No star is too big for the tardis.
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00:00Modern Doctor Who is often seen as the show that launches the careers of the next generation
00:05of stars. Karen Gillan, Carey Mulligan, Daniel Kaluuya, and Andrew Garfield have all passed
00:10through those big blue doors on their route to Hollywood. But what about the other way
00:14round? Back in the 1980s, John Nathan-Turner was keen to get theatre legend Sir John Gilgert
00:20to play a mutant in Revelation of the Daleks, but unfortunately it never came to pass. Similarly,
00:26Dennis Hopper had voiced a desire to appear in Doctor Who, but Russell T Davies decided
00:31against it as he felt it would overshadow Kylie Minogue's cameo rather than, y'know,
00:35add to it. Sometimes, however, big-name guest stars do agree to appear in Doctor Who. Who
00:41could forget Alan Cummings' scene-stealing turn as King James VI in The Witchfinders,
00:46or legendary British sitcom and movie actor Beryl Reed's turn as a grizzled space captain?
00:51This list collects some of the more surprising cameos and guest turns from Doctor Who's
00:55long history. From TV episodes to charity sketches and specially filmed comedy sketches,
01:01these are some of the big stars that you may not have realised have appeared in Doctor
01:05Who, or alongside the Doctor in something else entirely.
01:08So, with that in mind then, I'm Ellie with Who Culture, with 10 big stars you forgot
01:14appeared in the world of Doctor Who.
01:1610. Brian Cox
01:19David Tennant's final two-parter, The End of Time, was a big deal. Airing over Christmas
01:23Day 2009 and New Year's Day 2010, it was complemented by Tennant guesting on popular
01:29BBC panel show QI, and specially commissioned idents before each programme on BBC One. Not
01:36only that, but the production team secured two huge stars to join Tennant, Bernard Cribbins,
01:41Catherine Tate and John Simm for the big finale.
01:44One of those was former Hannibal Lecter and future Logan Roy actor Brian Cox as an Ood,
01:50or more accurately, the voice of an Ood. Brian Cox would likely channel Logan Roy's catchphrase
01:54if asked to don the Ood prosthetics.
01:57It's a brief voice-over role as the elder Ood, but the actor brings the required levels
02:01of gravitas to their portentous warning. It is returning, and he is returning, and they
02:06are returning. Set the tone for the momentous end of Part 1 Cliffhanger, that revealed the
02:11impending return of Gallifrey and the Time Lords to bring the RTD Tennant era to close.
02:17Years later, Cox would bring lashings of piss and vinegar to his role as Doctor Who's
02:22Canadian impresario creator Sidney Newman in Mark Gatiss' excellent docudrama about
02:27William Hartnell.
02:299. Timothy Dalton
02:31The other huge star in The End of Time was Timothy Dalton as The President. It's only
02:36in the climactic confrontation towards the end of Part 2 that RTD reveals that The President
02:42is a resurrected Razalon, the original founder of Time Lord Society.
02:47Originally Davies had considered making Omega the villain for Tennant's final story, but
02:50quickly dropped the idea. Omega would require far more explanation, and a corrupt President
02:55desperate to survive is a much easier sell for a hungover New Year's Day audience.
03:00The Razalon reveal is merely a nice bonus for fans.
03:03Timothy Dalton is excellent as Razalon. Like Cox, he gets to do a lot of portentous voice-over
03:07acting in the first part. His vengeful fury in his confrontations with the Doctor and
03:12the Master is tangible, not to mention spittle-inflected. What makes it even better is that it's a
03:17essentially James Bond vs Doctor Who and The Master, a real casting coup appropriate
03:22for such a momentous role and episode.
03:24Dalton's Bond predecessor Roger Moore once said that he'd have loved to star in Doctor
03:29Who for Mark Gatiss. He never got the chance, but in the RTD era, it was only right that
03:34the Welsh James Bond Timothy Dalton joined the show.
03:378. Bert Quark
03:39Bert Quark was a British screen legend, born in Lancashire in 1930 and raised in Shanghai.
03:45After the Communist Revolution, Quark returned to the UK, where he embarked upon a prolific
03:49career in film and television, which included a small role in Goldfinger. He is best known
03:54for his role as Kato, Inspector Clouseau's hands-on man-servant in the Pink Panther series.
04:00In later years, he delivered an acclaimed performance as Major Yamaguchi in Japanese
04:05Prisoner of War drama Tenko.
