Doctor Who (1963): The Five Doctors - Part 4

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the final chapter of The Five Doctors. If you want to go back and read an earlier part, click PART ONE, PART TWO or PART THREE.

This special features a ton of returning Doctor Who characters, but far from all of them. Counting only the absolutely unambiguous and indisputable companions, it's missing 13 people, and this goes up to 19 if you count the more debatable ones. I won't start listing them all, however, so you'll just have to imagine who I'm counting as ambiguous (*cough* Kamelion *cough*).

Funny thing is, if you were to look at this from a more non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint and count the number of companions from the series' future that are missing, that number would also be 19. Well, depending on who you decide to include.

You probably know this already, seeing as this is the fourth part of this review, but there will be SPOILERS beyond this point. Not for anything new though, and by 'new' I mean 'it aired during the last 40 years'.

---

Previously on Doctor Who:

Former Doctors and companions have been dropped into the deadly Game of Rassilon. It seems like the Castellan was responsible but he was killed while resisting arrest so we don't know what he was up to.

The first three Doctors have made it into the Dark Tower at the centre of the Death Zone (with a little help from the Master) and are currently heading to the Tomb of Rassilon to free the TARDIS before it's blown up by Cybermen. Meanwhile, the Fifth Doctor is with the Time Lord High Council, investigating what's really going on.

And now, the conclusion:

Another model shot of the Dark Tower! They really went all-out on this story. Plus the design does pretty much match how it looked when the First Doctor and Tegan were at the door.

The team that put together the 2023 Blu-ray were apparently less impressed however, as this is one of the shots that got replaced with new visual effects.

Hey, it's Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot... and she's wearing bubble wrap. In any other series that might be considered unusual (its pretty damn weird in this too, to be honest).

This scene is very similar the one from two minutes ago, where the Third Doctor ran into phantoms of Mike Yates and Liz Shaw. Those two were standing in a hallway trying to lure the Doctor to come with them, while these two want him to stay back. The two scenes were a cheap way to slot in whatever actors turned out to be available for a cameo. Even the dialogue is generally generic enough to fit anyone, though they did have to make one last-minute change when Deborah Watling had to drop out and was replaced by Frazer Hines.

Originally it would've been Zoe and Victoria here, and she would've given herself away by calling the Brigadier by his rank, despite only meeting him when he was a colonel.

6-44 - The War Games, Part 10

In the final episode the Doctor works out that they're illusions because the two characters got their memories erased by the Time Lords at the end of The War Games and shouldn't remember him. That's very clever... but this Doctor shouldn't know about this, as he'd been captured by the Time Lords and got regenerated into the Third Doctor at the same time.

This is only one of many continuity errors related to the Second Doctor in televised Doctor Who, and fans eventually came up with 'season 6B' to explain them all. War Games and Five Doctors writer Terrance Dicks would later write a novel confirming this theory to be true... as long as you consider the novels to be canon.

While the first three Doctors wander the surprisingly safe and empty Dark Tower, the Fifth Doctor has a puzzle to solve. Borusa went into the Council Chambers but he's not here now and no one saw him leave.

He investigates the room for clues, eventually noticing that when he plucks notes on the Harp of Rassilon it's accompanied by the sound of a mechanism inside the wall. The trouble is that he doesn't know the combination of notes to play in order to open the lock. Some sheet music would be handy right now, but that's not likely to be out on display.

The First Doctor is the first to arrive in the Tomb of Rassilon, followed by the Third Doctor. This means we get the first meeting of Tegan and Sarah Jane! They introduce themselves by saying their names and shaking hands. It's nice to get some real character moments like this.

One asks Three what happened to 'the little fellow', so I suppose he remembers the events of The Three Doctors. Two isn't far behind however, and he's brought the Brig.

The Brig's already met everyone here and he remembers their names! I suppose Tegan Jovanka is fairly memorable.

