Hogan Reviews

Time for our second review of this marathon to have “Four Doctors” in the title, though this one has the “The” in it! I remember how big a deal this was at the time, full-page adverts in Doctor Who Magazine and everything, then it turned out the Four Doctors only meet for all of a minute at the end, and beyond that it’s just a fun scene with the Fifth and Eighth Doctors and then a stand-alone story that features four incarnations. I’ll admit I was disappointed when reviews started coming out and I found out, but when I listened to it I was actually really happy with the story as it was really well paced and had a unique way to feature all the Doctors that really works. Now, with a re-listen and knowing exactly what to expect, I hold it in even higher regard. Let’s take a look!

The story kicks off with the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) as he arrives in the “Vault of Stellar Curios” because he detected temporal distortions coming from its inner-most vault. He is shown around the facility by Kalinda Ulrik (Ellie Burrow), and soon her brother Colonel Ulrik (David Bamber) arrives as well. The Colonel reveals their grandfather was a fighter in the Jariden / Dalek wars but was a coward who ran so he takes his position very seriously, hoping to bring honour back to his name. Kalinda heads off, leaving The Doctor in the lab and the Colonel to “inspect the facility” and ends up running into the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) who has just arrived because he also detected temporal anomalies and soon recognises Kalinda from his earlier encounter. At this point the Daleks attack after the station’s defence shields are lowered and The Doctor remembers what happens next so pops onto the comms and talks to his younger self pretending to be a Time Agent, telling him his plan to stop the “temporal maelstrom” won’t work and instead they need to use their TARDISes to create a time loop to fix the situation. We hear some commontion from the lab and then two Daleks arrive to exterminate the Doctor and Kalinda…

It’s here that Col. Ulrik reveals he let the shields down and promised the Daleks the content of the deepest vault in exchange for them leaving the system and finally giving his people peace. The Fifth Doctor scoffs at his plan and sure enough the Daleks arrive with no care as to how many Jaridens they kill to get there. We then switch to London, 1854 and the laboratory of Michael Faraday (Nigel Lambert), who is experimenting on a Special Weapons Dalek that appeared through a crack in the air, and shortly afterward Col. Ulrik arrives in the same manor, with no idea what happened. The Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) is visiting Faraday at that moment and immediately recognises Ulrik and reveals his true goal was to seal an unstable time corridor that he just went through before anything else arrives and sure enough a Dalek Prime and two regular Daleks soon arrive. The Doctor disables the two regular Daleks with Faraday’s electrics and escapes to where Faraday and Ulrik were and reveals to the latter that they’ve met twice from his perspective, once in the vault and then on  the legendary battlefield of Pejorica, the same place his grandfather was so famous for running away in. Just like that Ulrik and the Dalek Prime vanish once more but another Dalek arrives to kill The Doctor…

A very …. red cover for this one. Nice blending effects though!

As you’d imagine Ulrik arrives on the battlefields of Pejorica where he is immediately captured by the Daleks, who are confused at how much more advanced he is (the Jaridens are cyborgs) so they begin torturing the interrogating him. Ulrik is thrown in a cell next to the Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) and admits that this glorious war was anything but and then is horrified to find the Robo-Man servant patrolling the cells was his grandfather, showing he didn’t run away but instead was captured and converted. Ulrik is about to go through another round of torture when the Dalek Prime arrives and demands its fellow Daleks follow its commands but as he too is advanced they don’t recognise it as Dalek and open fire, allowing Ulrik to escape to the roof, where he meets The Doctor face to face. During their confrontation The Doctor instructs his foe to set his grandfather free of Dalek control and allow him to be captured by the Jariden people, thus giving them knowledge of Dalek tech and helping them to their legendary victory. He does so before taking one more trip through time just as the remains of the Dalek Prime arrives, ready to kill The Doctor…

As you can see its less a story about four Doctors and more a story about how a hardened Colonel learns some valuable lessons by flittering about time and meeting several Doctors. It’s really well told with one more fun surprise at the end too!

The Continuity:

Nothing direct this time round. The Special Weapons Dalek comes from Seventh Doctor TV story “Remembrance of the Daleks” and the Robo-men come from the First Doctor TV story “The Dalek Invasion of Earth” (man, that story is getting a lot of links in this marathon!) but that’s about it.

Overall Thoughts:

Hey, I found the old DWM poster I was talking about! I like that artwork better, if I’m honest…

It’s a shame The Four Doctors is still stuck behind a subscription paywall as it really is a great time-twisty story and handles multiple Doctors well. I remember writer Peter Anghelides saying he didn’t want to call it “The Four Doctors” because people will think it’s a full-on multi-Doctor story but he was shot down, and that’s a shame because people came away from this story disappointed when really if it had another name it most likely would be far more highly praised. For a quick hour long audio featuring Doctors 5-8 you can’t go wrong with this, frankly!

The last quarter of the story first sees the Fifth Doctor and the Eighth have their conversation but from the younger Doctor’s point of view followed by Ulrik appearing and all that stuff. We find out that the original Ulrik was knocked out by his future self, who arrives from Pejorica and tells the Doctor everything before the Daleks arrive and he opens the vault revealing the big secret inside is his Robo-man-ised grandfather who had been mixed with parts from the future Daleks back on the battlefield. To try and break out of his cycle he tells his grandfather to help him kill the arriving Daleks but the two of them are killed instead, just as the original Ulrik and the Daleks are pulled back in time to 1854 to start the loop over again, showing that the loop the two Doctors created to save the day effected the Daleks and Ulrik but nobody else.

We rejoin the Eighth Doctor and Kalinda as the Daleks in front of them vanish and he tells her that all the Daleks and tech that came through were similarly pulled forward and back forever and we hear the Seventh and Sixth Doctors see their foes vanish. The Doctor bids her farewell and then steps into his console room to see the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors all standing there. He calls it a bit embarrassing and that the time paradox energy or whatever will sort itself out soon and return the other Doctors to their own TARDISes, so they have a quick chat / backchat before the younger Doctors vanish and the Eighth Doctor heads out for his next adventure.