Trivia / Doctor Who S19 E2 "Four to Doomsday"

• Acting for Two: Philip Locke (Bigon) also provided the voice of Control in the first two episodes, but was uncredited on-screen.
• Creator Backlash:
  • While Peter Davison and Janet Fielding both consider "Time-Flight" to be the actual worst story from the Fifth Doctor's era, they considered this a close second as per the DVD Commentary. When they revisited the story for the special features on the 2018 Blu-Ray release, they seemed to have mellowed somewhat on this opinion.
  • Even Matthew Waterhouse thought Adric was a complete prat in this story. He felt Adric's reasoning for siding with the villain made no sense, and resented his character being made to have bad motives and beliefs for no other reason than for other characters to tell him they were bad.
  • Stratford Johns was disappointed how unrecognisable he was as Monarch in the finished programme. And this was after his requested Latex Perfection rather than the traditional mask he was supposed to wear.
• Hostility on the Set: Peter Davison and Matthew Waterhouse started their working relationship on a less-than-ideal note when Waterhouse kept pointing out Davison's mistakes when making this serial, ultimately telling him that he would never be as good as Tom Baker.
• Technology Marches On: Bigon mentions that his android body's processors use circuitry that is 100 nanometres thick, which is treated as advanced even when compared to Time Lord technology. In real-life, desktop CPUs started using circuitry even smaller than that (at 90 nanometres) as soon as 2004.
• Wag the Director:
  • The Aboriginal character's dialogue (and Tegan's when she demonstrates she can speak his language) was originally scripted as plausible-sounding gibberish (similarly to the Doctor's "Chinese" dialogue in "The Talons of Weng-Chiang"). Janet Fielding, an Australian, felt this was insulting, and requested that the writer consult the BBC's language department to rewrite the dialogue in an actual Aboriginal language. The one they settled on was Tiwi as filmed.
  • Stratford Johns was supposed to wear a more encumbering mask much like those worn briefly by his co-stars playing Persuasion and Enlightenment. Johns refused, fearing that the mask would hamper his performance. As a compromise, the makeup department created a thin latex mask each day for him to wear. It was laborious to apply and could only be used once as removing it destroyed it, but it allayed his concerns about the mask.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Colin Baker, Paul Darrow and Martin Jarvis were considered for Persuasion.
  • Robert Hardy, Peter Davison's All Creatures Great And Small co-star, was considered for Monarch.
  • In the early scripts, the assiters are described as wearing bands rather than having discs on their hands.
• Working Title: Day of Wrath.

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