The Five Doctors has to be one of my favourite “comfort food” things to put on, if I’m not really sure what to watch or for whatever reason feeling unhappy it’s something that will cheer me up for 90 minutes or so. That being said this is a review and to be completely fair to it the story really isn’t up to much, it’s a big anniversary special with loads of companions and, well, four Doctors to be more accurate, plus a few old villains and the like so it doesn’t really have time to be anything with more substance. Am I just making excuses? Well, let’s take a closer look…
After a quick archive shot of the First Doctor’s “no regrets” speech for the sake of getting Mr. Hartnell in this special we open with The Doctor (Peter Davison), Tegan (Janet Fielding) and Turlough (Mark Strickson) relaxing on the tranquil “Eye of Orion” until The Doctor starts having chest pains. We see that this is due to a mysterious figure using a device letter identified as a “Time Scoop” to take previous incarnations of him out of time and place them somewhere else. The First Doctor (played by Richard Hurndall…) is scooped from a random garden and later meets up with his granddaughter Susan (Carole Ann Ford), the two having to escape a Dalek in a confined space; The Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) is visiting Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) at a UNIT reunion event and the two are captured together; and the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) is driving Bessie around the countryside and both he and his vintage car are transported as well, plus Sarah Jane Smith (Elizabeth Sladen) is randomly collected outside of her house. Where’s the Fourth Doctor you ask? Sadly Tom Baker didn’t want to do it so they use then-unaired footage from Shada and add-in a Time Scoop effect and then claim that incarnation is “stuck” between the place he was scooped from the where he was to be placed. So, like I said, not really “The Five Doctors” at all…
Funny how the Fifth Doctor isn’t that bothered about seeing his Granddaughter after all this time… Several of his future selves act in the opposite way, as we’ve seen in this marathon!
The current TARDIS crew soon also land in the same barren landscape as the rest and we’re told via exposition from the several Doctors that it’s the “Death Zone” on Gallifrey, where in ancient times the Time Lords Time Scooped various dangerous races and popped them down and watched to see who would survive. Over on Gallifrey President Borusa (Philip Latham), Chancellor Flavia (Dinah Sheridan) and “The Castellan” (Paul Jerricho) are in a meeting discussing the time-breaking shenanigans going on have gotten so desperate that they have summoned The Master (Anthony Ainley) and offered him a new set of regenerations should he go to the Death Zone and rescue his old nemesis. He agrees and heads off, laughing at the irony. The Third Doctor meets up with Sarah (and somehow knows his successor is “all teeth and curls” when Sarah is confused at the previous Doctor she knew standing before her) while the First Doctor and Susan end up on board the TARDIS with the Fifth Doctor and his companions. They all decide to head to the “Dark Tower” where the legendary Time Lord known as Rassilon is said to be entombed. In a moment he had to have seen coming The Master encounters the Third Doctor but he refuses to believe his old nemesis is trying to help him and even steals his presidential seal assuming it’s a forgery, then a short while later he approaches the Fifth Doctor who at least tries to hear him out but when The Master is knocked out by a Cyberman blast The Doctor takes his recall device and teleports to the main chamber of Gallifrey.
“Look man even if it wasn’t obvious you’re the Master you don’t exactly look trustworthy, do you?!” “I don’t know what you mean Doctor….”
The Third Doctor and Sarah’s trip to the Tower, which they enter through the top, has them encounter Cybermen (making this the only on-screen Third Doctor / Cybermen encounter) and a “Raston Warrior Robot”, which is an all-metal humanoid that moves faster than light and fires spears from its hands. No idea where this design came from (or what is artfully jumps in the air before moving) but I always liked it, plus seeing it destroy a whole squad of Cybermen is good fun. The Second Doctor and Brigadier enter from underneath the tower and encounter a robotic Yeti in a cave, carefully lit so you can’t see its deteriorating costume but a fun cameo nonetheless. The First Doctor and Tegan make their way to the front door of the tower with little issue while Susan and Turlough stay behind in the TARDIS and watch Cybermen plant a massive bomb outside the time and space machine via the TARDIS screen; The Master allies himself with the Cybermen and promise to escort them to the Tower himself; and finally the Fifth Doctor gets caught up in more Gallifreyan politics as the nameless Castellan is accused of being behind it all after “Black Scrolls” were found in his quarters and shortly afterwards he’s killed as he’s tries to flee. The Doctor in unconvinced of his guilt…
The Brigadier enjoys his retirement…
So all paths lead to the tower (well, apart from the Fifth Doctor, but he does rejoin the main plot eventually…) so I’ll get to the finale in the spoiler section. As I said it’s good fun, especially for long-time fans like myself, but really it’s “characters get put in a place and all head to the same location where the villain is unmasked and defeated” and that’s it. Very little depth. Well, this is where Rassilon finally makes an appearance after being the lauded Time Lord legend in a few previous stories, so that’s something, but we all know we watch it because of all the Doctors on screen and the fun cameos, and for that reason it still does its job well!