Three comes over to say that it's nice to see him again and honestly I'm kind of surprised by this as the episode always puts plot over character and there's no reason for them to talk right now, besides the fact they worked together for 16 serials! That's potentially 86 episodes (though he probably missed a few). By comparison, he only appeared in 3 of the Second Doctor's stories, and that's counting The Three Doctors.

Anyway, Three walks away before the Brig can finish a single sentence, and that's the last they talk in this scene. To be fair, Three still works for the guy and sees him all the time, so it's not really much of a reunion from his perspective.

The Doctors have been working to translate the inscription etched into this stone. It looks like a maths equation but it's actually Old High Gallifreyan, which the Doctor can read.

It says that Rassilon lies in eternal sleep and whoever takes the ring from his hand will be rewarded with immortality. Personally, I wouldn't trust any artefact promising immortality that I found inside a tomb, but to be fair Rassilon isn't dead. Those phantoms they met were his mental projections.

There's another red flag here: a warning saying "To lose is to win and he who wins shall lose." At this point, it's so obvious that this reward is going to lead to an ironic fate that I'm surprised Rod Serling hasn't crept in to give a Twilight Zone monologue about the dumbass that's going to come and try to take it.

It turns out that the dumbass is the Master! He was only helping the Doctor so that the High Council would give him a new cycle of regenerations, but immortality is even better. Plus he's a little pissed off that Three and Five didn't believe him and refused his help. Now he shall have his revenge, by killing the Doctor three times over! So much for "The cosmos without the Doctor scarcely bears thinking about".

The Brig distracts him, Three kicks the tissue compression eliminator out of his hand, and the Brig finishes him off with a one-punch knockout, all in one take, with Anthony Ainley doing a great stunt fall at the end. Unfortunately, it was all filmed from this one angle, so it's a rushed mess, with Three's kick coming out of nowhere so fast you could blink and miss it.

I like that the Fifth Doctor's the one solving the plot while the Doctors solve the game, but this is really showing why he needs companions to spot things for him.

Here's some Fifth Doctor trivia: producer John Nathan-Turner liked to give the regulars a consistent iconic look (which is why Turlough's still wearing a school uniform), but if you look really closely Five actually has two different outfits over his run. This is the first costume, which you can tell because of the V pattern on the jumper and the red stripe on the shirt. A couple of serials later he had a new jumper with a different V pattern and a new shirt with a green stripe. He probably had a new coat as well, but they left the damn celery there though.

Anyway, Five finally spots the clue and proves he's pretty good at playing a harp. A hidden door opens and this leads to a bit of a Spaceballs moment as he catches the villain playing with his dolls.

It was Lord President Borusa! You can tell he's evil because he's changed in his black robes.

Being the most powerful man on Gallifrey is great until it ends, so Borusa has been taking steps to ensure that never happens. He wants to be immortal and rule the Time Lords forever, and he wants it bad enough to kidnap the Doctor and frame the Castellan.

Back at the Dark Tower, the Third Doctor does his signature trick of reversing the polarity of the neutron flow in order to free the TARDIS from the forcefield. Meanwhile, the companions are busy tying the Master up.

Just think of how many lives would've been saved in the future if they'd just let him take Rassilon's immortality ring and have his ironic fate. I mean after confiscating his tissue compression elminator so he can't kill any of them.

At this point, the few Cybermen who haven't already died in horrible ways are ready to blow up the TARDIS and achieve their ultimate victory over the Doctor. After all, he'll never be able to find another TARDIS on Gallifrey!

I love Doctor Who pyrotechnics.

The smoke clears to reveal that there's been a cut and the TARDIS prop had been moved before the bombs went off. It can dematerialise in a hurry when it wants to.

Actually, going through it frame by frame reveals that the shot is cleverer than that. It seems that they filmed the explosives going off twice, and the cut happens a few frames into the first explosion when the TARDIS is obscured by fire. The episode is an interesting blend of rushed first unit scenes with the main cast and elaborate second unit carnage, but at least they had their priorities straight!

