page_title: Fourth Doctor
section_title: Appearance
hierarchical_section_title: Fourth Doctor / Appearance
context_page_description: The Fourth Doctor is an incarnation of the Doctor, the protagonist of the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who. He was portrayed by Tom Baker.
  Within the series' narrative, the Doctor is a centuries-old alien Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey who travels in time and space in the TARDIS, frequently with companions. At the end of life, the Doctor regenerates; as a result, the physical appearance and personality of the Doctor changes.
  Baker portrays the Fourth Doctor as a whimsical and sometimes brooding individual whose enormous personal warmth is at times tempered by his capacity for righteous anger. His initial companion was intrepid journalist Sarah Jane Smith, who had travelled alongside him in his previous incarnation, and she is later joined by surgeon Harry Sullivan. His later companions included robotic dog K9, savage warrior Leela, Time Lady Romana, alien teenage aristocrat Nyssa, teen genius Adric, and Australian flight attendant Tegan.
  Baker portrayed the character for seven consecutive seasons, which remains the longest tenure of any actor to portray the lead, counting both the classic and modern series.
context_section_description: Imposingly tall, with eyes that seem to constantly boggle, a mass of curls for hair and prominently displayed teeth, the Doctor favours an outfit that usually consists of a shirt, waistcoat, cravat, trousers, a frock coat (with pockets containing a seemingly endless array of apparently useless items that would nevertheless suit the Doctor's purposes when used), a wide-brimmed hat and, most famously, his impractically long, multi-coloured scarf, which was apparently knitted for him by Madame Nostradamus (whom he refers to as a "witty little knitter"). When it is damaged in The Ark in Space (1975), the Doctor declares with regret that it is "irreplaceable."
  According to Baker, the Doctor's scarf was the idea of costume designer James Acheson.  Acheson, knowing little about knitting, procured large quantities of various colours of wool, and commissioned Begonia Pope, a friend of his, to create a colourful design.  She proceeded to use all of the wool provided, resulting in the absurdly long, but iconic, accessory.
  Producer Philip Hinchcliffe had wardrobe create three distinct coats for Baker to wear depending on the type of story, the first being the reddish-brown blazer that he wore throughout all of his first season; the other two (full-length) coats were dark brown (for the darker horror stories) and light grey (for more action-packed stories). The Wardrobe Department also provided a brown wide-brimmed felt fedora. The rest was often picked from his own clothes (like neckties, trousers and a waistcoat). A wider, brighter-coloured scarf debuted with Baker's fourth season and a light brown coat was introduced late in his fifth season.  Baker also appeared in a one-off Sherlock Holmes-inspired costume in The Talons of Weng-Chiang.
  According to both the creators of the show and Baker, the character's look was originally based on paintings and posters by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec of his friend, Aristide Bruant, a singer and nightclub owner whose trademark was a black cloak and long red scarf.
  When John Nathan-Turner became the show's producer in Baker's last year, the Fourth Doctor was the first to sport an item of clothing adorned with question marks as a motif, in this case, above the points on his shirt collars. His overall costume was redesigned, changing the colour focus from brown to red. Designer June Hudson later revealed in an interview that Nathan-Turner had even given her permission to remove the scarf altogether if she wanted to. Hudson opted to keep the scarf, as it was such an iconic part of the character.
caption: Painting of Aristide Bruant by Lautrec, which inspired the Doctor's famous look.
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