10 Big Stars You Forgot Appeared In The World Of Doctor Who
No star is too big for the tardis.
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00:00 Modern Doctor Who is often seen as the show that launches the careers of the next generation
00:05 of stars. Karen Gillan, Carey Mulligan, Daniel Kaluuya, and Andrew Garfield have all passed
00:10 through those big blue doors on their route to Hollywood. But what about the other way
00:14 round? Back in the 1980s, John Nathan-Turner was keen to get theatre legend Sir John Gilgert
00:20 to play a mutant in Revelation of the Daleks, but unfortunately, it never came to pass.
00:26 Similarly, Dennis Hopper had voiced a desire to appear in Doctor Who, but Russell T Davies
00:30 decided against it as he felt it would overshadow Kylie Minogue's cameo rather than, you know,
00:35 add to it.
00:36 Sometimes, however, big-name guest stars do agree to appear in Doctor Who. Who could forget
00:41 Alan Cummings, seen stealing Turner's King James VI in The Witchfinders, or legendary
00:46 British sitcom and movie actor Beryl Reed's turn as a grizzled space captain? This list
00:51 collects some of the more surprising cameos and guest turns from Doctor Who's long history.
00:57 From TV episodes to charity sketches and specially filmed comedy sketches, these are some of
01:02 the big stars that you may not have realised have appeared in Doctor Who, or alongside
01:06 the Doctor in something else entirely.
01:08 So, with that in mind, I'm Ellie with Who Culture, with 10 Big Stars You Forgot Appeared
01:14 in the World of Doctor Who.
01:16 10. Brian Cox
01:19 David Tennant's final two-part, At the End of Time, was a big deal, airing over Christmas
01:23 Day 2009 and New Year's Day 2010. It was complemented by Tennant guesting on popular
01:29 BBC panel show QI and specially commissioned idents before each programme on BBC One. Not
01:36 only that, but the production team secured two huge stars to join Tennant, Bernard Cribbins,
01:41 Catherine Tate and John Simm for the big finale.
01:44 One of those was former Hannibal Lecter and future Logan Roy actor Brian Cox as an oomph
01:49 nood, or more accurately, the voice of an ood. Brian Cox would likely channel Logan
01:53 Roy's catchphrase if asked to don the ood prosthetics.
01:57 It's a brief voiceover role as the elder ood, but the actor brings the required levels
02:01 of gravitas to their portentous warning. It is returning, and he is returning, and they
02:06 are returning. Set the tone for the momentous end of part one cliffhanger that revealed
02:11 the impending return of Gallifrey and the Time Lords to bring the RTD Tennant era to
02:16 close.
02:17 A year later, Cox would bring lashings of piss and vinegar to his role as Doctor Who's
02:22 Canadian impresario creator Sidney Newman in Mark Gatiss' excellent docudrama about
02:27 William Hartnell.
02:29 9. Timothy Dalton
02:31 The other huge star in The End of Time was Timothy Dalton as The President. It's only
02:36 in the climactic confrontation towards the end of part two that RTD reveals that The
02:41 President is a resurrected Razalon, the original founder of Time Lord Society.
02:46 Apparently, Davies had considered making Omega the villain for Tennant's final story,
02:50 but quickly dropped the idea. Omega would require far more explanation, and a corrupt
02:55 President desperate to survive is a much easier sell for a hungover New Year's Day audience.
03:00 The Razalon reveal is merely a nice bonus for fans.
03:03 Timothy Dalton is excellent as Razalon. Like Cox, he gets to do a lot of portentous voiceover
03:07 acting in the first part. His vengeful fury in his confrontations with the Doctor and
03:12 the Master is tangible, not to mention spittle-inflected. What makes it even better is that it's essentially
03:17 James Bond vs Doctor Who and the Master, a real casting coup appropriate for such a momentous
03:23 role and episode.
03:24 Dalton's Bond predecessor Roger Moore once said that he'd have loved to star in Doctor
03:29 Who for Mark Gatiss. He never got the chance, but in the RTD era, it was only right that
03:34 the Welsh James Bond Timothy Dalton joined the show.
03:37 8. Bert Quark
03:38 Bert Quark was a British screen legend, born in Lancashire in 1930 and raised in Shanghai.
03:45 After the Communist Revolution, Quark returned to the UK, where he embarked upon a prolific
03:49 career in film and television, which included a small role in Goldfinger. He is best known
03:54 for his role as Kato, Inspector Clouseau's hands-on man-servant in the Pink Panther series.
