Well here it is, the end of the Fourth Doctor era. It's weird, in that in some ways I feel like I have been watching Tom Baker stories forever (every day for three months), but in other ways it feels like it came and went so quickly. I'm a little bummed that the new restoration of Shada hasn't been released yet in the US, I would have liked to include that in my viewing. I will have to add it to my list of associated things to watch once I finish the main series, along with K9 and Company and a few others. After 92 days, 41 stories, 335 miles, and 625,000 steps, I am done with the Fourth Doctor. 

So let's talk about his final goodbye.

Logopolis - Parts 3 & 4

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

With the back half of this story we finally get the connective tissue that binds together almost the entire season. It turns out that the universe had passed its own heat death due to entropy long ago, but the mathematical wizards of Logopolis had kept things going by making N-Space not a closed system after all. That Charged Vacuum Emboitment that the TARDIS fell through into E-Space at the start of Full Circle? That one and others like it were created by the Logopolitans in order to shunt the excess entropic energy from our own universe into others. It was only a stop-gap measure, but they have been keeping it up while they explored ways to make the fix permanent.

And then along comes the Master to throw a spanner in the works, without realizing the consequences.

In the end, of course, the Doctor does a Very Clever Thing in order to save the universe, but not before a wave of entropy envelops and obliterates the Traken Union and leaves Nyssa without a home to return to. This is arguably the largest death toll ever witnessed in a Doctor Who story, as presumably billions of lives were wiped out by the little black smudge spreading on the TARDIS video screen, but they don't really dwell on that. The victory also comes at the cost of the Doctor's current form, and so the final scene has the Doctor regenerate into the remarkably-young Peter Davison.

A new Doctor, three new companions, a new Master, and John Nathan-Turner has completed his radical shift in the program. 

Unfortunately, part of that shift is a change in which the Doctor from here on out in the classic era wears a COSTUME. It started with the question marks on the Doctor's collar this past season, and that was... ok. But now we get a cricket uniform with a sprig of celery on the lapel for no reason, followed by the abomination that is Colin Baker's attire, and then Sylvester McCoy's all-question-marks-everywhere getup. It is a dark, dark future that lies ahead. 

STATS:

Doctor(s): Fourth
Companion(s): Adric, Nyssa, Tegan
Episode(s): Logopolis - Parts 3 & 4
Steps Walked: 7,611 today, 1,927,750 total
Distance Walked: 4.30 miles today, 979.92 miles total
Weight: 248.08 lbs (five day moving average), net change -59.02 lbs