WHONIVERSE: THE FOURTH DOCTOR, 1974-1981.

Under script editors Robert Holmes (1974-77) and Anthony Read (1977-78), the Doctor’s relationship with the Time Lords developed far beyond anything the previous Barry Letts/Terrance Dicks regime had attempted.

Twice in producer Philip Hinchcliffe’s run of stories (‘Genesis of the Daleks’ and ‘The Brain of Morbius’, above, both 1975) the Time Lords direct the Doctor to interfere in the timelines of planets, and it’s worth pointing out – again – that this was exactly the crime they’d exiled them to Earth for. This contradiction is explained in Holmes’ ‘The Deadly Assassin’ (1976) by the debut of the Celestial Intervention Agency, a clandestine Time Lord organisation with an agenda outside official policy. The resulting acronym ‘CIA’ is one of Holmes’ most playful, satirical touches.

In addition, there are Time Rings, Time Lord devices capable of transporting people through time and space without a TARDIS (‘Genesis of the Daleks’); the High Council war criminal Morbius and the Sisterhood of Karn, custodians of the Elixir of Life, shared with Time Lords during difficulties regenerating a body (‘The Brain of Morbius’); the stellar engineer Rassilion, his discovery the Eye of Harmony, and the “sum total” of all Time Lord knowledge, the Matrix (‘The Deadly Assassin’); the ganglia in a Time Lord’s brain that mentally unites them all (‘The Invisible Enemy’, 1977), and the secret time looping of the Fifth Planet on which the Fendahl – a creature from Time Lord mythology – originated (‘Image of the Fendahl’, 1977 again).

Then there are the Minyans, who treated the Gallifreyans as gods, rebelled against their patronage and destroyed their planet, a catastrophe that initiated the Time Lords’ official policy of non-intervention (‘Underworld’, 1978); the Great Key of Rassilon which powers the Demat Gun, the ultimate weapon, and the Outlers, drop-outs from Time Lord society who live in the wilderness outside the Capitol (‘The Invasion of Time’, 1978); Triple First academy graduate Romana, foisted on the Doctor as his assistant at the beginning of the search for The Key to Time by the White Guardian, posing as the President of the Supreme Council (‘The Ribos Operation’, 1978), and cockney rebel Time Lord Drax (‘The Armageddon Factor’, 1979), an old classmate of the Doctor’s (below): “60-40, know wot I mean?”

If production of Season 17 hadn’t been disrupted by a BBC strike, the 1979-1980 series would have concluded with the story ‘Shada’, featuring the Time Lords’ prison planet, retired Time Lord Professor Chronotis and the enigmatic book The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey. In ‘Shada’, Romana rather charmingly refers to her childhood as a “Time Tot”.

Because of all this, in the modern era of television drama with its thirst for backstory, the Tom Baker stories now play with a pleasingly contemporary feel. There’s also a massive dramatic irony in the Doctor, a renegade and convicted criminal, becoming Time Lord president. Their apparent betrayal of the Time Lords in ‘The Invasion of Time’ is very believable, considering the indignities they’d suffered at their peers’ hands. This attention to character detail confounds the criticism – made in Doctor Who fandom in the late 1970s – that, compared with other eras, the later Tom Baker stories were meandering and unconnected.

The reality is that individual serials were bound together more firmly than ever before. This is very much the case in Holmes’ vision of Time Lord society. Styled structurally and visually on the Vatican, with a series of colleges including Arcalians, Patrexes and Pyrdonians – the Doctor’s chapter, which delivered “more Time Lord presidents than any other.” The Panopticon, the palace central to Time Lord culture, is run by a Chancellor and policed by a Castellan, leader of the Chancellery Guards, while cardinals oversee the colleges.

This iconic new format served up one of the most rewarding aspects of Tom’s era, the Doctor’s equivocal relationship with his old teacher at Prydon Academy, Cardinal – later Chancellor – Borusa (above). The respectful, layered interactions between student and tutor are a joy to watch, particularly when actors of the calibre of Angus McKay and John Arnatt inhabit the character’s robes.

That’s the other distinctive thing about the Tom Baker years. They’re so delightfully LITERATE. Holmes has a ball with Borusa’s dialogue – “As I believe I told you long ago, Doctor, you will never amount to anything in the galaxy as long as you retain your propensity for vulgar facetiousness” – a baton taken up by both his successors at the script editor’s desk, Read and one Douglas Noël Adams (graduate of St. John’s College, Cambridge).