Back in his hidden lair, Borusa explains that he wanted the Doctor to get past the traps and dangers in the Death Zone and brought him companions to assist him. And they actually were a big help. Susan spotted the TARDIS right in front of the First Doctor, Tegan spotted the Cybermen squad when they were practically standing next to the Fifth Doctor, and the Brig punched out the Master... who Borusa sent in there.

In fact, he put the Dalek and the Cybermen in there too. Probably the Rastan Warrior Robot as well and maybe even the Yeti. This seems like a really dumb thing for him to do, seeing as he wanted the Doctor to win, but I think the Third Doctor had it figured out: he wanted the Doctor to win. He wanted to chuck him in the deep end and watch him play the Game of Rassilon against his greatest foes (and also the Cybermen). In fact, he wanted to watch five of them play the game simultaneously, even though the deaths of any of the first four would've been a paradox. Though he had to settle for just three when the Fourth Doctor got stuck and the Fifth Doctor went off-script.

And now that the other Doctors have lowered the forcefield, he uses the Coronet of Rassilon to control Five's mind and make him bow down to him.

Borusa teleports into the Tomb of Rassilon and immediately uses the Coronet to freeze the companions. So they're all out of the picture now. Literally, as we don't even see them again for the next four minutes.

Oh, Susan and Turlough turned up in the TARDIS by the way. There was a really touching and emotional reunion as Two and Three both saw their granddaughter for the first time in maybe hundreds of years. Unfortunately, it took place entirely in my imagination. What actually happened is that Susan and Turlough walked behind the Doctors, who didn't even glance back at them, and that was it. I suppose they're just glad to finally get out of the TARDIS console room set.

Look, it's all four Doctors on screen at once! And it only took 1 hour and 20 minutes.

John Nathan-Turner apparently minimised the amount of time the Doctors were on screen together in an attempt to avoid any issues with clashing egos on set. Which is funny, because Troughton and Pertwee already got on, Hurndall was a newcomer, and Davison... was Peter Davison.

Back in The Three Doctors, Two and Three together weren't strong enough to defeat Omega in a battle of wills, but One, Two, Three and Five together actually overcome Borusa's authentic Rassilon-brand artefacts! Five is freed from his control and walks over to join the others.

And then Rassilon's floating holographic head shows up!

We still don't know at this point if Rassilon is a good guy or not. We've heard the official story that he was a benevolent ruler and the rumours that he was a bit of a bastard, and either could be true.

Borusa says that the others are his servants, so Rassilon asks if that's true. He gets three 'no's and a 'yes'. The writer decided that the youngest of the Doctors gets to be the one to solve the final puzzle, I guess because he's so old and wise, so it's the First Doctor who tells Borusa that Rassilon totally deserves what's coming to him.

Borusa takes the ring and becomes one of the faces on the side of Rassilon's tomb. A living statue, forever. That's pretty horrifying... the way they've done the effect I mean, with the painted faces under plastic masks.

It turns out that the Doctors didn't need to do anything to defeat the villain, his plan was self-defeating from the very start. To win is to lose, just like the sign said. I wonder if the tomb's reached its capacity for ironic punishment now, or if there are more empty spaces on the other side.

Borusa asks the Doctors if they'd like some immortality and they firmly reject the offer. Two even ducks behind Three out of fear.

With Borusa gone the companions are all freed from his mind control. Actually, I just realised that the Coronet of Rassilon has disappeared entirely. I guess it's been put in the Attic of Rassilon. It turns out that Rassilon's actually a fairly decent guy, as he frees the Fourth Doctor and Romana from the time eddy as well.

I'm sure when I watched this episode for the first time during that Twitch marathon a few years back, he got put back on the boat he was taken from. But it's much funnier to have him running into the box and getting his scarf caught in the door, even if his clothes don't match how he looked when he was taken.

A lot of folks weren't keen on this scene being put back in the Blu-ray release, as it kind of implies that Shada didn't happen. But it's just a clip from later in the episode, so nothing about it proves anything. Maybe it shows that Borusa put the Doctor lying on his ass next to a fence, in a different outfit. Or maybe it shows that the Doctor and Romana are well into their current adventure and doing fine.