04:07It was around the same time as Tenko that Quark would appear in Peter Davidson's first
04:11serial as the Doctor, 4 to Doomsday. Quark plays Lin Futu, who was kidnapped by the frog-like
04:16monarch and converted into an android. When the Doctor reveals that he's been deceived
04:21by the monarch, Lin Futu and his fellow androids assist the Doctor and his companions in foiling
04:26the monarch's plan.
04:27Davidson and Quark would meet again years later on the set of The Harry Hill Show, where
04:32they took the helm of the Enterprise in a Star Trek-inflected version of Pulp's Disco
04:362000. In many ways, it's less weird than anything in 4 to Doomsday.
04:417. Ronny Corbett
04:43There have been all manner of Doctor Who charity sketches and crossovers over the years, but
04:47it's rare for one of the spin-off shows to get in on the ad. Torchwood, for example,
04:52never crossed over with Hollyoaks. It just felt like it did.
04:55One exception was the Sarah Jane Adventures, which got involved with Red Nose Day in 2009
05:00to raise money for comic relief. In a sketch known as From Raxacoricofallapatorius with
05:05love, Sarah Jane and her team come face-to-face with an alien ambassador played by UK comedy
05:10legend Ronny Corbett.
05:12Given that it's comic relief, the alien part is a very thin veil, as Corbett deploys
05:17his various trademarks, a love of golf, delivering monologues from a comfortable chair, and of
05:21course, Sarah Jane gets to say a goodnight from him when she dispatches him once his
05:26true colours are revealed.
05:27For Ronny, or Ronnius, is revealed to be a Sladeen who is intent on capturing K-9 and
05:32using the robot dog's knowledge and capabilities to rule the galaxy. He's very quickly found
05:37out and dispatched in a fun throwaway scene that also has the honour of introducing deadly
05:42dealy boppers to the world of Doctor Who.
05:456. Michael Sheen
05:47Michael Sheen has been about to play the next Doctor since Christopher Eccleston's departure
05:51was announced in 2005. The Welsh actor certainly fits the bill as an idealised version of what
05:56some fans see as the Doctor, but it feels unlikely that he'll ever get the keys to
06:00the TARDIS. He'll just have to take the Doctor's ship by force, and he's already
06:04got experience in that department.
06:07Neil Gaiman's acclaimed Doctor Who story, The Doctor's Wife, casts Sheen as the voice
06:11of the villainous House. He was a non-corporeal entity that survived by consuming Archeron
06:17energy from captured TARDISes on his junkyard planet. He's defeated by the TARDIS in the
06:22form of Idris, who expels the entity from the Doctor's ship. Sheen's voice is quite
06:27unrecognisable, unsurprising given his talent for mimicry. It's a spine-chilling performance,
06:32and despite recording all his lines separate from the filming, you get a real sense of
06:36Sheen going toe-to-toe with Matt Smith in the fantastic Fear Me scene. Sheen and Gaiman
06:41are, of course, firm friends, and continue to work with each other on the anticipated
06:45second series of Good Omens.
06:475. Stephen Fry
06:49You could be forgiven for forgetting that Stephen Fry appeared in Spyfall, given how
06:53brief his role as the head of MI6 was. However, that's not the forgotten Fry role in question.
06:59The polymath actor had previously appeared in a very different type of Doctor Who story
07:03back in 2001. With the series' comeback four years away, other revival options were
07:08being considered. One of these options was an audio serial entitled Death Comes to Time,
07:14which picked up the story of the seventh Doctor and Ace. It's a murder mystery, an epic
07:19intergalactic battle, and steeped in new Time Lord mythology. It also just happened
07:23to kill off the Doctor, seemingly for good.
07:26Joining a returning Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred was an extraordinary guest cast that
07:30included John Sessions and Anthony Head. Stephen Fry played the Minister of Chance, a fellow
07:35Time Lord who breaks the laws of non-intervention in a catastrophic fashion. It's a great performance
07:41by Fry, and the closest you'll likely get to him playing the Doctor. If the series had
07:45taken off, the plan was to have the Minister of Chance adopt the Doctor's title to redeem
07:49his prior actions, which led to the Doctor's death. It wasn't to be.
07:544. Ricky Gervais
07:55This is probably more a case of a Doctor that you forgot appeared in something else. Given
07:59that the Extras Christmas special features Gervais' character playing a role in a fictionalised
08:04version of Doctor Who alongside David Tennant, it counts. Andy Milman takes on a part in
08:10Doctor Who when his career hits the skids. Watching the scene in question, it's clear
08:14that neither Gervais or Merchant have actually watched Doctor Who since the 1980s. The slug-like
08:19character that Milman is playing and the use of salt by Tennant's tenth Doctor to defeat
08:24him are ripped directly from 1984's The Twin Dilemma.
