Still recognisable under tons of make-up whilst playing an interstellar alien frog thug, Stratford Johns, one of the household names of the BBC's police series Z Cars, gave an excellent performance as the egotist self-proclaimed 'Demi- God' known as 'Monarch' in the first filmed adventure for Peter Davison's Doctor, of which he certainly proved a memorable and worthy premiere foe for our recently regenerated hero to on-screen spar against.
Despite a relatively superficial plot full of technobabble worthy of a later episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, I genuinely like Terence Dudley's Four to Doomsday, directed with style by John Black (fresh from his then recent success with The Keeper of Traken), the interesting idea of the multi-cultural characters/robots on a multi-generational travelling ship (with great production design by Tony Burrough), and featuring, most importantly, a finding-his-feet performance from Davison that is nonetheless great, putting in deliberate tribute echoes of the Hartnell/Troughton WHO performances whom the actor admired watching from childhood.
DVD trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnbkTNxIC3I
Continuities:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zziUtJCPv94
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