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"I'm a Time Lord. I'm not a human being. I walk in eternity"
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| The Fourth Doctor: A Bohemian Walking in Eternity |
 It's apparent almost immediately that The Fourth
Doctor is markedly different from his predecessor. Even before he's
recovered from his regeneration, he's anxious to resume his
wanderings in the TARDIS, and it takes a bit of subterfuge for Sarah
Jane Smith and the Brig to convince him to stay on Earth until he
stabilizes. In contrast to the elegant and dignified Third Doctor,
this new persona has a dress style, posture, and demeanor that can
perhaps be best described as "laid back". Though his sheer physical
presence keeps him from being able to fade into the background as
his second persona could, they do share some character traits,
including an off-beat sense of humor and a tendency to keep people
guessing about their abilities and their motivations. The Fourth
Doctor is sometimes moody, and alternates between bursts of activity
and periods of quiet reflection. While he often cracks jokes, and
has an endearingly loopy quality which leads some who meet him to
question both his ability and sanity, there is always an underlying
seriousness in his methods. As he moves further away from his former
strong ties to Earth and becomes more involved with missions for the
Time Lords, these tendencies seem to become more pronounced, as if
his frequent involvement with his own people has reminded him of his
responsibilities to the cosmos. When the Time Lords send him on a
mission to alter the events of the creation of the Daleks
(Genesis of the Daleks), he questions his, and their, right
to do so, and ultimately decides that even the Daleks have the
potential for a greater good. The Fourth Doctor has a wide variety
of companions. In the beginning, there's Sarah Jane Smith and,
briefly, UNIT medical officer Harry Sullivan. After Sarah's
departure, there's an extended period when The Doctor's companions
are from alien worlds: Leela, the savage member of the Sevateem
tribe whom he tries, and ultimately fails, to civilize; the two
versions of K-9, the mobile computer; Romana, a young Time Lord
who's sent to help him find the Key of Time by a cosmic power known
as the White Guardian; and Adric, an Alzarian teenager who, perhaps,
reminds him of himself as a youth. The Fourth Doctor's enemies are
equally varied: old adversaries like the Sontarans, Daleks, and
Cybermen, and new ones like the Zygons, the Krynoid, the Mandragora
Helix, Magnus Greel, and the Vardans. His most notable new foes are
Davros, the twisted genius who created the Daleks, and the Black
Guardian, the evil, chaotic counterpart of the White Guardian. Most
importantly, The Doctor is again confronted by The Master, whose
scheme to gain a new cycle of regenerations nearly results in the
destruction of Gallifrey, and whose attempts to harness the powers
of Traken and Logopolis threaten the entire cosmos, and bring The
Doctor into contact with his final companions, Nyssa of Traken, and
Australian stewardess Tegan Jovanka. It is while battling The Master
that The Fourth Doctor loses his life, and it is fitting that in
making this sacrifice he once more saves the universe which he's
worked so hard to make better.
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| Who IS The Fourth Doctor? |
 The Fourth Doctor is a tall man with a mass of curly brown
hair, an expressive face which is usually dominated by a toothy
grin, and a voice which commands attention. His attire seems
inspired by a Toulouse-Lautrec poster, and usually consists of a
long coat, a vest or sweater, a battered brown hat, tweed trousers,
brogans or buccaneer boots, and a long multi-colored scarf. This
scarf, along with the sonic screwdriver, and the jelly babies he
often uses as an introductory ploy, are the trademarks of The Fourth
Doctor. His pockets sometimes seem to be as dimensionally
transcendental as the TARDIS itself, and the array of items he
carries include a galactic passport (Robot), a cricket ball
(The Ark in Space, The Hand of Fear), a yo-yo (The
Ark in Space, The Brain of Morbius, The Robots of
Death), a selection of books, including his 500-Year Diary
(The Sontaran Experiment), Oolon Caluphid's Origins of the
Universe (which "got it wrong on the first line": Destiny of
the Daleks) and a Tibetan language handbook (The Creature
from the Pit: apparently his ability to understand Tibetan was
lost when he regenerated from his previous form), a magnifying
glass, gemstones, handcuffs, an etheric beam locator (which also
detects ion-charged emissions: Genesis of the Daleks), a
picklock (Pyramids of Mars), a football rattle (The Masque
of Mandragora), a magician's cane (The Hand of Fear), a
clockwork egg-timer (The Face of Evil), a breathing tube
(The Robots of Death), a barrister's wig (The Stones of
Blood), and an instant camera (City of Death). On one
occasion (The Power of Kroll), he even drops a cup containing
a hot beverage into his pocket. He often remembers to carry money,
as well, which suggests that he isn't quite as scatterbrained as he
seems. The Fourth Doctor, a bohemian walking in eternity, is perhaps
the most complex, the most alien, and the most fascinating of all
The Doctor's incarnations.
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