Doctor Who © BBC

The Fourth Doctor

 


The Eight Doctors
"There's no point in being grown-up if you can't be childish sometimes"

The Fourth Doctor's Early Adventures
Companions and Allies: Sarah Jane, Harry Sullivan, Lethbridge-Stewart, Benton
Major Enemies: Wirrn, Sontarans, Davros, Daleks, Cybermen, Zygons

Robot
Location: England Date: April 1974

The Doctor tries to convince Harry that he's recoveredUNIT medical officer Harry Sullivan is in charge of The Doctor's recovery. Someone's stealing components for a disintegrator, and evidence suggests the robber's not human. The Doctor slips out of bed and heads for the TARDIS, but Sarah and the Brig convince him to stay and help. The Doctor finds a crushed flower at the site of the latest theft, and estimates the thief weighs a quarter ton. Sarah, with a pass from the Brig, tours Think Tank, a research facility, with its director, Hilda Winters, and her assistant, Arnold Jellicoe. She's told that Professor Kettlewell, a robotics specialist, is no longer there, and that his work's been abandoned, but she's suspicious and goes to see Kettlewell, who tells her no one could carry on his work. Sarah returns to Think Tank and is threatened by a robot. It's stopped by Winters, who tells her it isn't dangerous, and orders it to destroy her. The robot refuses, but Sarah's concerned about the distress it felt. After comparing notes, The Doctor, Sarah, and the Brig visit Kettlewell, who tells them the robot will go mad if its programming is altered. The robot steals a set of missile launch codes. The Brig learns that Winters and Jellicoe belong to the Scientific Reform Society. The next morning, after The Doctor gives into temptation and makes a trip in the TARDIS (see next entry), he and the Brig visit Think Tank, where Winters claims the robot was destroyed because Sarah introduced it to concepts it couldn't deal with. As they leave, Jellicoe tells Winters there's a visitor from the Ministry of Health, Dr. Sullivan, who's checking medical records. Kettlewell calls The Doctor, who's knocked out by the robot when he goes to the professor's lab. Sarah arrives and calms it down, but it escapes. Kettlewell is taken to UNIT, where he tells Sarah and Benton about another invention, a "metal virus" to rid the world of metallic waste. He sees an SRS leaflet, tells them he was a member, and agrees to sneak Sarah into that night's meeting. The Doctor, appalled when he learns this, arranges a raid, but the robot, Winters, Jellicoe, and Kettlewell (who, as The Doctor realized, has programmed the robot) escape, and take Sarah. Harry calls to say Think Tank's being abandoned, and that he Professor Kettlewell's Robot heard mention of a bunker, but the call's cut short. UNIT attacks the bunker, an old atomic shelter. As they approach, Winters orders Kettlewell to use the launch codes. Sarah and Harry, who've been taken to the bunker, rescue the professor, who aborts the launch. Sarah and Kettlewell try to reason with the robot, but it uses the disintegrator and the professor is killed. The robot, in shock, drops the gun. Winters restarts the launch but The Doctor aborts it. The robot captures Sarah, the only person who showed it kindness. It restarts the countdown because it believes this was Kettlewell's wish. Benton mentions the metal virus, and The Doctor and Harry go to the professor's lab. The superpowers, alerted by the Brig, stop the launch. The robot leaves the bunker with Sarah, and the Brig uses the disintegrator on it. The gun causes the robot to grow to gigantic size. The Doctor and Harry return, and The Doctor uses the virus to destroy the robot. With the menace over, The Doctor tempts Sarah with a trip in the TARDIS, and Harry also enters the ship. They take off, leaving the Brig to explain to the Queen that The Doctor will be "a little late" for his dinner at the palace.

