Story 117 - Four To Doomsday

In which the Doctor is attempting to take Tegan to Heathrow Airport, in order for her to commence her job, when the TARDIS gets drawn off course. It materialises in a vast spaceship, which at first appears to be empty. There is no oxygen, and the Doctor must don a special breathing helmet to explore. He discovers that he is being watched by spherical monitoring devices. His companions join him, and they find that the room they have landed in contains lots of advanced equipment - some sort of laboratory. The Doctor and Tegan explore further and soon come across the masters of this vessel. They are toad-like creatures called Urbankans. Their leader is Monarch, and with him are his two ministers - Persuasion and Enlightenment. Monarch explains that they are on their way to Earth where they hope to settle peacefully. There are millions of Urbankans elsewhere on the ship. He is keen to know what current Earth customs are like, and has Tegan draw a man and woman to illustrate fashions. Meanwhile, Adric and Nyssa have encountered a man named Bigon, who claims to have come from the Athens of classical times. When the Doctor and Tegan rejoin their colleagues in a room that has been set aside for them, supplied with oxygen, Bigon explains that the Urbankans have been visiting Earth for centuries - each trip taking half as long as the previous one. Each time they have come, they have taken representative humans away with them. As well as Bigon and some of his peers, there are people from Imperial China, prehistoric Australia, and the Mayan civilisation. Persuasion and Enlightenment join them - and they now look exactly like the man and woman who were in Tegan's sketch...

The Doctor quickly deduces that there is some threat here, which Bigon is keen to warn him about, but they are constantly being monitored by the spherical surveillance devices - Monopticons. He is able to use his sonic screwdriver to disable them. The reason that the human occupants of the ship are so long-lived is that they are actually androids - programmed with the memories and personalities of the original individuals. Urbankans are also now robotic constructs. Apart from Monarch and his ministers, all the rest of the species exist as circuits stored in the ship. When Adric and Nyssa meet Monarch, he reveals that it his intention to turn the whole of the human race into androids. They will therefore never fear illness, fear or death. Adric seems to agree with his aims, but Nyssa is appalled. Monarch orders that she be turned into an android duplicate. Bigon is showing the Doctor round the ship and they come upon the conversion laboratory just in time to rescue her. She saves the Doctor from execution by disabling the android executioners. Monarch is interested in getting his hands on the TARDIS after Adric tells him of its capabilities. He wants to travel faster than light in order to go back in time to the birth of the Universe and meet its creator - who he believes will be himself. For helping the Doctor, Bigon has his circuits removed.

Tegan returns to the TARDIS and, in a blind panic, tries to dematerialise. She eventually succeeds, but the ship rematerialises in space a few hundred feet away. The Doctor is able to convince the leaders of the different ethnic groups that Monarch will never allow them to rule these groups once they reach Earth. Lin Futu, leader of the Chinese group, agrees to reinstate Bigon's circuits. Bigon informs the Doctor of a way to make the more basic androids break down, then the Doctor makes a spacewalk to retrieve the TARDIS. He achieves this by bouncing a cricket ball off the spaceship hull and letting the momentum carry him to his own ship. Both Persuasion and Enlightenment are deactivated. Monarch has a deadly poison which he has been developing, which can reduce a person to the size of a grain of rice. The Doctor secures a sample and uses it against him. It transpires that Monarch had never fully converted to android status, and is shrunk by the toxin. Bigon and the other android humans decide to seek a new home on some other world. Back in the TARDIS, Nyssa suddenly collapses from the effects of the android replication machine she had earlier been put in...

