They're all the Doctor, the Timeless Child said so!
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00:00 Despite his denial, the rumours continue to circulate that Hugh Grant will be taking on
00:05 the role as the next Doctor. However, a lot of people seem to forget that he has actually
00:10 played that role before. If Grant is in line to play the next Doctor,
00:14 then he wouldn't be the first actor to have appeared in some form beforehand.
00:18 Peter Capaldi and Colin Baker both had roles in the series before eventually being cast
00:22 as the Doctor. But it's not the 6th and 12th Doctors that
00:26 this list is interested in. So, with that in mind then, I'm Ellie with
00:29 Who Culture and here are 10 Doctor Who guest actors who also played the Doctor.
00:35 10. David Warner David Warner was reportedly Steven Spielberg's
00:41 suggestion to play the Doctor in the TV movie, but it is said that the actor did not want
00:46 to be tied down to a long-running series. Warner finally made an appearance in the series
00:51 proper in Cold War, a minor and some might say disappointing role, in an episode written
00:56 by his friend Mark Gatiss. The two had previously played the Doctor
01:00 and Master respectively in the big Finnish audio series entitled Symphony for the Devil,
01:06 which was released as part of the Unbound series during Doctor Who's 40th anniversary
01:11 year. Each play followed a "what if" Doctor story,
01:14 such as what if the Valiard had won, or in Warner's case, what if the Doctor had not
01:19 become Unit's scientific advisor. Jonathan Clements' story saw this third Doctor
01:23 accidentally sent to Hong Kong in 1997 instead of England 1970. He finds his old friend the
01:31 Brigadier running a bar in the city after being dishonourably discharged from Unit,
01:35 and the two join together to fight the Master and some alien parasites.
01:39 It's a really good Doctor Who story, and Warner was so good in the role that he has
01:44 returned to play the so-called "Unbound" Doctor in numerous big Finnish audios.
01:49 Number 9. Arabella Weir. Arabella Weir made a brief appearance in the
01:54 2011 Christmas special The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe. However, years earlier,
02:00 again in Big Finnish's Unbound series, she played the second female Doctor. The first
02:04 being Joanna Lumley, of course. Exile, written by Nicholas Briggs, is another
02:09 alternative Doctor Who reality, but a much more controversial one. Again, the Doctor
02:13 is exiled to Earth due to some offence committed against the Time Lords. But this female Doctor
02:18 is an alcoholic who works in a supermarket, rather than the smart, dashing hero with a
02:23 military contract. But more controversially, the Doctor's female
02:27 incarnation is a punishment, doled out by the Time Lords due to the previous incarnation
02:32 committing suicide. It's nobody's finest hour. And for those who have issues with Stephen
02:37 Moffat's writing for female characters, you should probably give this one a wide berth.
02:42 Number 8. David Banks. David Banks is best known as the 1980s cyber
02:48 actor, but he also played the Doctor for two performances of the Stay Show, Doctor Who
02:53 The Ultimate Adventure. As well as starring as the snarling mercenary
02:57 Carl, Banks was an understudy for third Doctor John Pertwee, who was touring the show around
03:02 the UK. Pertwee fell ill, and so Banks had to play
03:05 the role for two nights, with his Doctor later being dubbed the "Greenpeace Doctor" owing
03:10 to his choice of clothing – a Greenpeace T-shirt, beige coat, trousers and a brown
03:15 hat, which were probably just the clothes that Banks happened to be wearing that day.
03:19 As it was a live show, it's difficult to tell what unique spin he put on the character,
03:25 which was clearly written with John Pertwee in mind.
03:28 The Ultimate Adventure, written by Terrence Dix, is a weird mixture of Doctor Who, pantomime
03:34 and a West End musical. But it does have some accidental references to future Doctor Who,
03:39 most notably Madame Delilah, a slightly criminal, slightly untrustworthy woman who falls for
03:45 the Doctor and ends up sacrificing her life to save him. Hello, sweetie, indeed.
03:52 Number 7. Derek Jacobi. Derek Jacobi's master was one of the great
03:56 surprises of the Russell T Davies era. He'd played the character before, of course, in
04:01 that ill-fated Scream of the Shulker series, but here he was, albeit briefly, as a decidedly
04:06 menacing master. Of course, a brief cameo is no barrier to
04:10 future roles in Doctor Who, and Jacobi has been playing the character for Big Finish
04:14 since 2017. Jacobi had previously worked with Big Finish,
04:19 however, most notably back in 2003 as part of their Unbound series.
