This story shows how three companions can be put to excellent use. The way in which Adric is so easily indoctrinated, while Tegan tries everything to escape adds to the drama and unpredictability of the story. It’s amazing seeing how little control The Fifth Doctor has over his TARDIS team and how he can lose his temper with them - interesting new facets to the character. The ambiguity of the menace and the fact they are not overtly aggressive towards our TARDIS team only adds to that drama.

Peter Davison feels like The Doctor in this story. He has arrived and I am loving his performance.

This story has an amazing concept. Humans from throughout time, from many cultures end up on a spaceship run by seemingly non-hostile aliens who seem to want to get along. But The Doctor has an uneasy feeling. The green aliens create humanoid versions of themselves based off of Tegan’s drawings as part of a plan to head to Earth to resettle, and the human population with androids.

Watching the doctor and Tegan “enjoy” the on board cultural entertainment whilst worrying where Adric and Nyssa are is hilarious. This story is packed for of sparky details like that. This story looks and feels more exciting than any we’ve had in ages. The show feels invigorated.

idk pretty mid. adric is written very strangely in this, all of a sudden an instant anti-democracy sympathiser and sexist which he had never been in other episodes?? i hope this does not continue in his character going forward. the idea of the four different earthlings with different cultures and times is neat but it's not very explored. it's really sick that tegan can speak tiwi though that's a sick character detail and i'm really glad janet fielding pressed for that instead of random tribal noises or some weirdness. the villains never feel very threatening at all, but also are going to graphically execute the doctor it is such an escalation from what they do the rest of the time. obviously planning to kill all people on earth to repopulate it or take its cobalt is very evil - but that is villainy we are told and not shown. actually that is a problem with a lot of this serial - like bigon just tells doctor mostly everything, instead of the doctor having to work it out

It's far from perfect, but Four to Doomsday has a lot to offer viewers.  These early Fifth Doctor stories have a solid foundation for their companions.  They all really have a sense of purpose here and are each pretty entertaining in their own way.  Monarch isn't the most memorable villain but the weirdness of the Persuasion and Enlightenment characters definitely makes up for that a bit.  Overall, while not the best, it is memorable, creative, deeply silly, and, at its core, a true Doctor Who story.

This is part of a series of reviews of Doctor Who in chronological timeline order.

Previous Story: Psychodrome

After a dodgy start with Castrovalva, this is the story that has fully sold me on Peter Davison. He's captured the role completely.

Also, this is a perfect example of what can be done with 3 companions. They each get an equal role in the story and it proves that they can be balanced well without needing to sideline one or more of them.

The actual story itself was pretty good, I found the way they handled these different cultures to be fairly, not-racist? Normally this shouldn't be something that's necessary to point out but with the 70s/80s BBC this is a surprising change of pace, (I'm looking at you The Talons of Weng-Chiang). The scene where Tegan speaks to the Aboriginal in Tiwi is great and I'm glad Janet Fielding pushed to put that in.

Adric is written really poorly in this story, he's needlessly sexist at the beginning of the story and he sides with the villain for most of it, it's not at all how he was portrayed in previous stories.

Next Story: Kinda

This is an odd story, even by Doctor Who's standards! I really like the concept of an alien planning to steal Earth's minerals in an attempt to break the speed of light, and the stuff with Persuasion and Enlightenment taking on the form of Tegan's drawing is a really clever one.

I also think it's worth noting that even though Peter Davison admitted to feeling nervous during the recording of this serial (it was the first story he filmed), it really doesn't show. He seems so comfortable and confident in the role from the start, a bit like Matt Smith did in the first story he shot, The Time of Angels/Flesh And Stone.

Tegan is really annoying in this story though. I really hated her when she just straight up abandoned the Doctor and the others and left in the TARDIS at the end of Episode Three. I mean, what the hell, Tegan? Shows how much you care about them.

Also: Monarchy is way too easily defeated at the end. All the Doctor does is chuck the poison at him and he's shrunk. I was expecting a little more.

Overall a pretty good story.