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Saturday, 8 December 2012

Doctor Who - The Fourth Doctor.

Some 'good guys'. Predictable but of course it had to be the Fourth Doctor up first. Tom Baker was 'my' Doctor and still my favourite to this day. I do have a soft spot for Jon Pertwee though, especially the Earth bound UNIT stories! More on him later.

Companions were -

Sarah Jane Smith
Harry Sullivan
Leela
K9
Romana I
Romana II
Adric
Nyssa
Tegan Jovanka

Here we have the Fourth Doctor and his first companions, Sarah-Jane Smith, Harry Sullivan, Leela and K9. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart makes an appearance but is yet to get a splash of paint...

"Jelly Baby anyone?"
Leela, the Doctor and K9.

Leela was the daughter of Sole'. She first appears in the 1977 serial, The Face of Evil, where she was a warrior of the savage Sevateem tribe, who were amongst the descendants of the crew of an Earth ship from The Mordee Expedition that crash-landed on an unnamed planet in the far future. The name of her tribe, "Sevateem", was a corruption of "survey team". Although the Doctor at this point was content to travel alone, Leela barged into the TARDIS and continued to accompany the Doctor on his journeys.

Although Leela was a primitive, she was also highly intelligent, grasping advanced concepts easily and translating them into terms she could cope with. Despite the Doctor's attempts at "civilizing" her, however, Leela was strong-willed enough to continue in her savage ways. She usually dressed in animal skins, and was armed with a knife or a set of poisonous Janis thorns which she did not hesitate to use on people who threatened her, much to the Doctor's disapproval. Leela frequently demonstrated a highly accurate sense of danger.

Leela, the Doctor and K9.

Although Jameson's eyes are naturally blue, as Leela she initially wore red contact lenses to make them brown. However, the contact lenses severely limited her vision, and producer Graham Williams promised her she could stop wearing them. To explain the change in-story, writer Terrance Dicks wrote a scene in the 1977 serial Horror of Fang Rock in which Leela's eyes suffer "pigment dispersal" and turn blue after viewing the explosion of the Rutan ship.

In her travels with the Doctor, Leela faced killer robots, murderous homunculi, the Rutan Host, and the Sontaran invasion of the Doctor's home planet of Gallifrey. It is during this final adventure, The Invasion of Time that she meets and falls in love with Andred, a native Gallifreyan, and decides to stay behind to be with him. The first K-9 remains with her.

Sarah-Jane Smith, the Doctor and Harry Sullivan.
Doctor Sullivan is a commissioned Surgeon-Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, who is attached as medical officer to the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, the military organisation to which the Doctor acts as scientific advisor. He is first mentioned (though not seen) in Planet of the Spiders, when the Brigadier thinks the Third Doctor has gone into a coma. The Brigadier calls "Doctor Sullivan" and asks him to come to the Doctor's laboratory, but tells him not to bother when Sergeant Benton wakes the Doctor by offering him a cup of coffee. In the next serial, Robot, after the Doctor's third regeneration, Sullivan is called in to attend him, and ends up travelling aboard the TARDIS with the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith for several subsequent adventures.

Harry, the Doctor and Sarah Jane.

Harry is rather old-fashioned and stereotypically English in his attitudes. Somewhat accident-prone, he once claimed he was always trapping his nose in the doors of Portsmouth barracks. He often employs slightly archaic language — for example, referring to Sarah Jane affectionately as "old thing". He is nonetheless depicted as possessing great bravery and a "can-do" attitude, adapting well to the many strange situations in which he finds himself. He can, however, also be quite clumsy and unsubtle, once leading the Doctor to declare, in a moment of frustration, that "Harry Sullivan is an imbecile!".

Harry's last regular appearance is in the season thirteen opener Terror of the Zygons, which had actually been made at the conclusion of the twelfth production block and held over to start the following season. At the conclusion of this story he chooses to return to London by train rather than by TARDIS with the Doctor and Sarah Jane, who continue their adventures without him. He does, however, reappear three stories later in The Android Invasion, both as the original Harry and an android double. This is the character's final appearance in the programme. Harry is also mentioned in the story Mawdryn Undead — the Brigadier tells the Fifth Doctor that he was "seconded to NATO" and was last heard of "doing something 'hush-hush' at Porton Down."

Leela. "Enjoy your death as I enjoyed killing you!"
Sarah-Jane Smith. "Call me old girl again and I'll spit in your eye!"


Surgeon Lieutenant Harry Sullivan. "Harry here is only qualified to work on sailors."
K9. "Affirmative Doctor."
Leela, the Doctor, K9, Harry and Sarah-Jane.

As is typical with me, I have yet to do the bases...

All figures are Black Tree / Harlequin.

3 comments:

  1. All looking good.

    How are you doing the bases? I went with standard boogy moor which they all seem to spend a lot of time in but my Hitch-Hikers (in a sort of parraelle paint) I have gone with the classic BBC sand pit which is pretty much rough grey and works reasonably well outside or ship-board.

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  2. Still not decided yet but thinking of the 'quarry' look you suggested earlier. Sand, bit of grey, bit of brown/yellow, highlighted. Done.

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  3. I love how scared Harry looks!
    "DALEKS!! WHERE???"

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