Unrecorded Events
Location: Unknown Date: Unknown

During the previous adventure, The Doctor slips away from UNIT HQ and makes a trip in the TARDIS, landing on a planet where a Mordee spaceship crew is having computer trouble. The Doctor apparently succeeds in repairing the computer by imprinting his own personality on it. This journey, which the still-unstable Doctor forgets, will later come back to haunt him (The Face of Evil).
Theoretically Speaking

The Ark in Space
Location: Nerva Date: Unknown

The Doctor and Sarah examine the Wirrn queenThe TARDIS lands on a space station in the far future. The station's been converted into an Ark, with the best of Earth's inhabitants in cryogenic storage, but something has gotten into the machinery and delayed their wake-up call. Harry finds the corpse of a large insectoid creature in a cupboard. Sarah has accidentally been placed in suspension, and The Doctor and Harry revive Vira, the chief medtech, who helps wake her. A technician is missing, and Vira revives Noah, their leader, who suspects the TARDIS crew is responsible. After linking with the cerebral tissue of the dead alien, The Doctor learns the culprits are the insectoids, called Wirrn, whose queen laid eggs in the technician's body before she died, and who absorb the memories of their victims before assimilating them. Noah is infected, but retains enough humanity to place Vira in charge. With the help of Vira and technician Rogin, The Doctor and his companions prevent the Wirrn from taking over the Ark. Noah leads the Wirrn onto the Ark's shuttle and takes off, after Rogin sacrifices his life to ensure the ship's launch. The shuttle explodes, and Vira believes Noah has kept enough of his own personality to save them. The Doctor, with Sarah and Harry, transmats to Earth to repair the receivers there, and Vira begins reviving her people.

The Sontaran Experiment
Location: England Date: Unknown

The Doctor repairs the transmatAs The Doctor fixes the transmat, Sarah and Harry explore. Harry falls into a pit, and Sarah can't find The Doctor, who's been captured by colonists who've returned to Earth. Harry escapes from the pit, and Sarah meets Roth, who tells her about a robot which has been capturing his friends. He says they're being taken to an alien in the rocks, who's already captured and released their leader, Vural. With Roth's help, Sarah rescues The Doctor, and they look for Harry. The Doctor falls into the pit, and Sarah and Roth are captured by the robot, which takes them to the alien, a Sontaran named Styre, whom Sarah initially mistakes for Linx (The Time Warrior). Styre is testing to see if humans offer a threat to his people, and uses Sarah to test the human response to fear. Vural and his crew are captured by the robot. The Doctor gets out of the pit and releases Sarah, but is shot by Styre. He survives because a piece of the shuttle locking mechanism in his pocket absorbs the blast. Vural, who'd helped Styre, is tested with the others. The Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver to destroy the robot, and, after briefing Harry, challenges Styre to single combat. Sarah and Harry release the crew, and Harry goes to Styre's ship and removes part of its hardware. The Doctor is losing to Styre, but is saved when Vural distracts the alien, at the cost of his own life. Styre, who's exhausted his energy reserves, goes to his ship to recharge, but a part which The Doctor had Harry remove controls this process, and the ship feeds on Styre instead. The Doctor uses Styre's comlink to inform the Sontarans that Styre is dead, and their Marshal admits the invasion can't proceed without Styre's report. The Doctor and friends use the transmat to return to the Ark, leaving the others to await the arrival of its people.