04:00 In later years, he delivered an acclaimed performance as Major Yamaguchi in Japanese
04:04 prisoner of war drama Tenko. It was around the same time as Tenko that Quark would appear
04:09 in Peter Davidson's first serial as the Doctor, 4 to Doomsday. Quark plays Lin Futu,
04:15 who was kidnapped by the frog-like monarch and converted into an android. When the Doctor
04:20 reveals that he's been deceived by the monarch, Lin Futu and his fellow androids assist the
04:24 Doctor and his companions in foiling the monarch's plan.
04:27 Davidson and Quark would meet again years later on the set of The Harry Hill Show, where
04:32 they took the helm of the Enterprise in a Star Trek-inflected version of Pulp's Disco
04:36 2000. In many ways, it's less weird than anything in 4 to Doomsday.
04:41 7. Ronnie Corbett
04:43 There have been all manner of Doctor Who charity sketches and crossovers over the years, but
04:47 it's rare for one of the spin-off shows to get in on the act. Torchwood, for example,
04:51 never crossed over with Hollyoaks. It just felt like it did. One exception was the Sarah
04:56 Jane Adventures, which got involved with Red Nose Day in 2009 to raise money for comic
05:01 relief. In a sketch known as From Raxacoracofalopitorius with Love, Sarah Jane and her team come face
05:07 to face with an alien ambassador played by UK comedy legend Ronnie Corbett.
05:12 Given that it's comic relief, the alien part is a very thin veil, as Corbett deploys
05:16 his various trademarks - a love of golf, delivering monologues from a comfortable chair, and of
05:21 course Sarah Jane gets to say "a good night" from him when she dispatches him once his
05:26 true colours are revealed.
05:27 Or Ronnie, or Ranius, is revealed to be a Sladeen who is intent on capturing K-9 and
05:32 using the robot dog's knowledge and capabilities to rule the galaxy. He's very quickly found
05:37 out and dispatched in a fun throwaway scene that also has the honour of introducing deadly
05:42 deely boppers to the world of Doctor Who.
05:45 6. Michael Sheen
05:47 Michael Sheen has been about to play the next Doctor since Christopher Eccleston's departure
05:51 was announced in 2005. The Welsh actor certainly fits the bill as an idealised version of what
05:56 some fans see as "The Doctor", but it feels unlikely that he'll ever get the keys to
06:00 the TARDIS. He'll just have to take the Doctor's ship by force, and he's already
06:04 got experience in that department.
06:07 Neil Gaiman's acclaimed Doctor Who story "The Doctor's Wife" casts Sheen as the
06:11 voice of the villainous House. He was a non-corporeal entity that survived by consuming Archeron
06:17 energy from captured TARDISes on his junkyard planet. He's defeated by the TARDIS in the
06:22 form of Idris, who expels the entity from the Doctor's ship. Sheen's voice is quite
06:27 unrecognisable, unsurprising given his talent for mimicry. It's a spine-chilling performance,
06:32 and despite recording all his lines separate from the filming, you get a real sense of
06:36 Sheen going toe-to-toe with Matt Smith in the fantastic "fear me" scene. Sheen and
06:41 Gaiman are, of course, firm friends, and continue to work with each other on the anticipated
06:45 second series of good omens.
06:47 5. Stephen Fry
06:49 You could be forgiven for forgetting that Stephen Fry appeared in Spyfall, given how
06:53 brief his role as the head of MI6 was. However, that's not the forgotten Fry role in question.
06:59 The polymath actor had previously appeared in a very different type of Doctor Who story
07:03 back in 2001. With the series' comeback four years away, other revival options were
07:08 being considered. One of these options was an audio serial entitled "Death Comes to
07:14 Time", which picked up the story of the seventh Doctor and Ace. It's a murder mystery,
07:18 an epic intergalactic battle, and steeped in new Time Lord mythology. It also just happened
07:23 to kill off the Doctor, seemingly for good.
07:26 Joining a returning Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred was an extraordinary guest cast that
07:30 included John Sessions and Anthony Head. Stephen Fry played the Minister of Chance, a fellow
07:35 Time Lord who breaks the laws of non-intervention in a catastrophic fashion. It's a great
07:41 performance by Fry, and the closest you'll likely get to him playing the Doctor. If the
07:45 series had taken off, the plan was to have the Minister of Chance adopt the Doctor's
07:48 title to redeem his prior actions, which led to the Doctor's death. It wasn't to be.
07:54 4. Ricky Gervais
07:55 This is probably more a case of a Doctor that you forgot appeared in something else. Given
07:59 that the Extras Christmas special features Gervais' character playing a role in a fictionalised
08:04 version of Doctor Who alongside David Tennant, it counts. Andy Milman takes on a part in
08:10 Doctor Who when his career hits the skids. Watching the scene in question, it's clear
08:14 that neither Gervais or Merchant have actually watched Doctor Who since the 1980s. The slug-like
08:19 character that Milman is playing and the use of salt by Tennant's tenth Doctor to defeat
08:24 him are ripped directly from 1984's The Twin Dilemma.