Hey, different TARDIS prop! Four's old TARDIS was apparently replaced with this new fiberglass prop right after filming Shada, though it didn't get this darker paint job until earlier in the year. I'm just reading this off another website (The Mind Robber), don't blame me if any of the facts are wrong!

Well the crisis is over, the villain defeated himself and the Master got sent somewhere else, so the Doctors and companions finally have a chance to relax and actually talk to each other! But they don't. They shake hands, say their goodbyes, and head off into the TARDIS.

Well, the Doctors do get a chance to mock each other a little first. Though the First Doctor is considerably nicer than he was in The Three Doctors, saying that it's reassurring to know that his future is in good hands. Plus the Brig repeats the line "Splended fellows, all of you," like the writer had forgotten he'd already used it at the start. (It's a little different second time around to be fair).

Then three cutouts of the TARDIS fly out of it before vanishing. This is strange because the TARDIS doesn't usually move. It also makes no damn sense. The Special Edition changed it to the time scoop taking them away, which was better but still not great. Why not just have Five drop them off in their own times? He can steer the TARDIS fairly well, when he's not aiming for Hearthrow Airport at least.

The important thing I want to know is, was Susan able to grab her stuff this time? The first time she left she was just locked out and stranded. Actually what I want to know is what happens to Bessie! Is it stuck on Gallifrey now?

Oh, this must be why they were in a rush. Chancellor Flavia has arrived with guards, and the Time Lords have a habit of wiping his companion's minds when they catch them on Gallifrey. Well, okay, that only happened the one time, but it was one time that got referenced in this story!

Flavia has a job offer for him, well, more of a job demand: he's the new leader of Gallifrey! Again.

He made himself a presidential candidate in The Deadly Assassin, then claimed the presidency in The Invasion of Time before handing it over to Borusa, so it's not completely absurd that he'd chosen. It is completely absurd to believe he'd actually do it though! He starts giving orders, saying that he's travelling back in his TARDIS and Flavia has full deputy power until he arrives, and then makes a run for it. She's the new leader of Gallifrey!

Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor finds that Tegan and Turlough both believe he's going to return home and take the job. It's like they haven't met him.

He's going to go on the run from his own people in a rickety old TARDIS. Just like how it was for him when he started.

Hey, William Hartnell got a credit! It's a bit strange though, to see six actors credited as "The Doctor" in a story called The Five Doctors. Especially as up to this story he'd always been called "Dr. Who" or "Doctor Who".

It's not even his name, I don't get it.

Christopher Eccleston was credited as "Doctor Who" in the 2005 series, but David Tennant was "The Doctor" and that's been the case with all his successors as well.

Something else is a bit unusual here: they changed the music. The credits start with Delia Derbyshire's classic '60s arrangement which eventually transitions into the '80s version by Peter Howell.


CONCLUSION

---

In this era of crossovers and deepfakes and Fortnite DLC, it's become more important than ever that characters, designs and settings are iconic and authentic and immediately recognisable. So even the actor's face is part of their character's image. Now when we see a new actor playing Superman or Spider-Man etc., they're explicitly a different person from another universe, not a recasting. In fact, they can even interact with their earlier incarnations (or just stare at bizarrely terrible looking CGI representations of them while the original actors spin in their grave). Even the James Bond movies have drawn a line between the original continuity and the Daniel Craig era, and series like Strange New Worlds are weird exceptions.

So Doctor Who was pretty ahead of the curve when it (tried to) put five different versions of the same character together into one story. Actually, it was ahead of the curve back in 1966 when they invented regeneration in the first place, as it meant that new actors could be a really good Second or Third Doctor, instead of a string of out-of-character First Doctors. What I'm getting at here, is that recasting the First Doctor was a mistake. It was probably also a mistake for the actor to not look at at footage of Hartnell in action, or for the writer to assume this Doctor was the kind of guy who'd tell a woman he'd just met to go to the kitchen and make him some sandwiches, but in my opinion their main error was in choosing to recast in the first place. The First Doctor only appears in this story for 20 seconds at the start.

