The other day I happened to be reading through Doctor Who Magazine's Mighty 200 poll done back in 2009 and I noticed that the Fifth Doctor story Four to Doomsday came 173rd out of the 200 episodes. It's understandable that regular classics such as Blink and The Deadly Assassin bumped it down the list, but I feel that this episode isn't nearly as appreciated as much as it deserves to be. True, it doesn't quite live up to the haunting beauty of Enlightenment or the Burton-esque eeriness of Kinda Elsewhere in the Fifth Doctor's tenure but equally it isn't as bad as others I could mention (cough, Timelash, cough). There is still much to be enjoyed in this four-part serial, so here is my defence for an episode that, like so many others in the Doctor Who series, is actually not as bad as some people may think...
4. The Storyline
You may have thought that The Big Bang had one of the most ambitious plots, but Four to Doomsday takes the Jammie Dodger when it comes to unusual story lines. In short, three Urbankan aliens are on a large spaceship which has been visiting Earth every few thousand years. On each visit they take human representatives and convert them into androids, whose only real purpose is to provide musical entertainment (clearly DVDs and Scrabble have not yet been invented on their planet). Monarch, the leader, has a plot to take over Earth and mine its resources to improve the ship's capabilities. His plan is to travel faster than light (which seems somewhat ambitious for a ship that size) in order to time travel back to the beginning of the universe and meet himself there as God, though how he came to hold this belief in the first place is beyond me. And that's just the abridged version! It's hard not to admire its sheer boldness if nothing else, and it's one of the reasons why I fell in love with this episode in the first place. It's totally bonkers, but lovable in its sincerity. There should definitely be more stories like this.