08:27Clearly, Colin Baker's debut story had a profound effect on the pair. It's a surprise
08:32not to see a producer wandering around in a Hawaiian shirt, a la 80s producer John Nathan
08:37Turner. It's an odd moment, given how many big stars have played villains in real life
08:42Doctor Who by this point in the new series' history. The idea of playing a Doctor Who
08:46monster as a low point feels outdated in 2007. It's almost as if Gervais is prone to making
08:51sweeping, simplistic generalisations in his comedy.
08:543. Eddie Redmayne
08:56Eddie Redmayne is a name regularly plucked out of the next Doctor hat, likely due to
09:01his Doctor-ish, slightly quirky-wears-a-long-coat performance in the Fantastic Beasts series.
09:07However, Redmayne has come within spitting distance of the TARDIS in a charity sketch
09:11that saw the world of Harry Potter crossover with Doctor Who.
09:15The sketch involves Newt Scamander, a role that incidentally Matt Smith reportedly turned
09:19down, call round various fictional characters to ask if they'd seen Pudsey. The one-eyed
09:24yellow teddy is the Children in Need mascot, and has clearly gone missing.
09:29Given that Newt Scamander has a history of magical creature wrangling, the mind boggles
09:33as to his intentions for the bear. One of the calls he makes is to the Twelfth Doctor,
09:38who lists a variety of strange alien creatures that may or may not be Pudsey.
09:43Capaldi is on fine form, relishing in rattling off elaborate creature descriptions and delivering
09:48the best gag in the whole sketch, that Pudsey has destroyed whole worlds with a death ray.
09:54Redmayne, meanwhile, blandly simpers and pouts his way through it.
09:57As for calls for Redmayne to be the next Doctor, maybe the Twelfth Doctor should answer those.
10:02Thank you very much for your call. Have a nice life.
10:052. June Brown
10:07The late, great June Brown appeared in Doctor Who back in the 1970s, going toe-to-toe with
10:12John Pertwee in The Time Warrior. This was before she landed the iconic role that would
10:17define her career, Dot Cotton in EastEnders.
10:20Through Brown's incredible performance, Dot is firmly embedded in British popular
10:24culture, to the point that she once made friends with Lady Gaga on The Graham Norton Show.
10:29Decades after her first appearance in the series, June Brown briefly re-emerged in the
10:33Doctor Who world via a short sketch, and we're not talking about dimensions in time.
10:382011's National Television Awards channelled the spirit of Billy Crystal at the Oscars
10:42via a whistle-stop TARDIS tour around TV history. The central conceit is that presenter Dermot
10:48O'Leary has slept in for the ceremony, and needs the Doctor's help to get him to the
10:52NTAs on time.
10:54The TARDIS travels 100 years into the future to find an advert-laden BBC, and returns
10:59to Albert Square. When Dermot emerges onto Albert Square, he's immediately recognised
11:03by Dot Cotton as not being the Doctor. After all, he's only got one outfit. Where else
11:08would he get it cleaned but in one of TV's last standing laundrettes?
11:121. Ian McKellen
11:14Ian McKellen has regularly worked with Seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy, both in King Lear
11:19at the RSC and in Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy. It was while they were filming this
11:24that McKellen and Jackson submitted a short scene for the celebratory comedy The Five-ish
11:28Doctors reboot back in 2013. However, McKellen had already appeared in Doctor Who 11 months
11:34earlier as an evil snow globe.
11:36If anyone can lend the required gravitas to something as ostensibly silly as an evil snow
11:41globe, it's Sir Ian McKellen. McKellen's voice performance as the Great Intelligence
11:45is a superb addition to 2012's Christmas special, The Snowmen. He's warm and paternal
11:51as he entrances the lonely young Simeon, then shifts to frosty malevolence as the Doctor
11:56discovers the extent of the plot.
11:58It's the sort of star casting that became expected of the Doctor Who Christmas special
12:02since Catherine Tate, who, lest we forget, was huge in the UK in 2006, appeared in the
12:08TARDIS at the end of Doomsday.
12:10Despite him only being a voiceover, McKellen's portrayal of a classic villain like the Great
12:13Intelligence is indicative of Doctor Who's increasing popularity in the run-up to the
12:1850th anniversary in 2013.
12:22And that concludes our list. If you can think of any that we missed, then do let us know
12:26in the comments below. And while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe
12:29and tap that notification bell.
12:31Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there, and I can be found across various social medias
12:35just by searching Ellie Littlechild.
12:36I've been Ellie with Who Culture, and in the words of River Song herself, goodbye,
12:41sweeties.