04:23 Deadline, the play in which Jacobi stars as Martin Bannister, technically isn't a Doctor
04:29 Who story, but rather about the absence of Doctor Who.
04:34 Set in an alternate reality where Doctor Who never made it past the pilot, Jacobi's character
04:39 is the ageing and confused writer of that first episode.
04:44 As the play goes on, Bannister starts to believe that he himself is the Doctor, and listeners
04:48 get to hear Jacobi perform alternate versions of scenes from The Unearthly Child and The
04:53 Daleks. It's a dark and melancholic tale of twisted
04:58 opportunities and dashed dreams, and it also suggests that life is just that little bit
05:02 brighter with Doctor Who in it. Number 6. Trevor Martin. Trevor Martin played
05:09 one of the trio of Time Lords that exiled the second Doctor to Earth at the end of the
05:14 War Games, offering him a new face. It was surprising not to find Martin's own
05:18 face there, considering that only a few years later he would be playing the character on
05:23 stage. Terrence Dicks wrote Doctor Who and The Daleks
05:27 in The Seven Keys to Doomsday as a vehicle for the departing John Pertwee, but unfortunately
05:32 the actor was unavailable and so Trevor Martin was cast as an alternative fourth Doctor.
05:37 It is essentially a chase quest for seven crystals that the Daleks will use to control
05:43 all life in the universe. Wendy Padbury, who had previously starred
05:47 as Zoe, also appears as the Doctor's companion Jenny.
05:51 Martin said that he was harassed by youths on the Tube during the run of the show due
05:55 to his long effeminate hair, but he did return to the role in 2008 in the Big Finish audio
06:02 adaptation of the play. Martin's casting is an interesting bridge
06:06 between the end of the Troughton era, when the series was close to cancellation, and
06:10 the end of the Pertwee era, when the show was popular enough to warrant a West End stage
06:14 show.
06:15 5. David Troughton Both of Patrick Troughton's sons have had
06:20 guest roles in Doctor Who and played their father's incarnation of the character on audio.
06:25 David Troughton, however, is the more prolific guest star of the two.
06:28 He was an extra in The Enemy of the World, appeared alongside his father in the second
06:33 Doctor's final story, The War Games, and starred as the King of Peledon alongside John Pertwee.
06:38 He was also a former flatmate of sixth Doctor actor Colin Baker, and memorably stole the
06:43 show from Peter Davidson in a very peculiar practice.
06:47 Troughton returned to the series in the David Tennant episode "Midnight" as Professor Hobbs.
06:52 A few years after that, he would be cast as the second Doctor in a series of Doctor Who
06:56 audios centred around Tom Baker's fourth Doctor.
07:00 It was a great performance, and the fact that he didn't sound exactly like his father only
07:04 added to the mystery of the character.
07:06 He would then go on to read some audio books of second Doctor stories for the BBC.
07:11 Interestingly, in the 1990s, he was actually considered as a replacement for Sylvester
07:17 McCoy's seventh Doctor when the New Virgin Adventures range wanted to regenerate him,
07:22 and a photoshoot was even commissioned for reference, until the BBC vetoed the idea.
07:27 Number 4.
07:28 Nicholas Briggs.
07:29 Before he was the voice of the Daleks, and even before his work with Big Finish, Nicholas
07:34 Briggs was the Doctor.
07:36 He played the character over four series of fan-made audios from 1985 to 1993.
07:43 His version of the Doctor was such a big part of the fabric of the fandom at the time that
07:48 he even made appearances in the Doctor Who magazine comic strip.
07:52 Dressed as a 1920s gentleman, Briggs' Doctor had an obsession with tea and classical literature,
07:57 which is exactly what people thought Doctor Who was at the time.
08:01 The Nth Doctor, as he is sometimes known, made his first appearance in Doctor Who magazine
08:05 comic strip called Party Animals, where it's hinted that he is a future incarnation of
08:11 the seventh Doctor when the two meet at an intergalactic birthday party.
08:16 However, Briggs' Doctor would become an even larger part of Doctor Who canon when,
08:20 in 1998, the comic strip appeared to kill off Paul McGann's eighth Doctor in a story
08:26 entitled The Final Chapter.
08:28 After being mortally wounded in defeating a cabal of Gallifreyan zealots, the Doctor
08:32 regenerates... into Nicholas Briggs!