In addition to original, witty dialogue – in ‘The Stones of Blood’ (1978), the Doctor describes robots like K9 as “all the rage in Trenton, New Jersey” – there are diverse namedrops: Franklin Adams, “American humorist, 1881-1960”; Sir Isaac Newton; the Greek king Ulysees, hero of Homer’s liad; Swedish biologist Carl Linneaus; Renaissance man Leonardo da Vinci; Gertrude Stein, the Pennsylvanian author, poet, playwright and art collector; English philosopher John Aubrey; the Venerable Bede, writer of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731 AD)…

It’s an impressively eclectic list. Sydney Newman, Doctor Who’s creative godfather who championed the original, educational remit of the series, must have found these historical asides particularly satisfying.

It’s worth noting that Tom’s era includes the only two Doctor Who stories in which all the supporting characters are wiped out: ‘Pyramids of Mars’ (1975, with Robert Holmes re-writing Lewis Greifer’s script under a pseudonym, Stephen Harris) and Terrance Dicks’ ‘Horror of Fang Rock’ (1977), which Holmes edited. Tom wasn’t happy with what he saw as a derivative script – more than a little informed by John W. Campbell Jnr’s short story Who Goes There? (left) – and gave director Paddy Russell, who’d helmed ‘Pyramids’, a hard time. Whatever the circumstances of production, all four delivered a masterclass in suspense and claustrophobic character drama, as the marooned crew of an Edwardian yacht are murdered in a remote lighthouse by a shape-shifting Rutan. Holmes again added to Doctor Who’s mythology, with the first on-screen appearance of the Sontarans’ nemeses, first referred to in his ‘The Time Warrior’ (1973-74).

Especially worthy of note are the Doctor’s relationships with his female companions. Whether it’s journalist Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen), warrior Leela (Louise Jameson) or Time Lady Romana (Mary Tamm and Lalla Ward), they’re equal partnerships. The Doctor says Sarah is “my best friend” (‘The Seeds of Doom’, 1976) and their muted, heart-breaking goodbye in ‘The Hand of Fear’ (1976 again, above) speaks volumes. Leela’s violence initially causes conflict between the two time travelers, but the Doctor gradually recognises her lethal skills are a necessary evil. 

When Romana arrives, there’s endlessly entertaining byplay via her academic cleverness and the Doctor’s lived experience. She changes from being naive about creatures like the Schrivenzale (‘The Ribos Operation’), to being fully engaged with the people she meets, reflecting the Doctor's moral sense in her outrage at the White Guardian callously using Princess Astra as a component of The Key to Time (‘The Armageddon Factor’). By ‘Warriors' Gate’ (1981, below), it's entirely fitting that by the end of her travels, Romana effectively becomes the Doctor, exiled to E-Space with K9 Mark II, inspired to free the Tharils from slavery by constructing her own TARDIS. A blonde, female Doctor…

Generally speaking, and very much so under producer Graham Williams (1977-1980), there’s an increase in strong female supporting characters, both virtuous and villainous. Artist and ex-anti-aircraft gunner Amelia Ducat, Kastrian dictator Eldrad, Sandminer pilot Toos, pagan Mother Tyler, Gatherer’s assistant Marn, Time Lady engineer Rodan, mad Queen Xanxia, Professor Amelia Rumford, Cessair of Diplos – an agent of the Black Guardian? – android engineer Madame Lamia, Astra (the model for Romana’s second regeneration), the criminal Countess in ‘City of Death’ (1979), Lady Adrasta, the tyrannical ruler of Chloris, Leisure Hive director Mena… Once again, the Tom Baker production teams were way ahead of their time.

All this goes to show how wrong the programme’s fandom critics were at the time. John Peel, editor of Cosmic Masque, the Doctor Who Appreciation Society’s short story fanzine, didn’t like the increasing humour in the programme and often said so in print. Around the same time, Jan Vincent-Rudzki, the DWAS president, wrote disparagingly in his Celestial Toyroom column in 1978 about the Doctor “pattering along in the same clownish way unique to this incarnation.” When production unit manager John Nathan-Turner became producer in 1980, these observations seemed to inform his creative decisions regarding the Fourth Doctor i.e. Tom Baker would drop the improvisation – something he thrived on – and take everything seriously.

He left at the end of Nathan-Turner’s first season of Doctor Who in 1981. After Tom’s departure, out went artistic and cultural sophistication and in came continuity references and old monsters.

In 1985, BBC1 controller Michael Grade tried to cancel the programme, feeling it was tired and had fallen behind modern science fiction film and television.

He was right. For so many years, it used to be ahead.

At the start of Doctor Who’s 61st year, the Tom Baker years remain the popular and artistic high point of the 20th century phase of the series, the stories ranging through horror, Time Lord civilisation (‘The Invasion of Time’, below), satire, comic drama, fantasy and hard science fiction. Through all the genres at Doctor Who’s disposal, Tom is a towering presence – quite literally.

A breathtaking achievement in television drama.