Ten Essential Fifth Doctor Moments

The Doctor is, unsurprisingly by the established precedents of unfathomable excellence by today, a most fabled and revered character that has been near impossible to interpret and emulate outside of the science fiction television paragon, Doctor Who-The esteemed regard of the illustrious profile of the hero is certainly unrivalled by any single individual peer. The honourable onus of portraying an all-encompassing and embodying definition of the character has befallen a blessed few from the palette of plentiful candidates for potential selection, and mostly immediately, but sometimes retrospectively(especially in the instance of the first two or so) the actors that have offered their unique determination of what precisely the identity of the Doctor should be, throughout their many bodies and alternating personalities, have become enshrined as legendary dignitaries of the entire medium.

When, in 1974, Tom Baker took custody of the reins of the show, he exponentially grew in the adulated favour of the clamouring niche of the "Whovian" demographic of subcultural society; And over forty years later, remains the beloved pinnacle of an epitomising example to his peers, at the zenith of fan appraisal as the one of the best merits of representations of the character. Though that is a subjective and opinionated perspective, the prevalence of it, particularity during the rampant popularity of the show that Baker was a large benefactor of in the early 1980s, rendered the task of inheriting the role an ominously looming one for the aspiring youthful Peter Davison-The youngest actor to portray the Doctor at that point at just 29-but he approached the duty of sustaining the show with such courage in the face of the adversity of being placed in a precarious position that could besiege him with intense scrutiny. And he persevered with warmth, gentility, and more reservedness in the nuanced eccentricity he possessed, in contrast to the overt flamboyance of his predecessor's egotism.

He also retained the altruistic egalitarianism that defined the traits of the titular protagonist, and stood as the metric grade of exemplary morality and compassion, and also of a philosophical insular cognisance of the universe and its intricate profundities and complex iniquities. With the additional unfavourable odds of occasionally languishing production value also stacked against him, he executed a remarkably impressive performance, and was one of the redeeming features of the show, by virtue of the consistency of impatful and indelibly affecting moments he contributed to the series. Some of the best are acknowledged and paid due diligence to in the following reverential listicle.

Where in the past, the delinquent defecting Time Lord, Omega, had committed the treacherous acts of syphoning energy from his indigenous species and their home planet, the thwarting of that menacing endeavour by none other than the Doctor had evidently only served to intensify his vendetta on the eternal beings, and he returned to exact retribution in the manifest of stealing their identities through the sequestration of the valuable and sensitive intelligence of the bio-data of the race. He then proceeded to exploit the enlightening knowledge it granted him to invade the Doctor's metabolism, and beleaguered his very being.

Following the ensuing recovery in which Nyssa came to his aid, the Doctor immediately sprung into the action of resolving to prevent further conquest from the villain, and returning to Gallifrey to the hostile and contemptuous reception of the high council. The irascible commander Maxil of the militarised forces of the planet, Lord President Borusa and multiple other members of the council elected to condemn the Doctor to his execution in a conspiracy, and upon its eventuation, the mind of the Doctor was stored in the Time Lord matrix, and his body concealed behind a force shield. This subsequently resulted in the return of the initially reluctant companion, Tegan Jovanka, the restoration of the Doctor, and the eventual resolve, after exchanges of initially repressed enraged animosity lurking beneath the surface of the exterior exhibitons of the Doctor and his nemesis, in a battle of the whit of the two alphas. A tremendously testing trial of the hero's aptitude.

Although he had his fair share of moments where he juxtaposed such a mentality in his remorseful, contemplative sentiments, the Fifth Doctor has been regularly characterised as a being of eternal optimism, in complement of his perseverance through the most dourly arduous situations of adversity, and there have been numerous instances where he made that verbally explicit; In his very first adventure, in fact, venturing to Castrovalva, he dispensed a very valuable and virtuous gem of knowledge:

'I think it does us good to be reminded that the universe isn't entirely peopled with nasty creatures out for themselves.'

It served as a lesson to be learned for his companions, and established some of the foundations for what the convicted identity of the already flourishing Doctor, as he would begin to construct his personality of predilection upon philosophies of that very ilk.

In the first serial of the Black Guardian trilogy, a companion that doubled as a surreptitious saboteur was introduced, along with an accompanying dynamic of intrigue that really stood to put the unconditional and unfathomably optimistic faith of the Doctor to the test of the boundaries of its capacity, along with his shrewd astuteness as well. Vislor Turlough was an innocent, bystanding student, and suddenly appeared in the Doctor's life by commission of the hedonistic brute, and was the subject of his manipulations for a time, as the Black Guardian sought to spell disastrous doom for the Doctor in vengeance for the aversion to his tyranny that the Doctor had successfully accomplished in his previous cycle.

