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The
Fifth Doctor
(1981 - 1984) |
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The
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| Nyssa |
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The Best Doctor
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if I am your favourite Doctor |
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 Following
Tom Baker’s portrayal of The Doctor, the Fifth Doctor’s debut
appearance created a marked contrast between the two characters; while
the Fourth took some while to recover from the trauma of his regeneration
and spent several days unconscious, the Fifth, although mobile, was portrayed
as highly confused and requiring assistance, this aspect of his personality
made all the more prominent by the fact that he required the aid of the
Watcher - a kind of ‘ghost’ of his future self that had appeared
over the course of the Fourth Doctor’s last adventure - in order
to regenerate in the first place.
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| Castrovalva |
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The
new Doctor was very different than his other selves. While other Doctors
had always appeared fairly old, assuming a father - and, in the First
Doctor’s case, grandfather - role to his companions, the Fifth
appeared physically far younger, giving a softer, almost naïve impression
as he travelled. This attitude prompted some to regard this Doctor as
the ‘weakest’; indeed, during "The
King of Terror" the
Third
Doctor’s old enemy Control - head of the CIA - referred to
the Fifth Doctor as ‘the vulnerable one’, and mockingly suggested
he sit down before he hurt himself. His debut episode did little to negate
this impression, his companions forced to carry him to the TARDIS before
he began to wander around his ship, discarding his old clothes to help
him find his way around and calling his companions by the wrong names
(Adric was referred to as Jamie and Tegan
Jovanka was briefly mistaken for Vicki ).
Fortunately, despite The Master’s attempts to set a trap for the
newly-regenerated Doctor, his plans failed as The Doctor and his companions
escaped, The Doctor casually commenting that he now felt ‘absolutely
splendid’.
Unlike
his predecessors, who commonly assumed an air of mystery that avoided
giving away anything more than was necessary, the Fifth Doctor regularly
came across as being a very expressive-faced, boyish mixture of ancient
intelligence and eager curiosity. As his regeneration stabilised a very
likeable personality developed, The Doctor displaying a willingness to
teach and a simultaneous eager desire to learn, curious to a fault, generous
of spirit, strong of body, co-ordinated, limber, and warmly courteous.
However, his faults were also evident, sometimes prone to snapping and
lecturing at others - on one particular occasion he commented that he
sometimes wondered why he liked Earth so much given humanity’s
habit of seeking the most violent solution to problems ("Warriors
of the Deep") - also sometimes offering sarcastic responses to what
he perceived as the incredible density of his companions'
reasoning abilities; he once even yelled at his own future self when
he briefly met the Tenth
Doctor (Although it should be noted that he initially didn’t
know who the other man actually was) ("Time
Crash").
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| Earthshock |
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As
far back as the First
Doctor we find a scientist adventurer with
a soft spot for orphans (even if he was initially unaware of their
orphaned status when he met them). William Hartnell's Doctor - originally
found travelling with his granddaughter Susan -
went on to take Vicki and Dodo under
his wing, while Patrick
Troughton's brought Victoria aboard,
and even Tom Baker's independent Doctor Who couldn't resist the fatherless
Leela's plea to travel with him or send
the stowaway Adric back to his home planet of Alzarius. Even shortly
before his regeneration, the Fourth Doctor took action to save Nyssa - the now-orphaned daughter of Tremas, a friend of The Doctor’s
whose body had been taken by The Master after his own regenerations
were exhausted - leaving his fifth self the unofficial guardian of
two alien orphans and an outspoken, act-before-you-think young human
called Tegan Jovanka.
Like
many Doctors, the Fifth Doctor’s relationship with his companions
defined much of his identity. Adric was seen as almost a pupil in
need of fatherly guidance, being occasionally on over to the point
of view of villains such as Monarch or the vampire Aukon, although
he was nevertheless a capable companion when the situation truly
required it. Nyssa, by contrast, was treated as an equal or niece,
The Doctor respecting her intelligence and helping her to grow up
during their time together, culminating in her leaving to help treat
the dangerous Laxar’s Disease on the ship Terminus. While his
relationship with Tegan was initially more of a trial than the others
- due to her habit of blundering into any sort of trouble and of
freely and loudly expressing her disagreements, as well as her continued
frustration at his inability to return her to her own era - her fundamental
loyalty to him, possibly combined with the fact that he might have
felt that he deserved her scorn to keep him in check, helped to overcome
these problems. During her travels, Tegan eventually coming to enjoy
herself to the extent that she formed an almost sisterly bond with
fellow companion Nyssa, later meeting and briefly travelling with
the First Doctor when rogue Time Lord Borusa drew The Doctor’s
past selves together for his own ends.