This four part adventure was written by Terence Dudley, and was broadcast between the 18th and 26th of January, 1982. It was actually the first story which Peter Davison recorded as the Doctor, and was script edited by Anthony Root - the only story he really had much input with, as he was only in post for three months and was quickly joined by full-time replacement Eric Saward.
The programme's production schedules had changed to accommodate Davison, as he had commitments to two sit-coms at the time (Holding the Fort - rubbish - and Sink or Swim - not bad).
Four To Doomsday is an odd story, in that it just doesn't seem to sit quite right in this era of the series. The more you look at it, the more it seems to be a throwback to an earlier phase of the programme - and you could quite see Troughton or, better still, Hartnell, turning up here. Dudley obviously hadn't been paying the series that much attention since the 1960's. The idea of an entire population being held in filing cabinet drawers immediately reminds you of 1966's The Ark. And the following year's The Faceless Ones. There is even the early Hartnell era's insistence on teaching us something about the historical ethnic groupings - though it is more through having to sit through the interminable "recreationals" than someone reeling off facts. These recreationals are either dances or gladiatorial games.
There is a very impressive cast assembled, one of whom is woefully underused. Stand up Burt Kwouk. Best known internationally as Inspector Clouseau's ninja manservant, Kato in The Pink Panther franchise, in the UK he is best remembered for Tenko and Last of the Summer Wine, and (certainly for me) The Harry Hill Show. [The latter had a number of Doctor Who references, including Nicholas Courtney appearing as the Brigadier. He is about to welcome the former Foreign Office junior minister Clare Short as the new Doctor, when a clumsy Earthshock type Cyberman knocks the glass presentation bowl from his hands]. Kwouk is Lin Futu, in case you were wondering. Bigon is played by Philip Locke. He had been a Bond villain - the chief henchman (so not the main baddie) in Thunderball - and the principal villain in the first of the colour episodes of The Avengers [the one where Jon Pertwee does his Field Marshal Montgomery impersonation].

Principal guest star is Stratford Johns, as Monarch. For many years he had played Chief Inspector Barlow in Z-Cars and subsequent spin-off's, and was keen to do something different. Despite the heavy make-up, he is still quite recognisable. Special mention must go to Paul Shelley, as both the Urbankan and "human" Persuasion. Enlightenment is Annie Lambert, but she doesn't get any of Shelley's dryly humorous lines.
Episode endings are:

1. A man and woman appear in the time travellers' quarters, and they look identical to Tegan's fashion sketches. They identify themselves as Persuasion and Enlightenment...
2. Bigon removes his face and unhooks his tunic to reveal that he is actually an android...
3. As some of the Chinese androids hold him down, the Athenian warriors prepare to lop off the Doctor's head...
4. Doomsday averted, back in the TARDIS Nyssa suddenly collapses...

Overall, as mentioned above, a bit of a strange one for its day. Okay, but nothing brilliant. Could have been three episodes if they had taken out most of those bloody recreationals...

Things you might like to know:

• Four what to Doomsday, exactly? The title can be looked at in two ways. Either it is the fact that Monarch's ship is four days from Earth, and he intends to inflict doomsday on its population, or it refers to the Doctor and his companions - the four travellers who are on their way to a potential doomsday.
• Tegan can speak an Aboriginal language, quite fluently, from thousands of years ago. No-one else of the Doctor's party can understand this language, so the TARDIS translation thing seems to be faulty - or it is being very selective in who gets to understand what.
• Adric gets doped up on the stupid pills. Suddenly the writers - and one assumes the producer - don't have a clue what the character is about. After a promising start with the Romana-less Tom Baker stories, he suddenly starts to act like a complete dick. We could be charitable and say that his allegiance to Monarch is another example of him ingratiating himself with the villains to get in their good books whilst seeking a means to undermine them, but if that's the case then there is absolutely no evidence of this on screen. Alone with the Doctor, he doesn't own up to this being his cunning plan. No, he seems to really think that it is okay for some alien tyrant to destroy humanity and steal the TARDIS.
• Tegan wants to warn Earth, but the Doctor - despite having worked for UNIT for several years - says that no-one will believe them...
• It has been stated many, many times, in various guidebooks and on-line, that the maths of Monarch's visits to Earth, with the speed of travel doubling each time, simply doesn't work. The civilisations on show just do not match the dates that this implies. Therefore I won't bother to state it again.
• If the Chinese dragon dancers hail from a few thousand years ago, why do they wear modern plimsolls, and have a costume belonging to a Kung Fu club?
• To the best of my knowledge, the Greeks of Pericles' age did not go in for gladiatorial combat. What we should have seen was some hot, oily, man-on-man action. 
• I am, of course, referring to wrestling...
• If that wasn't what you were thinking of, you may now (unlike the Doctor) dream of interfering with your Monopticons...