Doctor Who: Ranking All 12 Doctors From Worst To Best
2. The Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker)
STORIES: 9
ALIENNESS: 12
HEROISM: 6
LIKABILITY: 7
LEGACY: 12
OVERALL SCORE: 46
The top scores in each of the five categories are shared between our top two Doctors. The iconic Fourth Doctor receives 12 points for legacy. Even now, with seven actors having played the role after him, Tom Baker remains the definitive Doctor. The boggle-eyed bohemian, parodied and imitated more than any other, will likely always be the face best associated with the character, even if surprisingly he comes out second best in our list.
The Fourth Doctor also gets top marks for alienness. The natural eccentricity of Tom Baker alone is not what made his character so believably alien. There are a plethora of eccentric humans in Doctor Who stories, many of them encountered by the Fourth Doctor. It is instead the combination of that quirkiness with Baker’s booming voice and expressive face which gives him that rare otherworldliness.
The directors were never quite sure how Baker would deliver a line or follow their direction, and that unpredictability hits the viewers too, forever reminding us that the Doctor is not bound by predetermined patterns of behaviour.
The Fourth Doctor starts out as a reluctant hero, grumbling about the Time Lords sending him on missions (Genesis of the Daleks, The Brain of Morbius) but nonetheless he fights for justice, with rhetoric being his greatest weapon. We often see him facing off against a single opponent in a battle of wits, leading to the enemy’s inevitable downfall (Genesis of the Daleks, Pyramids of Mars, The Deadly Assassin).
Such a shame then that his final stand should end not in a deliberate sacrificial act but with an accidental fall from the telescope in Logopolis. The moody, uncooperative beginning and that ignominious ending pushes the Fourth Doctor below our winner into second place.