This however, came to no fruition ultimately, and the casting of Turlough into the Doctor's life proved futile for the menace responsible, and eventually significantly beneficial to the hero himself-Who, after some trepidation that required some reassurance, managed to recruit a loyal, serviceable companion to invest his compassion into. The introduction of the character to Tegan and to the audience was one of implicit exposition, and the Doctor barged through the doors of the TARDIS to find the initially malicious reprobate at the control panel of his vessel, but became acclimatised and comfortable with the presence of him to explain the situation to Tegan when she arrived. Perhaps it was also testament to the manipulation of Turlough, who himself was intoxicated by the orchestrations of the Black Guardian, that managed to lore the Doctor into a perceived sense of security and assuredness, but the tenure of the Fifth Doctor's time in the TARDIS would have not been the same without the crazy companion on board.

Another aspect of the Fifth Doctor's endurance in custody of the TARDIS key and screwdriver was the punctuated emphasis of it as conveyed and effectuated by the tragic losses he suffered. One of the most monumentally despairing of those that befell him was that of the demolition of his beloved sonic screwdriver, when the leader of the highly advanced Terileptil race shot it with a laser. The impact of the loss was so palpably perturbing, that the Doctor himself orated his dismay, stating that he felt like he had lost a friend. The event brought an abrupt conclusion to the usage of the sensational device that had admittedly become a deus ex machina, and impelling the commencement of the contorted convolution of an era defined by a "back to basics" mentality.

The resort of the Doctor was instead to rely on his application of pragmatic, practical technobabble solutions to all of the issues affronting him and his allies, and it proved to be exceptionally effective in instigating the salvation of countless souls across the universe. There were fans that bemoaned the loss of such a significant stalwart feature of all of the Doctor's exploits at the time, but they were remiss to acknowledge the fact that the lead roleplayer of the show had not originally depended on the usage of the esoteric, extraordinary accessory, and was more than proficient in solving mysteries and averting peril hands free. The Fifth Doctor was perhaps the greatest indicative testimony to that.

The entire parabolic arc of Earthshock is reverentially of the vital significance of finding the tranquil contentment in embracing all of the idiosyncrasies and oddities in humanity itself, with the opposition to the antithetically emotionless and dull Cybermen through exhibitions of conflicting ideologies fought on the battleground of the mental, cerebral plain, as well as the superficial conquest upon the physical welfare of the Earth-As the villainous cyborgs perpetuated their eternal ambition of converting humans into them to create a psychologically "superior" elite race of robots; Their attempts in the past had seen them in animus with the terrific Time Lord several times before:

LEADER: This one calls himself the Doctor, and does nothing else but interfere.
DOCTOR 1 [on holoimager]: Emotions. Love, pride, hate, fear. Have you no emotions then?
LEADER: It was in this regenerated form that he confined the Cybermen to their ice tomb on Telos.
DOCTOR 2 [on holoimager]: I imagine you have orders to destroy me.
LEADER: And as this, he defeated us in our attempt to destroy Voga, the planet of gold.
DOCTOR 4 [on holoimager]: You've no home planet, no influence, nothing. You're just a pathetic bunch of tin soldiers skulking about the galaxy in an ancient spaceship.
CYBERMAN: I did not see any of these men in the cave.
LEADER: It appears he has regenerated again, but whatever his form, he must be found and destroyed.

In maintenance of the pervasive thematic tone of the episode, the Doctor was constantly at odds with his malignant enemy, and spent the majority of his time protesting their heinous incursions, and the greatest of his defiances occurred when he was under the interrogation of the Cyber Leader in a particularly tense state of affairs:

LEADER: I see that Time Lords have emotional feelings.
DOCTOR: Of sorts.
LEADER: Surely a great weakness in one so powerful?
DOCTOR: Emotions have their uses.
LEADER: They restrict and curtail the intellect and logic of the mind.
DOCTOR: They also enhance life! When did you last have the pleasure of smelling a flower, watching a sunset, eating a well-prepared meal?
LEADER: These things are irrelevant.
DOCTOR: For some people, small, beautiful events is what life is all about!
LEADER: You have affection for this woman?
DOCTOR: She's a friend.
LEADER: And you do not consider friendship a weakness?
DOCTOR: I do not.