Genesis of the Daleks
Location: Skaro Date: Unknown

The transmat beam is diverted by the Time Lords, whose emissary tells The Doctor that they want him to deal with the menace of the Daleks by aborting their creation, or altering it so the Daleks will be less of a threat. The Doctor agrees, and is given a time ring which will return him and his companions to Nerva when their mission is completed. The Doctor, Sarah, and Harry are on Skaro, which has been ravaged by a thousand-year war and whose people are mutating because of radiation. The Doctor and Harry are captured by Kaled troops, while Sarah is taken prisoner by their enemy, the Thals. The Kaleds (later mistranslated as Dals: The Daleks), have a Nazi-like military government, though the real power lies with their chief scientist, Davros, who is accelerating The Doctor and Davrosthe mutations and developing a travel machine in which the mutants can survive. The Doctor recognizes the machine as a primitive Dalek and tries to convince Kaled dissidents to halt this work, but Davros is so obsessed he helps the Thals against his own people. After the Thals destroy the Kaled city, Davros sends his Daleks to attack them. Sarah has escaped from the Thals and is reunited with Harry and The Doctor. They're captured by Davros and his aide, Nyder. Davros, who believes The Doctor's claim that he is from the future, threatens to kill Sarah and Harry unless The Doctor reveals the future of the Daleks, which Davros intends to change by altering their programming to prevent their defeats. After he has done so, they are locked up, but escape with help from the dissidents, and The Doctor goes to the Dalek incubation chamber to destroy the mutants. He questions whether he, or the Time Lords, have the right to do this, and remembers that species which would otherwise have attacked each other will instead unite to oppose the Daleks. He is apparently spared the decision when Gharman, a dissident leader, arrives to tell him that Davros has agreed to halt his work until a vote can be taken on whether to continue. This, unfortunately, is a ruse devised by Davros to discover who opposes him, and the dissidents are exterminated by the Daleks. The Doctor has recovered the time ring, which the Kaleds had seized, and destroys the tape recording of the Daleks' future history. As he returns to the incubation chamber to complete his mission, the Kaled bunker is attacked by Thal forces. The Doctor is nearly killed by a Dalek, which inadvertently sets off the explosives he has placed in the incubation room. The Thals have set bombs to seal up the bunker and The Doctor barely escapes in time. He and the others watch a monitor screen, and see the Daleks, who've taken charge of their own destiny, turn on Davros and his followers and exterminate them (although Davros, who seems always to have a backup plan, survives: Destiny of the Daleks). The Daleks are sealed in the bunker, delaying their development, and as The Doctor and his friends use the time ring to leave, he tells them he believes that a greater good will eventually come from the evil of the Daleks.

Revenge of the Cybermen
Locations: Nerva, Voga Date: 30th Century

The Cyberleader questions The DoctorThe time ring returns the travelers to Nerva, at a point when the Ark is serving as a navigational beacon. The Doctor tells Sarah and Harry that the TARDIS will drift back in time to meet them, and they explore the station. They find several bodies with strange markings, and are captured by the crew, whose commander, Stevenson, holds them responsible for this "virus", which has killed most of his people. One of the crew, Kellman, is working for the Cybermen, and has used Cybermats to transmit the disease. The beacon picks up a signal from Voga, the legendary "planet of gold", which played a major role in the Cybermen's last defeat (Cybermen can be killed by gold dust, which shuts down their breathing apparatus). Sarah is attacked by a Cybermat, and after The Doctor repairs the transmat, which Kellman sabotaged, uses it to send Sarah and Harry to Voga. The transmat filters out the virus, but Sarah and Harry are captured by Vogans. The Cybermen arrive, and take The Doctor and the crew captive. They plant bombs on them and transmat them to Voga. Kellman is beamed down to investigate a malfunction in the transmat on Voga, and Harry learns that he's a double agent, who's been working with a dissident faction of Vogans to lure the Cybermen to the beacon, which will then be destroyed by a missile. Kellman tells them about the bombs, and he and Harry try to locate The Doctor and the others. Kellman is killed in a cave-in, which also knocks out The Doctor. After Harry nearly explodes the bomb by tampering with it, The Doctor frees himself and defuses the other bombs. Sarah, who doesn't know The Doctor's on Voga, has returned to Nerva, and The Doctor persuades the Vogans to delay the missile while he rescues her. The Cybermen, who have discovered that their first plan has failed, have transferred more bombs to Nerva, and intend to crash it into the planet. They leave The Doctor and Sarah tied up on the bridge, and depart. The Doctor gets free, prevents the crash, and tells Stevenson how to divert the missile, which destroys the Cybermen's ship. The TARDIS arrives, and The Doctor finds a message from the Brigadier, who's used the space-time telegraph The Doctor left behind to summon him back to Earth.