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| Arc of Infinity |
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Later
companions would be Vislor
Turlough,
another orphan, simultaneously an alien exile trapped on Earth for
reasons unknown, who was manipulated
by The
Black Guardian into joining The Doctor’s companions
so that he could kill The Doctor in revenge for him depriving The
Black Guardian of the Key to Time. Although Turlough rarely volunteered
information about his past beyond his alien status, The Doctor respected
this desire, genuinely coming to like the younger boy as time went
on. The android Kamelion,
a shape-shifting machine that had been stolen by The Master at some
point in the past, was another intriguing
addition, with The Doctor showing a great willingness to treat Kamelion
as a sentient being even after he learned that Kamelion was essentially
a slave by his very nature. Even at the very end of his life, as
Peri Brown - a runaway college student escaping an apparently abusive stepfather
- joined him, he quickly demonstrated an attachment to
her, her original request for a three-month trip quickly extending
to the point where she travelled with him for well over a year even
after his regeneration (To say nothing of agreeing to her suggestion
that Erimem, a previously-unknown female Egyptian
pharaoh, travel with them for a brief time).
The
Fifth Doctor, like his predecessors, feels strong responsibility
for the safety of his companions, putting them and others first at
the risk of his own life on many occasions, risking such varied methods
of death as suffocation, snakebite, electrocution, madmen and gunfire
in order to help his friends and companions. This trait proved particularly
useful as he faced a diverse range of enemies in this incarnation,
ranging from old foes such as The Master (who orphaned Nyssa and
murdered Tegan's aunt before being responsible for the end of The
Doctor’s fourth incarnation), the Cybermen, Silurians, Sea
Devils, and Daleks,
to new enemies like the frog-faced Urbankans, colourful Terileptils,
malevolent Mara, treacherous Eternals, terrible Tractators, and the
menacing Malice. During this incarnation, The Doctor had two particularly
personal encounters with the Cybermen, their plan to destroy Earth
resulting in the death of The Doctor’s companion Adric (“Earthshock”),
while a later trip to Mondas in its distant past revealed that the
entire Cyber-race was essentially based on The Doctor, the Cybermens’ creator Doctorman
Christine Allan perfecting the design of the Cybermen after scans
of The Doctor inspired her to mimic his brain’s structure and
create a third lobe that controlled all body functions while leaving
the rest of the brain free to operate more efficiently ("Spare
Parts").
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| The Five Doctors |
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Despite
the Fifth Doctor’s intelligence, his boyish face worked to
his disadvantage at times, as authority figures reacted with hostility
to the idea that this seemingly young man tried to order them about; The
Toymaker once taunted The Doctor with this, claiming
that he only kept his current companions around because otherwise
nobody would take him seriously ("Divided
Loyalties").
His clothing further encouraged this appearance; while previous Doctors
had worn rather elaborate outfits, ranging from the Third Doctor’s
velvet jackets to the Fourth Doctor’s long scarf, the most
distinctive thing about the Fifth Doctor was the stick of celery
he regularly kept pinned to his lapel - apparently to warn him of
the presence of certain gases - otherwise wearing an Edwardian cricket
outfit (A game for which he demonstrated a certain fondness in this
incarnation). Although he, like all Doctors, desired a peaceful solution
to the problems he faced, this Doctor commonly found himself facing
crises on such a scale that he failed to win his enemies over, sometimes
demonstrating a lack of confidence in his skills - such as asking
Adric to check an equation he’d just calculated - or making
crucial errors in judgement, such as allowing Davros to gain the
upper hand during their confrontation aboard a Dalek space station
("Resurrection
of the Daleks"); during a meeting with his
sixth and seventh selves he injured his leg during their attempt
to escape an attack by the mysterious ‘Sirens of Time’,
and was nearly killed before a being called the Temperon sacrificed
itself to imprison the Sirens once and for all ("The Sirens of Time").
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| Frontios |
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This
habit of making mistakes was not simply a matter of The Doctor senselessly
berating himself; on one occasion he accidentally destroying an entire
planet of beings of pure thought while trying to stop a race of psychic
pirates ("Omega"),
and on another occasion being forced to witness the deaths of the
crew of an underwater base when the
Silurians and the Sea Devils attempted to trigger a nuclear war ("Warriors
of the Deep"). This violence eventually drove Tegan to leave
The Doctor after he was forced to unleash a lethal virus to destroy
a Dalek army, as she could no longer cope with the violence that
she witnessed while travelling with him even as she acknowledged
that he never intended to cause such damage. Despite his occasional
apparent ineptitude compared to his other selves - on one occasion
he even required the aid of his first three incarnations to break
through the hypnotic influence created by his old teacher Borusa
("The
Five Doctors") - The Doctor nevertheless won some
important victories in this incarnation, outwitting The Black Guardian’s
attempt to claim revenge and leading an army of various races - the
army including his old enemies the Sontarans,
the Ogrons and the Cybermen - against the evil Time Lord general Morbius ("Warmonger").
