My Whovian Adventure Part 6

Yes, this post is coming very shortly after my post on the Fourth Doctor. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that the Fifth Doctor was only there for 3 years, in contrast to the Fourth Doctor's 7 years. The second reason is that the Fifth Doctor's episodes were really interesting!! Throughout this whole process I have been watching the episodes while doing something else; painting trim, sewing, cleaning, writing blog posts, Pinterest...because they weren't all interesting enough for me to just sit down and watch (to be fair, I do this with pretty much every show I watch. I'm a multitasker, what can I say?), but during the Fifth Doctor's run, for the first time, I found myself stopping what I was doing so I could really focus on what was happening.

So, I really liked the Fifth Doctor, almost as much as the Second, who remains my favourite to date. Peter Davison's Doctor is much more easy going, friendly and all in all just a more caring person than any Doctors before him. I feel a certain kinship with him, for many reasons. He was the Doctor in 1983, the year I was born. He was 29 when he took over the role, I was 29 when I started watching Doctor Who. AND, possibly the most exciting reason, he is the Doctor who I will be meeting in November when I go to Hal-con (basically Comi-con in Halifax. For those of you who are still lost, Comi-con and Hal-con etc are big conventions where geeks like myself can get together and celebrate all the TV, book, movie and comic characters we love so much). He's basically the reason I'm going.



Back to the task at hand. When the Fourth Doctor gets into a fight with the Master (his arch nemesis) on a tower, the Master pushes the Doctor off and he is forced to regenerate to survive. Strangely, a weird white figure had been following him around for the whole story arc, which turned out to be the Fifth Doctor, preparing to take over at regeneration. Kind of unusual. The Fifth Doctor is the only Doctor I've encountered so far who NEVER changes his clothes. Sometimes he adds a hat, and in one story arc he trades his sweater and coat for a strange embroidered vest, but that's about it. He's a cricket player and therefore wears a cricket outfit around all the time. And yes, that is a celery stalk in his lapel.

The Fifth Doctor has far fewer companions than the Fourth, but sadly, I didn't really like any of them. The only one I really disliked was Adric, but the rest were just kind of meh. No companion I have met so far can hold a candle to my Jamie. Three companions carry over from the Fourth Doctor. Two of them get better, one of them gets worse. Guess which one gets worse...

...Adric. He was only mildly annoying when he was with the Fourth Doctor, but by the time he takes up with the Fifth Doctor he's a horrible, whiny little shit. He's sexist, has an inflated ego and refuses to listen to anyone, preferring to do what he wants. He always thinks he's right, right up until the moment he blows himself up. Not going to lie, I did a bit of a happy dance. That sound horrible. But you watch a couple of episodes with him in them and see if you don't feel the same. I dare you.




Nyssa starts to develop a personality during the Fifth Doctor years, and also stops wearing strangely designed clothing. Her exit story is a bit of a refreshing change from the horribly ill-conceived love stories that seem to come about for most of the female companions. She stays behind to help rebuild a planet who needs her scientific knowledge. Honourable little thing that she is.

Tegan also becomes more tolerable during her time with the Fifth Doctor. She eventually gets back to Earth and decides to stay, but she gets fired and joins up with the Doctor again. She then finally stops wearing her flight attendant's uniform and starts wearing some quintessential 80's garb. She gets a haircut too, which I really like. After a particularly bloody fight with the Daleks she chooses to stay on Earth once again, which is also a much more believable reason to leave than a lame love story.

Turlough joins the companions under false pretenses. After crashing the Brigadier's car (yes, the Brigadier is back), and complaining that he doesn't want to live on Earth anymore (in his final story he mentions that he is from the planet Trion, and we eventually learn he was sent to Earth as a punishment, but when he makes his initial statement we don't know he's an alien) he is hired by the Black Guardian (a villain from the Fourth Doctor's era) to kill the Doctor, but in the end he isn't able to do it and then proceeds to skulk around being grumpy and dissing Earth for the next season and a half. I tried to find a better picture of him, but seriously, this is what he looks like most of the time. He leaves in the second to last episode of the Fifth Doctor's run and returns to his own planet, just as he becomes less of a grump.

Chameleon. Weirdest. Companion. Ever. He was a shape shifting robot who started out as a tool of the Master, but joined the Doctor as a companion at the end of 'The King's Demon' story arc, and then isn't mentioned again until 6 stories later, at which point he is written out. Very disappointing because he had the potential to be really cool. A full size, working robot. Come on!! 

The final companion to join the Fifth Doctor was Peri. She was an American student who Turlough saved from drowning. So she wanders around in a bikini a lot. And I seriously question the choice to make her from the US. Her American accent was pretty pathetic, and she talks more like a five year old than a college student, but I had no major complaints about her.






Here are the top five things I noticed about the Fifth Doctor;

1. ADRIC!!!!;  Unless you watch him, you will never understand why I hate him so much. He's just such a pompous ass. At one point after his death, Tegan and Nyssa are reminiscing and the Doctor says "He wouldn't want us to mourn unnecessarily". I disagree. Adric was a dick and would probably have just loved the fact that they were sad about losing him. Boo Adric! And those stupid clothes!




2. Helmets; It was the era of weird helmets. The first picture is of the helmets worn in the 'Terminus' story arc. They are weirdly shaped (hard to tell in this picture) and I can't imagine they're too practical. They did have some very impressive 80's hair underneath. The second picture is of the helmet of a Dalek trooper. To me it looks like half a Dalek with a dildo stuck to the front of it. Strange designs...

 











3. The Garm; Not the best visual effect. He's kind of a bumbling creature who's mouth doesn't move when it should.







4. The Guardian's hats; Yes. They are wearing birds on their heads. Enough said.








5. The Celery; It seems that many of the Doctors are best known for their accessories, and the Fifth Doctor is no exception. His is perhaps the most unusual accessory, however. The Fifth Doctor wears a stalk of celery on his lapel, and we don't find out why until the final story arc of his tenure. Apparently, the celery will turn purple when it comes into contact with certain gases that the Doctor is allergic to. If it turns purple, he eats it, and says if nothing else it will be good for his teeth. I will be wearing a stalk of celery when I meet the Doctor :-)







And so that was the Fifth Doctor. I liked and was interested in most of the episodes, but my particular favourites were 'The Black Orchid' (even Adric was tolerable in this story), 'Mawdryn Undead' (some useful information about regenerations and the return of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart) and 'The Five Doctors' (which didn't make a whole lot of sense, but all the Doctors and several companions were back, which always makes me happy). I'm a little nervous to start the Sixth Doctor, because my go-to girl Tansy Rayner Roberts of A Modern Woman's Guide to Classic Who implies that this was the beginning of the end of the classic Who, due to poor writing etc, but I'll give it a whirl.