I had a look and couldn’t find a 4th Doctor thread! (Unless I missed it somehow)
So here we go! A thread to discuss ol’ teeth and curls himself! Or his companions, his era, anything related! Positivity, criticism, all goes here!
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I already did two of these in the last 24 hours. Someone else want to post screenshots?
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My bad! I searched “Fourth Doctor” and “4th Doctor” by titles and couldn’t find anything at all 
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For other Doctors, I mean. We just had new 2nd and 12h Doctor threads I posted screenshots for.
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Oh right !! My bad! Yeah I saw those two threads and thought it made sense to make one for 4 lol
Sorry for misunderstanding what you were saying! Id do screenshots if I wasn’t at work haha
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That’s fine. Don’t normally mind finding screenshots, just at my limit for the moment…
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Give me a minute to get my laptop. Just can’t promise the doctor himself is in many of these 
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This is the best Doctor.
Utterly alien, totally bohemian, endlessly fun. Baker gives a brilliantly understated performance (that admittedly dissolves throughout his run) that gives this character such life.
Easily my favourite incarnation.
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Love 4 to death. He is what a good chunk of people think of when they think of Doctor Who and for good reason. Because of just how much 4 content there is a lot of it can be mid, but for every 3 so-so stories you have one of the best classic who stories of all time. If I were to make a tier list of 4 stores there’d be at least 10 in S-tier, and I don’t even like a lot of his most well regarded ones that much. Generational run.
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Yeah, 4 is absolutely my Doctor. He was my first classic (though not my first Doctor overall), and Tom Baker’s strange, brooding, yet silly performance enraptured me as a teenager.
In my 20s I stopped watching classic as much for whatever reason. So I began to wonder if maybe 4 being my #1 was just legacy and nostalgia. But having gotten back into classic again in the past couple years, I’ve been reminded that no, 4 is still king for me.
He may not have the character arc of 8 or 12, nor the sheer physical energy of 2. But he is a presence. When I close my eyes and think of The Doctor, I think of him. As much of a cliche as that is.
As I once put to some friends:
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Controversial opinion, but I think he’s pretty good in the role. And out of the role as well tbh
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He was my first Doctor, but unfortunately he didn’t grip me back then. I chose to start with Four because, of course, most of the suggestions I saw on the Internet suggested him for Classic. I liked some of the episodes I watched (I also consulted the Internet for his “Greatest Hits”), but overall I wasn’t that enamored by Four.
Over the years I have started to warm up to him. I think it was his appearance in Shada that changed my mind.
This reminds me of a show he was in where he played a priest and was rubbing his feet on the face of some woman…amongst other things that happened throughout the episode.
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ICONIC. There is no other word. For years when anyone said the words Doctor Who it was Tom Baker’s face that appeared in the minds of the public.
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Possibly The Life and Loves of a She-Devil.
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Tom Baker. My first Doctor. He was definitely my favorite back then, when Doctor Who to me was 4 Doctors and a movie with a fifth (though I was aware there were three more Doctors before). Without Tom Baker, I wouldn’t be here today. But I was maybe 6 years old then, my thoughts have since changed over the years.
Baker was in the role for so long that you really can’t consider his Doctor on his own outside of the context of his three producer “eras.” There are different flavors to Four whether it’s Hinchcliffe/Holmes era Four, Williams era Four, or JNT era Four.
In the Hinchcliffe era, honestly, I think he very well could be the best Doctor there’s ever been. He’s got plenty of that bizzare, alien, bohemian nature, honestly living up to the “cosmic hobo” idea even more than Troughton did. He could be silly and very funny, but in a more understated (as Speechless puts it) sort of way, not too exaggerated. And under Hinchcliffe, Four also had this strong darkness to him to go with it. When push came to shove, he very much could take the situation seriously when needed. You can see how grave the situation is in Genesis of the Daleks, Pyramids of Mars, The Seeds of Doom, The Deadly Assassin, and others just by the way the Doctor acts in those stories. He’s not without jokes, but will sometimes even be a bit short with people, including his companions, if he feels their actions may get the rest of them killed or they aren’t taking it as seriously as they should. He also had these sort of calm, introspective moments like, “I’m a Time Lord… You don’t understand the implications. I’m not a human. I walk in eternity.” He’s I think in this incarnation starting to come to terms with how long he’s lived, how much he’s done, sometimes brooding a little over it. I think Hinchcliffe Four has so many layers, and you see shades of each of those layers at different moments throughout those three seasons, layers that I think start to get stripped away in the next three.