The Fifth Doctor has been characterised by his profundity, his contemplative sentimentality, and his fiendish proclivity for preserving justice through the expression of those convictions in a perplexingly intellectual and logically enigmatic way. There are few moments that compare to the masterful exhibition that defined his character during the harrowing events of Earthshock.

By the time the Fifth Doctor encountered his former incarnations in The Five Doctors, he was more than adroit in his expertise in the bewildering phenomenon; And where the previous versions of the entity of the marvellous proponent of magnanimity would have ultimately bickered between themselves and found themselves with an abundance of exercises in enlightenment to derive from the situation and contemplatively reflect upon, the version with a ridiculous advocacy for cricket and decorative vegetables took a more mature and already competent approach to the affair.

Lord President Borusa of the high council of Gallifrey had constructed a debauched and corrupted scheme of manipulative service to his avaricious desire for eternal life, and the Doctors convened on the planet to instil a cognisance of the nonchalant disregard of morality he had committed and to defeat him. Such a colossally consequential antagonist required the full united capacity of all of the Doctors in order to triumph, and despite the competence with which the Fifth Doctor approached the nefarious villain with, he still fell victim to a vice grip possessing his mind. The height of those stakes were adverse odds with which he had barely trifled with before, and so the ramifications of the defeat of Borusa saw the Doctor presented with a voluntary offer of the immortality that Borusa had attempted to steal from Rassilon, and the compulsory mandate of becoming the new Lord President from Flavia; And he then proceeded to repeat the deed that began it all-Sauntering away in a stolen faulty TARDIS.

Though, by its fifth occurrence, the Doctor had experienced more than a sufficient quantity of regenerations and the subsequent delirium that the ensuing recovery process impelled-sending him sprawling through the petty motions of rediscovering his identity-usually with a mysterious whimsicality, the endurance through it for the Fifth Doctor was equally as disconcerting and perplexing. The restorative process of his cells was on the brink of failure, and he could possibly have died permanently. Awakening in somewhat a state of frantic panic, the Doctor strode around the TARDIS physically, he did not take the situation in his stride all to proficiently. Despite their obliviousness to the true nature of what the logistics of what had happened were, companions Adric, Nyssa and Tegan managed the situation with remarkable courage and adroit intuition.

Both the companions of the Doctor and the Doctor himself were acting on little more than improvisational impulses, due to the bewilderment the situation imposed, and the three passengers of the TARDIS could contribute nothing, other than flailing attempts t distilling stability to their pilot, who was displaying nuanced shades of all of his predecessors, with the quirky mannerisms of the First and Third Doctors, and attempting to play the Second Doctor's flute for instance. While those who emanated before, like Tom Baker, did persist through the suffering of discovering their new identity, none exhibited the running of the gauntlet through numerous obstacles to the same broad scope of the spectrum of reactionary responses to the inundating influx of thoughts, feelings and impulses permeating his mind like Peter Davison's Fifth Doctor. But, like all before him, he emerged on the other side-Slightly unhinged, but not totally insecure, to the point of lunacy that extended beyond his typical eccentricity.

The Resurrection of the Daleks occurred when Davros infiltrated the Doctor's life against, enraged with the ambition of exacting maliciously vindictive vengeance on him and everything he stood for. Having been emancipated from incarceration in a space station in which he had remained stranded within as a consequence of trifling with the Doctor during the Daleks' Destiny by his allies' utilisation of a time tunnel, the megalomaniacal mastermind was hell-bent on causing agonising annihilation by extermination all of the humans inhabiting 1984 London. And that was only his initial aspiration; As is implicitly intrinsic to the revoltingly abhorrent philosophy of the Daleks, ruination via supremacy and genocidal cleansing of the entire universe was the ultimate aspiration.

This inevitably lead to various deceptions, mind controlling machinations and revolts of insurrection from either side, and numerous exchanges of enraged ferocity. The Daleks, while not as intricately thorough with the scrupulousness of their methods as they had been previously, were painted in a new hue of light of their unrelenting tenacity-By virtue of the vast quantity of the body count they amassed the deprivation of. Tegan suffered a head trauma and blacked out, but the insult to the injury was the subjection of bearing witness to the abject travesties that were transpiring around her. Having recently lost the company of Nyssa and the life of Adric altogether and realising the pure, unadulterated risk for jeopardy and atrocity that falling afoul of the Doctor's enemies threatened, the burden proved to be too overwhelming for her to bear the weight and magnitude of-And she decided to depart the TARDIS:

TEGAN: I'm not coming with you.
DOCTOR: I beg your pardon?
TEGAN: I'm tired of it.
DOCTOR: What's the matter?
TEGAN: A lot of good people have died today. I think I'm sick of it.
DOCTOR: You think I wanted it this way?
TEGAN: No. It's just that I don't think I can go on.
DOCTOR: You want to stay on Earth.
TEGAN: My Aunt Vanessa said, when I became an air stewardess, if you stop enjoying it, give it up.
DOCTOR: Tegan
TEGAN: It's stopped being fun, Doctor. Goodbye. Turlough.
(They shake hands.)
TURLOUGH: Goodbye.
TEGAN: I'll miss you both.
DOCTOR: No, no, don't leave, not like this.
TEGAN: I must. I'm sorry. Goodbye.
DOCTOR: It's strange. I left Gallifrey for similar reasons. I'd grown tired of their lifestyle. It seems I must mend my ways. Come along.
TEGAN: Brave heart, Tegan. Doctor, I will miss you.

That was the interaction that eventuated at the resolution of the conflict, and there was no bitterness, but instead the tension of despair, made all the more poignant and devastating by the contrite remorse and recognition of the inadvertent hazardous endangerment of lives that going through everything with the Doctor presented.

One of the events that preceded many of the glorious and devastating transpirations by serving to influence the resounding effects of how the TARDIS crew approached them was one of the only degree of such monumental significance that could possibly instigate that. In an endeavour revolving around the plights of the Cybermen with the intention of putting the Earth under the duress of their tyranny in the distant future. Events reached such a climactic edge of tension, that the Doctor extended himself to threatening the Cybermen with a laser gun, after the exponential futility of his protests at their inhumanity continually infuriated him. Stakes were enormously high, and the tension subsided to allocate capacity for despair to replace it when the Cybermen successfully locked the controls of the freighter to set it on a collision course with the surface of the planet of which they were occupying the stratosphere of-The most beleaguering aspect of it altogether though, was the fact that they had commandeered the TARDIS and forced the Doctor to abandon Adric and their allies aboard the inevitably doomed vessel.

Adric's attempts at overriding the navigation of the spacecraft rendered its arrival 65 million years from the eminence of the remote space freighter from which they operated, in the prehistoric age. With the Doctor standing helpless audience to the tragic fate of what transpired, Adric fell victim to the destruction of the freighter, in a repercussion ade so jarring and disturbing due to the example of nobility that Adric set to the Doctor, instead of the converse erudition, and all despite the Doctor's deploration. The Cybermen were defeated, but at an expense that was extremely costly:

ADRIC: There's something missing. There's something I've forgotten.

NYSSA: Please hurry, Doctor. We must get Adric off the freighter.
DOCTOR: The console's damaged.
NYSSA: We must save Adric! There's so little time!

ADRIC: Of course, that's it. Now I'll never know if I was right.

NYSSA: Look out!

DOCTOR: I must save Adric!
TEGAN: Look!
NYSSA: Adric!
TEGAN: Adric? Doctor! Oh, no.

The regeneration of the Fifth Doctor into the Sixth was tragic, of course. It was poignantly affecting and distressing, absolutely. The regeneration was an adequately celebratory and simultaneously stifling disaster of sorrow. These are all elements that comprise the quintessence of a death of an incarnation of the Doctor, but what was there to distinguish it? The premise of the nature of sacrifice being the cause that impelled the regeneration of the Doctor had been flirted with previously-Particularly in the fatalities of the Third and Fourth Doctors respectively. But their deaths were marginal, and could theoretically have been averted, if not for provisional circumstances attributing the Doctor with a lack of favour.

The death of the Fifth Doctor was a last resort of voluntary sacrifice; He had made a conscious decision to surrender his life for a companion who he was very limited in his familiarity with, and he elected to administer the only antidote to the lethally poisonous raw spectrox that he and Peri had stepped in. The only solution was the milk of the Bat Queen, and after securing two vials, the Doctor dropped one while carrying the unconscious Peri back to the TARDIS in the knick of time, before spiralling into the hysteria of hallucinating images of all of his companions beckoning out to him; The most prominent being Tegan's lecturing rhetoric pertaining to the patronisation he addressed her with, with relevance to the "brave heart" of courage, before the Master's looming demand of the Doctor to die. He called out to Adric in acknowledgement of a companion he was bereaved of, and transitioned into the new form of the resplendent Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor in a scene that was an earnest tribute to the greatness and resonance of the most sympathetic of Doctors.