I'd say that the episode's also very modern in how it brings together heroes for an epic crossover, but even back then the series was being influenced by trends already happening in comic book stories. Still, they really prioritised bringing back as many as many actors as possible, to the point where the story feels like it was a puzzle that the writer had to solve.

I can imagine fans at the time absolutely loving The Five Doctors and I'm not saying they were wrong to. This was a proper event in its day and it delivers almost everything it promises. You want classic monsters? It's got a Dalek and Cybermen together in one story for the very first time, along with the Master. You want returning characters? How about The Brig, Susan, Sarah Jane, K-9, Romana, Jamie, Zoe, Mike Yates and Liz Shaw! Plus Borusa, the Castellan and we also see Rassilon for the first time. It's got location filming, model shots, action scenes, explosions, and honestly that Rastan Warrior Robot sequence was way more hardcore than I remembered. John Nathan-Turner didn't have the room to fit any of his favourite light entertainment stars into this one, so he got behind the camera and delivered some heavy metal carnage instead.

Unfortunately, it's quantity over quality, nostalgia over substance. A big crossover event where all the characters you love return to listen to exposition while they hike across North Wales, and then go stand in the background doing nothing during the climax. Two and the Brig aside, the episode is never, not even for a moment, about old friends being reunited. And it certainly doesn't give a damn about what they've been up to in the meantime. I still can't believe that they brought Susan back after 20 years and pretty much all we get with her is a joke about her spraining her ankle again. Yeah the series was a different show in 1983 and people expected a certain kind of story, but I can promise you that no one was watching the big reunion crossover episode because they were really into the Tomb of Rassilon. Sure no one had seen The Dalek Invasion of Earth in two decades, but tell a new viewer that the Doctor has a granddaughter and that is going to get their attention.

Of course, it's easy for me to criticise the wasted potential here when I live in the future and I've seen what stories like this are capable of... so I'm going to carry on doing that. Because the biggest problem with The Five Doctors may be that it keeps the Doctors separated.

The thing about the Doctor, in any incarnation, is that they always want to be the centre of attention, the most interesting person in the room. The Tony Stark or Captain Kirk of the group. But you can't make an Avengers team of nothing but Tony Starks unless you're very clever about it, so I understand why the episode keeps them isolated in their own adventures where they each get to be the main protagonist. Honestly, I think it's great that this episode gives us new stories for both the Second and Third Doctors. However, a clever writer might see a room full of Tony Starks as an opportunity to dig into who the character is, what they think about themselves, what drives them, what they regret, how they've changed over time etc. Or alternatively they could just have them do some funny bickering like in The Three Doctors. Sadly, the best we get here is a few mean comments about their clothes.

I did enjoy the episode though. Sure it's empty nostalgia and the deadly Game of Rassilon was weirdly lacking in danger and challenges (nine characters venture into the Death Zone and the only injury is a sprained ankle), but it's a fun well-paced action-adventure. If you were going to ask me what The Five Doctors is about, I'd reply that it's about 90 minutes, but it doesn't really feel like it.


Anniversary story ranking so far:

---

This is a tough choice, even though I've only seen two stories so far, but right now I think I'm going with this.

1. The Three Doctors (6)
   
2. The Five Doctors (6)
   

The Five Doctors has a better story, with the different teams tackling separate adventures while Five solves a mystery, but I'm giving The Three Doctors the edge due to its character interactions. Two and Three mostly just annoy each other, but that's more interesting than being separated for the entire story.

---

COMING SOON

Next on Super Adventures, Anniversary Special Month continues with another anniversary story. It's the Seventh Doctor serial Silver Nemesis! Not Remembrance of the Daleks, sorry.

You're welcome to share your own thoughts on The Five Doctors below.