Doctor Who: Why Each Doctor Was Forced To Regenerate

10. The Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker)

Logopolis The Watcher Doctor Who
BBC Studios

After an incredible seven-year run as the Doctor - spanning from 1974's Robot to 1981's Logopolis - it was time for Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor to say goodbye, and his regeneration... well, it was a bit of a weird one.

Throughout Logopolis, a strange, pale figure can be seen lurking in the background of certain scenes, and initially, it's unclear what its purpose is. It's just this creepy unexplained alien thing, but all is made clear at the tail-end of the serial.

While attempting to stop the Master's latest evil plan, the Doctor falls from a radio tower, sustaining injuries that he cannot recover from. Here, the Watcher appears once more, wandering over to the Doctor and merging their two bodies together: the Watcher had been some sort of odd manifestation of the Doctor the entire time.

This merge helps the Doctor regenerate, and a few seconds later, the Fifth Doctor is born, with a rather cheeky grin on his fresh, youthful face.

In this post: 
Doctor Who
 
Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.