Fifth Doctor - Appearance

Appearance

The Fifth Doctor's chosen mode of dress was a variation of an Edwardian cricketer's uniform, and he was even seen to carry a cricket ball in one of his pockets (which saved his life in one adventure). He wore a cream-coloured frock coat, striped trousers, plimsoll shoes, and occasionally a pair of spectacles. He frequently wore an optimo-style Panama hat that had a red band studded with sparkling stones, which he would roll up and place in an inside coat pocket. The Tenth Doctor, who inherited various traits from this incarnation such as spectacle use, revealed in "Time Crash" that the spectacles were not actually needed to aid the Doctor's eyesight but were just for show to make him look clever (perhaps to counter his youthful appearance), although in Four to Doomsday, he makes a remark about being a bit short-sighted in one eye when questioned about the contents of his pockets, which included the aforementioned cricket ball, a book (The Tardis Manual) and a magnifying glass. The Fifth Doctor's costume also retained red question marks embroidered onto the collar, which producer John Nathan-Turner added to the Fourth Doctor's costume in 1980. The Fifth Doctor displayed an unusually acute sense of taste in Planet of Fire, also inherited by the Tenth Doctor and the Eleventh Doctor.

On his lapel, this Doctor wore a celery stalk. He claimed in The Caves of Androzani that the celery would sometimes turn purple in the presence of certain gases in the "Praxis" range to which he was allergic, although this allergy was not mentioned by any incarnations before or since. He said that if that happened, he would then eat the celery, adding "f nothing else, I'm sure it's good for my teeth." In the same story, while attempting to revive a feverish Peri from spectrox toxaemia, he had noted that celery was an "excellent restorative from where I come from," but that the human olfactory system was "comparatively feeble." Supporting this assertion, in the 2010 episode "Cold Blood", the Eleventh Doctor asks if there is any celery handy after being subjected to a decontamination process intended for humans (which proved potentially lethal to a Time Lord biology). The Tenth Doctor poked fun at the celery in "Time Crash", describing it as a "decorative vegetable".

Peter Davison stated in an interview on the DVD of Castrovalva that he thought the clothes he wore were far too "designed" and that he would have still kept them, but wanted to add some individual flair to them, as other actors portraying the Doctor have done in the past. In an interview with BBC Breakfast in July 2011, Davison stated that the cricket jumper was his idea, as the producers wanted something that conveyed both action and eccentricity.