meeting friendly and happily reminiscent.

Studio Recording (27.07)
On top of demonstrating the amazingly simple yet effective technqiue behind the floating monopticon, this raw studio footage demonstrates perhaps more than any other similar Doctor Who extra the brutal schedules under which the programme was made, as well as letting us rubberneck on some fractious moments on the set.

Saturday Night At The Mill (14.23)
Wherein Peter Davison makes an early promotional appearance on a then-popular weekend outing for the BBC’s Pebble Mill chat-show. Here he talks about his career at the time, and even makes a pretty ****ing good milkshake (we kid you not), which he shares with his wife at the time, Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy actress Sandra Dickinson.

Theme Music Remix (3.35)
A reasonably pointless melding of the Baker and Davison title sequences from the post-slitscan era. Go figure.

Photo Gallery (6.40)
A very nice photo collection of colour and B&W publicity stills from Four To Doomsday, focusing later on Stratford Johns’ legendarily awkward Urbanka make-up and on the set design.

Info text
Typically fascinating factoids about Four To Doomsday that you can run alongside the story, though they are immensely distracting!

Radio Times Listings (when mounted in computer)
An underwhelming PDF file with a scan of the Radio Times listings for Four To Doomsday.

Coming Soon
A trailer for the forthcoming release of the William Hartnell adventure The War Machines.

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Four To Doomsday is released on September 15th