The Continuity:
I’m sure an updated Raston Warrior Robot would be a good fit for the current series… Maybe without the ballet poses when it teleports around the place…
Quite a few, obviously. The audio drama “The Five Companions” takes place in the middle of this story and sees the Fifth Doctor accidentally get teleported to a “holding area” where he meets more companions and old foes before heading on to the Gallifrey chamber. The Eighth Doctor novel “The Eight Doctors” has a segment that takes place just after this story finishes and sees him meet up with his Fifth self back on the Eye of Orion and having to deal with a Raston Warrior Robot. The Fifth Doctor audio drama “Time in Office” is also a sequel to this for spoilery reasons that will make sense if you read the spoiler section and then re-read the title. Weirdly enough the Seal of the High Council that the Third Doctor takes off The Master here is used by the Eleventh Doctor during the TV story “The Time of the Doctor”, now that’s a long, long time in between first appearance and pay-off!
Beyond that there are mainly just visual callbacks, like the Yeti from “The Web of Fear” and stuff like that.
Overall Thoughts:
“What is it, Doctor? Do you really think a Time Lord you once thought of as a nice person could end up power-mad and evil? Pfft. What nonsense.”
“The Five Doctors” is a really fun 90 minutes full of callbacks and fan-pleasing dialogue, but in truth it doesn’t really do anything other than that. The plot, such as it is, is extremely thin and having the Fourth Doctor not involved but still calling it “The Five Doctors” remains a crappy thing to do really… Still, I can’t be too harsh on it, it’s a bit of fun for the 20th Anniversary, and due to that it accomplishes what it set out to do!
As the Doctors approach Rassilon’s tomb they start to see mental visions trying to tell them to come away; the Third Doctor sees Mike Yates (Richard Franklin) and Liz Shaw (Caroline John) while the Second Doctor sees Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Zoe (Wendy Padbury), but they both break free, including the Second Doctor infamously saying they can’t be real because “they had their memories erased by the Time Lords”, adding more fuel to the Season 6B fire. While this is going on the First Doctor and Tegan run into a floor trap that the former soon figures out after The Master steps across it with no issue yet the Cybermen he led there don’t. The Fifth Doctor meanwhile finds a secret room and sees that the villain at the heart of it all was his old mentor and current President Borusa, who wants to gain Rassilon’s immortality secret so he can reign as President forever. He uses the “Coronet of Rassilon” to take control of the Fifth Doctor’s mind and heads to the Tower now the other Doctors have made the path clear.
Rassilon gives The Doctor an offer he CAN refuse… four times! … at the same time!
As Doctors 1-3 and their companions all arrive in the tomb (and start arguing) The Master arrives wanting to take the immortality secret for himself but he gets punched unconscious by the Brigadier, who gives a nice quip by saying how it was nice to see him again (great moment!) The Fifth Doctor and Borusa arrive and the other Doctors combine their will to break their older self free and then the four of them allow Borusa to approach Rassilon and get his wish granted as The First Doctor figured out a warning engraved on a nearby slab. An image of Rassilon appears (played by Richard Mathews) and he gives Borusa the immortality he sought… as a stone slab on Rassilon’s tomb, a proper monkey’ paw wish! With that dealt with the Doctors got their separate ways, with the Fifth getting told he had been made President of Gallifrey by unanimous decision but he runs for it instead, when asked if he wants to go on the run from his own people the Doctor saying “Why not? After all, that’s how it all started!” which is on the fourth-wall-breaky side, but I’ll let it slide. He does eventually serve as President in the audio drama I mentioned in the continuity bit, in case you’re wondering…
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