Doctor Who: Series 20, Episode 21 – “The Five Doctors” (1983)

Here’s the thing with multi-Doctor episodes.  The plots are virtually never very good, but it never really matters, because you’re so excited to see different Doctors interacting that you’re all in from the word “go.”  (I’m not sure why the plots are usually so subpar.  Too overstuffed?  Too many characters to utilize everyone well?  Too preoccupied with writing fun inter-Doctor dialogue to worry about story logic?  Too confident that fans won’t worry about the plot ‘cause they’ll be so busy geeking out over the multiple Doctors?  Take your pick.)  This 20^th anniversary special, unfortunately, is no exception.

There’s big, worrying goings-on on Gallifrey.  Before the High Council has a chance to rope their favorite renegade Time Lord into the proceedings, someone else beats them to it, pulling every Doctor but one out of their timestreams and placing them in the middle of Gallifrey’s Death Zone (Four and Romana II get stuck along the way, so this episode was really only “Five(ish) Doctors” 30 years before Peter Davison’s parody of it.)  The Death Zone is about as pleasant as it sounds, and the Doctors, and the companions who’ve been dropped into the thick of it along with them, have to navigate the dangers while attempting to get to the bottom of a big mystery involving the Tomb of Rassilon.

Even by multi-Doctor-episode standards, I’m no fan of this story.  It’s very aware that it’s an “event” episode, and so is crammed with flash, craziness, and cameos.  The Master, the Cybermen, and the Yeti make appearances, and none of them are the actual main baddie.  In addition to our four main Doctors (with Richard Hurndall dubiously standing in for the late William Hartnell as One—even more “Five(ish)”), we have Susan, the Brigadier, Sarah Jane, Tegan, and Turlough, in addition to other old favorites in small scenes.  As such, there’s too much going on for the story to get much traction, and much of the supersized 90-minute episode is spent avoiding assorted dangers rather than working out the mystery.

More than that, though, the episode squanders the biggest asset of a multi-Doctor special:  Doctor interaction.  Each Doctor-companion set is deposited in a different part of the Death Zone, and I’d bet at least 80% of the episode is spent trying to get them all together.  They finally manage it at the end, of course, and One and Five find each other partway through (and then quickly separate again)—no surprise, these bits are my favorite.  Two and Three’s bickering never gets old, there’s some fun lines playing with each Doctor’s place in his timestream, and I like the dichotomy of Five being the oldest Doctor while simultaneously having the youngest-looking body.  The companions get a bit of cross-Doctor interaction, too, most notably between Tegan and One (still wish it could’ve been Hartnell, though.)

To be fair, these aren’t the only good moments.  There’s some nice quick thinking from our Doctors, such as One figuring out the safe path across a booby-trapped floor and Five working out a musical mystery.  Turlough isn’t too much of a weasel here, and even though she doesn’t do a whole lot, I really enjoy seeing Susan again.  Both of the Doctor’s Gallifreyan companions (three if you count Romana’s regenerations separately) bring such a different tenor to the Doctor-companion dynamic, and Susan was the start of that, way back at the beginning.