08:27 Clearly, Colin Baker's debut story had a profound effect on the pair. It's a surprise
08:32 not to see a producer wandering around in a Hawaiian shirt, a la '80s producer John
08:37 Nathan-Turner.
08:38 It's an odd moment, given how many big stars have played villains in real life Doctor Who
08:42 by this point in the new series' history. The idea of playing a Doctor Who monster as
08:46 a low point feels outdated in 2007. It's almost as if Gervais is prone to making sweeping,
08:52 simplistic generalisations in his comedy.
08:54 3. Eddie Redmayne
08:56 Eddie Redmayne is a name regularly plucked out of the next Doctor hat, likely due to
09:01 his Doctor-ish, slightly quirky-wears-a-long-coat performance in the Fantastic Beasts series.
09:07 However, Redmayne has come within spitting distance of the TARDIS in a charity sketch
09:12 that saw the world of Harry Potter cross over with Doctor Who.
09:15 The sketch involves Newt Scamander, a role that incidentally Matt Smith reportedly turned
09:19 down, call round various fictional characters to ask if they'd seen Pudsey. The one-eyed
09:24 yellow teddy is the Children in Need mascot, and has clearly gone missing.
09:29 Given that Newt Scamander has a history of magical creature wrangling, the mind boggles
09:33 as to his intentions for the bear. One of the calls he makes is to the Twelfth Doctor,
09:38 who lists a variety of strange alien creatures that may or may not be Pudsey.
09:43 Capaldi is on fine form, relishing in rattling off elaborate creature descriptions and delivering
09:48 the best gag in the whole sketch, that Pudsey has destroyed whole worlds with a death ray.
09:54 Redmayne, meanwhile, blandly simpers and pouts his way through it.
09:57 As for calls for Redmayne to be the next Doctor, maybe the Twelfth Doctor should answer those.
10:02 Thank you very much for your call. Have a nice life.
10:05 2. June Brown
10:07 The late, great June Brown appeared in Doctor Who back in the 1970s, going toe to toe with
10:12 John Pertwee in The Time Warrior. This was before she landed the iconic role that would
10:17 define her career, Dot Cotton in EastEnders.
10:20 Through Brown's incredible performance, Dot is firmly embedded in British popular culture,
10:25 to the point that she once made friends with Lady Gaga on The Graham Norton Show.
10:29 Decades after her first appearance in the series, June Brown briefly re-emerged in the
10:33 Doctor Who world via a short sketch, and we're not talking about dimensions in time.
10:38 2011's National Television Awards channelled the spirit of Billy Crystal at the Oscars
10:42 via a whistle-stop TARDIS tour around TV history. The central conceit is that presenter Dermot
10:48 O'Leary has slept in for the ceremony and needs the Doctor's help to get him to the
10:52 NTAs on time.
10:54 The TARDIS travels 100 years into the future to find an advert-laden BBC and returns to
10:59 Albert Square. When Dermot emerges onto Albert Square, he's immediately recognised by Dot
11:03 Cotton as not being the Doctor. After all, he's only got one outfit. Where else would
11:08 he get it cleaned but in one of TV's last standing laundrettes?
11:12 1. Ian McKellen
11:14 Ian McKellen has regularly worked with Seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy, both in King Lear
11:19 at the RSC and in Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy. It was while they were filming this
11:24 that McKellen and Jackson submitted a short scene for the celebratory comedy The Five-ish
11:28 Doctors reboot back in 2013. However, McKellen had already appeared in Doctor Who 11 months
11:34 earlier as an evil snow globe.
11:36 If anyone can lend the required gravitas to something as ostensibly silly as an evil snow
11:41 globe, it's Sir Ian McKellen. McKellen's voice performance as the Great Intelligence
11:45 is a superb addition to 2012's Christmas special, The Snowmen. He's warm and paternal
11:51 as he entrances the lonely young Simeon, then shifts to frosty malevolence as the Doctor
11:56 discovers the extent of the plot.
11:58 It's the sort of star-casting that became expected of the Doctor Who Christmas special
12:02 since Catherine Tate, who, lest we forget, was huge in the UK in 2006, appeared in the
12:08 TARDIS at the end of Doomsday. Despite him only being a voiceover, McKellen's portrayal
12:12 of a classic villain like the Great Intelligence is indicative of Doctor Who's increasing
12:17 popularity in the run-up to the 50th anniversary in 2013.
12:22 And that concludes our list. If you can think of any that we missed, then do let us know
12:26 in the comments below. And while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe
12:29 and tap that notification bell. Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there, and I
12:33 can be found across various social medias just by searching Ellie Littlechild.
12:36 I've been Ellie with Who Culture, and in the words of River Song herself, goodbye,