When circumstances forced him to take on the role of Lord President of the Time Lords as Borusa's political manipulations had left the High Council in such a state that none of the other members had the political strength to carry out the necessary reforms after Borusa had created a system that depended on his presence, the Fifth Doctor actually did well in the role, using the opportunity to make some changes to Gallifrey's political process that he felt were necessary ("Time in Office"). However, he finally chose to abandon his role once Gallifrey was politically stable rather than remain in power to encourage a more interventionist policy, his old companion Leela helping The Doctor recognise that taking such a stance would turn himself and his people into tyrants enforcing their will on other civilisations. This Doctor was also responsible for a crucial victory when he was called upon to find the segments of the Key to Time, which had been unintentionally damaged by the actions of his previous self, helping to encourage his new companion Amy and her 'sister' Zara - sentient Tracers created by the mysterious beings known as the Grace - to explore their own identities rather than just blindly seek the segments for the Grace. As a result, at the conclusion of the quest, he defied both the Grace and the Black and White Guardians
as they each demanded the Key, trusting Zara to make the right choice
and give the Key to him, allowing him to destroy it and prevent anyone
from using its powers ("The
Key 2 Time: The Judgement of Isskar" and "The
Key 2 Time: The Chaos Pool").
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| Resurrection of the Daleks |
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Interestingly
enough, despite the monstrous aliens The Doctor regularly encountered,
many of his foes in this incarnation were simply unbalanced rather
than evil, such as when The Doctor and Adric were imprisoned on Deva
Loca by a man suffering from a nervous breakdown while Tegan was
left in danger from a powerful entity known as the Mara, which bent
and corrupted her mind on two occasions to use her as its host in
the real world ("Kinda” and "Snakedance"). A
particularly memorable encounter with a Victorian expedition to the
Moon in 1878 culminated in The Doctor and Turlough being imprisoned
and nearly killed by a lieutenant on one of the spaceships who had
been driven half-mad by fear of what the expedition had encountered,
the situation made worse by his inability to cope with the freedom
that his skills as a space pilot offered him in a world where class
restrictions were the norm, thus prompting The Doctor to take action
to end Victorian exploration of space ("Imperial
Moon").
Even at the end of his life, The Doctor found himself surrounded
by madmen on Androzani, forming a tentative alliance with the deformed
and enraged Sharaz
Jek to save Peri’s life and battle Jek’s
insane counterpart, the ruthless Tra Morgan, Jek’s grief-induced
madness providing an intriguing contrast to the intentional cruelty
of the gunrunners and the infernal hypocrisy of General Chellak.
Given
this Doctor’s sometimes-failed but never-weakened desire to
avoid causing death, it is no surprise that the Fifth Doctor’s
death came about as a result of sacrifice to save his companion.
While visiting the planet Androzani Minor, The Doctor and Peri both
unintentionally contracted the fatal disease Spectrox Toxaemia, The
Doctor’s best efforts to acquire the antidote - the milk of
a giant bat native to the planet - resulted in him only acquiring
enough for one of them, causing him to give Peri the milk while allowing
himself to die. As visions of his old friends passed through his
mind, encouraging him not to die - countered by a vision of The Master ‘ordering’ him
to do the opposite - energy swept over The Doctor, altering his features
and physical appearance before he sat bolt upright, a new man in
appearance while still remaining indisputably The Doctor.
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| The Caves of Androzani |
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Even
after his regeneration, however, the Fifth Doctor’s legacy
remains with his future self. During the events of "Timewyrm:
Revelation", when the powerful being known as the Timewyrm hid
inside the Seventh
Doctor’s mind, it was revealed that
the Fifth Doctor has come to personify the conscience of his future
incarnations, The Doctor’s companion Ace travelling into The
Doctor’s mind to free the Fifth Doctor - The Doctor having
buried his conscience out of what he perceived to be necessity -
before the Seventh killed her to defeat the Timewyrm (An action that
proved to be a wise decision, as The Doctor’s guilt over his
actions would otherwise have led to the Timewyrm being reborn). During
a brief meeting with his tenth incarnation after their two TARDISes
unintentionally collided - the Fifth Doctor appearing far older than
usual due to the presence of two Doctors shorting out the ‘time
differential’ - the Tenth Doctor told the Fifth before his
departure that the Fifth Doctor was his favourite past self, the
Tenth Doctor regarding it as the point when he stopped trying to
be old and important and simply allowed himself to have some fun
as he travelled around in the TARDIS, even noting elements of his
own clothing that he had assumed from the Fifth Doctor such as his
trainers and ‘brainy specs’ (Commenting that The Doctor
didn’t actually need his glasses but wore them because they
made him look smarter).
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