Terror of the Zygons
Locations: Scotland, London Date: 1975

Sarah, Harry, Benton and The Doctor The TARDIS arrives near Loch Ness, and The Doctor and friends hitch a lift to the village of Tulloch with the Duke of Forgill. The Brig has recalled The Doctor because of attacks on North Sea oil rigs. During their investigation, Harry is shot and taken to the hospital. He's kidnapped by an alien creature, which locks Sarah and The Doctor into a decompression chamber. The Doctor hypnotizes Sarah, and uses his yoga training, to conserve oxygen, and they are rescued by Benton. Harry is taken to the spacecraft of the aliens, a race of shape-shifters called Zygons, who've used the area as a base while awaiting the arrival of a fleet which will make Earth suitable for their species. They've stayed hidden for centuries, but the recent increase in oil drilling has threatened their safety, and they've used their cyborg, an amphibious creature called the Skarasen, to attack the rigs. The Doctor learns that a homing device found in the wreckage of one of the rigs still works, and heads across Tulloch Moor with it while UNIT tries to track the signal. He's pursued by the Skarasen, but is saved when Harry disrupts the Zygon control panel and makes them lose contact with the cyborg. The Doctor, Sarah and the Brig visit the Duke to get permission to use depth charges against the creature. He dismisses their stories of the monster, but lets Sarah use his library to research it. She accidentally activates a hidden panel, and follows a passage which leads to the Zygon ship. She rescues Harry, and when they tell The Doctor what they've learned, he enters the ship. He's captured by Broton, the Zygon leader, who's impersonated the Duke, and the ship takes off despite UNIT's efforts to stop it. The Doctor risks his life to send a signal to UNIT, and activates the ship's self-destruct mechanism. He, the real Duke, and other captives escape from the ship just before it's destroyed, and all the Zygons except Broton are killed. Broton, as the Duke, has gone to London, where he intends to use the Skarasen to attack an international conference on energy. The Doctor and the others arrive at the conference site, and Broton is killed by the Brig. The Doctor finds a homing device which Broton has put in his pocket, and destroys it. The Skarasen returns to Loch Ness, the only home it's ever known. Back in Scotland, Harry declines The Doctor's offer of further adventures, but Sarah agrees to accompany him in the TARDIS, provided they head straight back to London.

Planet of Evil
Location: Zeta Minor Date: 372nd Century

Vishinsky, Sorensen, The Doctor, and Salamar The TARDIS picks up a distress signal, and The Doctor diverts the ship to investigate. He and Sarah arrive on Zeta Minor, which is being explored by a survey team led by Professor Sorensen. All but Sorensen have been killed, but their signal has been picked up by a Morestran Probe ship commanded by Controller Salamar and first officer Vishinsky. The Doctor learns the team has found a gateway to an anti-matter dimension, and have taken samples. The deaths have been caused by an anti-matter being which is trying to recover the material. Sorensen, who's convinced that he's found a major new energy source for his people, refuses to give up the samples, but the being won't let the ship leave. The Doctor convinces the Morestrans to give the material back, and the ship takes off, but is pulled back because Sorensen has kept a sample. It's infected him, and he mutates into an anti-matter being, which splits into duplicates after Sorensen is shot with a neutron accelerator by Salamar, who's cracked under the strain. With help from Vishinsky and Sarah, The Doctor overcomes Sorensen and takes him back to Zeta Minor in the TARDIS. The anti-matter creature cures Sorensen, and The Doctor suggests he try an alternative energy source, the kinetic motion of planets, to solve the Morestrans' problems.

Unrecorded Events
Locations: London, Cambridge Dates: 1975, 1955, 1980

Sarah, whose journalism career has been neglected as a result of her association with The Doctor, takes a break when they return from Zeta Minor.
The Doctor visits Professor Chronotis at Cambridge in 1955 (Shada), and pays his first visit to Logopolis, where he declines The Monitor's offer to fix the TARDIS's chameleon circuit (Logopolis). He returns for Sarah, arriving in 1980, and they resume their travels. Theoretically Speaking

 
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