08:35 It's one of the great Doctor Who comic strip arcs of the 1990s.
08:41 Number 3.
08:42 Lenny Henry Lenny Henry played the villainous tech mogul
08:46 Daniel Barton in the series 12 two-part story Spyfall.
08:50 He made a great Doctor Who villain, and it's rather promising that he abruptly exited stage
08:55 right as soon as the Master's plan fell apart.
08:58 Could he be one of the forces being drawn back for the 13th's final adventure?
09:02 Who knows?
09:03 Prior to his appearance in Doctor Who, Lenny Henry had been vocal about the lack of a black
09:08 actor in the lead role.
09:10 Back in the 1980s, Henry became the first black Doctor on an episode of his sketch show.
09:15 It's a fairly standard Doctor Who spoof, with gags about Technobabble, running down corridors,
09:19 and the Doctor and companion wanting to have sex with each other.
09:22 That's actually the best gag in the sketch, which suggests that family-friendly Doctor
09:26 Who was taken off the air in 1985 so that the Doctor and Perry could get it on with
09:31 each other.
09:32 Lenny Henry's Doctor is dressed rather brilliantly as a cross between John Shaft and Rupert the
09:36 Bear, which is as good a description of the character as any other.
09:40 And in retrospect, this sketch is archly satirical, with the evil Thachos, a Cyberman dressed
09:45 as Maggie Thatcher, automating all jobs in the year 2010.
09:51 Number 2.
09:52 Richard E. Grant.
09:53 Richard E. Grant played the Great Intelligence, the big bad of Doctor Who's series 7B, which
09:59 led to the 50th anniversary special in 2013.
10:03 And given his history with Doctor Who, it's easy to see why Grant was the perfect choice
10:07 for a vengeful villain.
10:09 Richard E. Grant had played the Doctor twice before first being cast in 2012's The Snowmen.
10:15 When Rowan Atkinson's Ninth Doctor was killed during Stephen Moffat's comic relief sketch,
10:19 he regenerated into Richard E. Grant, or as written, the "slightly handsome Doctor".
10:24 It was a one-night-only charity gig that surely allowed Moffat and the comic relief team to
10:28 scratch the itch of which 90s actors could play the Doctor if the series was still on.
10:34 Four years later, Grant was cast as the Ninth Doctor in Scream of the Shalka, a 40th anniversary
10:39 animated web series for the BBC's website.
10:43 It was written by Paul Cornell, and the Doctor is clearly recovering from a terrible loss
10:47 that has occurred off-screen.
10:49 Meeting a new companion, it appears that he will gradually become the Doctor again.
10:53 Unbeknownst to the team of The Scream of Shalka, Russell T Davies was also devising a Ninth
10:59 Doctor, who was also dealing with a tragedy in his past.
11:02 And when the new TV show was announced, the Shalka Doctor was quietly set aside.
11:08 Number 1.
11:09 Mark Gatiss Mark Gatiss is one of the revised series'
11:13 most prolific guest stars and writers.
11:16 Since the show returned in 2005, Gatiss has written nine Who episodes, written for nine
11:22 separate Doctors across various media, and starred as four very different characters
11:28 in the TV series.
11:30 But he has also been the Doctor in his own right.
11:34 For one-night-only back in 1999, the same year that Hugh Grant played the Doctor, Gatiss
11:39 wrote three comedy sketches for BBC Two's Doctor Who night.
11:43 The second of these, entitled The Web of Caves, is an affectionate spoof of 60s Doctor Who.
11:49 Landing on an alien planet, the Doctor is constantly door-stopped by aliens who aren't
11:53 particularly villainous.
11:55 The aliens are played with relish by Little Britain's David Walliams and UK comedy stalwart
12:00 Paul Putnam, who wear daft blonde wigs and silvery costumes.
12:04 They're desperate for the Doctor to defeat them, but fail at each hurdle, as the aliens'
12:08 evil plots are repeatedly shot down by the Doctor.
12:12 It's been attempted, but I suppose I better stop you.
12:15 What a catchphrase!
12:17 Print that on the 2023 Doctor Who calendar!
12:20 And that concludes our list.
12:22 If you can think of any other examples, then do let us know in the comments below.
12:25 And while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe and tap that notification bell.
12:30 Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there, and I can be found across various social medias
12:34 just by searching Ellie Littlechild.
12:36 I've been Ellie with Who Culture, and in the words of River Song herself, "Goodbye,