Williams era Four, when the show started to move in a more campy, unserious direction, I think Baker followed suit, perhaps a little too much. I think a lot of the layers and nuance starts to go away, while they dial up the silly Four, to a rather exaggerated level. It starts off just a little too silly in Season 15, but still having good moments, to by Season 17 he’s completely out of control, going off script, and I think just a full-on goofball with almost none of the subtlety present in the Hinchcliffe era there anymore. It’s this kind of thing that I found funny and enjoyed a lot more as a kid, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve started to want a bit more out of the writing and performances in my Doctor Who, and I think in many ways the Graham Williams era just isn’t up to par. The Williams era now moves Four a lot lower in my estimations than when I was 6.
Then John Nathan-Turner becomes producer, and he’s not going to let Tom Baker get away with the ad-libbing and being absolutely uncontrollable like he could get away with under Williams. I do think this change is for the better, but I think it’s a shame that clearly Baker wasn’t enjoying it anymore, and it does show. It feels like his heart just isn’t in it anymore, even if I think a good bit of that more layered Four starts to come back, mostly from the writing of the episodes. It also doesn’t help that he wasn’t in great health at the time either, not to mention everything with his relationship with Lalla Ward. I think it’s a sign that maybe he stayed on the show a little too long, and it was definitely time for the moment to be prepared for.
But, even after all of that, he’s the most popular and most iconic Doctor of the classic series. When people think of Doctor Who, very many of them have an image of the guy with the hat and the scarf in their heads. I think his Doctor did great things for the show, turning it into a cultural phenomenon, and even a significant part of why it’s a cult classic over here in the US. He may not be top of my list of my personal favorites, but I certainly believe him to be one of the most important to the show’s history.
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Four is a weird one for me, don’t get me wrong, he is a classic and I love him dearly, but he often ranks the lowest with all the other classic Doctors (which is not saying much, considering all of them are in my Top 10 and I have a great fondness for the classic series, which isn’t the same with the revival). Okay not to go into Tangents here, four is very much a very enjoyable Doctor, he has a lot of the Quirks, Quips and lovely witty dialogues that you just want from a good Doctor Who. His Collection of Stories is also just marvelous, sure he probably outstayed his welcome with 7 Seasons, but in his Tenure you get Stories like: Hand of fear, Seeds of Doom, Pyramids of Mars, Face of evil, Robots of death, Image of the fendahl, Androids of Tara, City of Death, Shada, Creature from the Pit and many more, just to name a few favorites. Also, just the fact that you get three different flavors to him like already pointed out here does do a lot for him.
I think the best Part for me in his Era are easily the Companions, Sarah, Leela, both Romanas is just a great Run of Characters, not to mention Harry can be quite enjoyable and if he works K9 has a lovely presence to him. Whenever I think of the T. Baker Years, my Mind goes quickly to the Companions after the Scarf and the Douglas Adam Humor.
I think Tom really made a mark on the classic show like no other and while my preference never usually has him at the top, most of the time I do enjoy a good Story of his, even if at times the sheer amount can be quite overwhelming. Especially with his EU Stories (in particular BF), not having so many all-time great ones like many of the other Doctors do (at least in my Eyes, Scratchman, the Trouble with Drax and a few others are superb!)
There is probably a lot more I could say about this Doctor, but I leave it at that. Again great Doctor and one I particularly enjoy whenever I do a Story with him (mainly the ones where Tom plays him), I can totally see why for many he became THE face of the Show!
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Great taste! I adore both of these a lot 
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He’s not my favorite Doctor, but he is THE Doctor.
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I think I’ve made it pretty clear I far prefer Four’s companions to him. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like him, in fact I really do. Four being one of my least favorite Doctors just speaks to how good this show is.
I do really love him with Sarah, that’s probably the peak of my enjoyment of the Fourth Doctor as a character. If I’m currently watching a Four & Sarah episode he is my favorite Doctor ever why would I ever think otherwise.
If I’m currently watching a Leela episode, on the other hand, I want to break all his bones with hammers one by one. Sorry not sorry. He’s still entertaining, obviously, but my feelings on the underlying racism [1][2] have to go somewhere, and I love Leela too much to direct it at her, so the murder fantasies go to everyone else. He can be a condescending ass sometimes.
And then with Romana, I don’t love him, but I do really like him. Probably I like his dynamic with Romana i a sliiightly more? For the most part it is the same dynamic though because they are the same people. Character growth. And you can really tell Tom Baker was getting tired of it by the end there
Yes I’m splitting him up based on companions. I am a companion girlie first and foremost.
maybe someday I’ll write an essay on this but for now now I’m just gesturing and hoping you connect the dots ↩︎
if you need help there, then I’ll pose you a question. Where exactly do you think the idea in media of a savage came from, and how would that influence peoples views on other real life people? ↩︎
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