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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
00:04of stars.
00:06Karen Gillan, Carey Mulligan, Daniel Kaluuya and Andrew Garfield have all passed through
00:10those big blue doors on their route to Hollywood.
00:13But what about the other way round?
00:15Back in the 1980s, John Nathan-Turner was keen to get theatre legend Sir John Gilgud
00:20to play a mutant in Revelation of the Daleks, but unfortunately it never came to pass.
00:26Similarly, Dennis Hopper had voiced a desire to appear in Doctor Who.
00:29But Russell T Davies decided against it, as he felt it would overshadow Kylie Minogue's
00:34cameo rather than, you know, add to it.
00:36Sometimes, however, big name guest stars do agree to appear in Doctor Who.
00:40Who could forget Alan Cummings, scene-stealing Turn as King James VI in The Witchfinders, or
00:46legendary British sitcom and movie actor Beryl Reid'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.
00:56From TV episodes to charity sketches and specially filmed comedy sketches, these are some of
01:02the big stars that you may not have realised have appeared in Doctor Who, or alongside the
01:06Doctor in something else entirely.
01:08So, with that in mind then, I'm Ellie with Who Culture, with 10 big stars you forgot appeared
01:14in the world of Doctor Who.
01:1610.
01:17Brian Cox
01:19David Tennant's final two-parter, The End of Time, was a big deal.
01:22Airing over Christmas Day 2009 and New Year's Day 2010, it was complemented by Tennant guesting
01:29on popular BBC panel show QI and specially commissioned idents before each programme on BBC One.
01:35Not only that, but the production team secured two huge stars to join Tennant, Bernard Cribbins,
01:40Catherine Tate and John Simm for the big finale.
01:43One of those was former Hannibal Lecter and future Logan Roy actor Brian Cox as an Ood.
01:49Or more accurately, the voice of an Ood.
01:52Brian Cox would likely channel Logan Roy's catchphrase if asked to don the Ood prosthetics.
01:56It's a brief voiceover role as the elder Ood, but the actor brings the required levels of
02:01gravitas to their portentous warning.
02:03It is returning.
02:04It is returning.
02:05And he is returning.
02:06And they are returning.
02:07Set the tone for the momentous end of Part 1 Cliffhanger that revealed the impending return
02:12of 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 Canadian
02:22impresario creator Sidney Newman in Mark Gatiss's excellent docudrama about William Hartnell.
02:289. Timothy Dalton
02:30The other huge star in The End of Time was Timothy Dalton as the President.
02:35It's only in the climactic confrontation towards the end of Part 2 that RTD reveals
02:40that the President is a resurrected Razzalon, the original founder of Time Lord Society.
02:46Apparently, Davies had considered making Omega the villain for Tennant's final story,
02:50but quickly dropped the idea.
02:52Omega would require far more explanation, and a corrupt president desperate to survive
02:56is a much easier sell for a hungover New Year's Day audience.
03:00The Razzalon reveal is merely a nice bonus for fans.
03:03Timothy Dalton is excellent as Razzalon.
03:05Like Cox, he gets to do a lot of portentous voiceover acting in the first part.
03:09His vengeful fury in his confrontations with the Doctor and the Master is tangible,
03:13not to mention spittle-inflected.
03:15What makes it even better is that it's essentially James Bond vs Doctor Who and the Master,
03:20a real casting coup appropriate for such a momentous role and episode.
03:24Dalton's Bond predecessor Roger Moore once said that he'd have loved to star in Doctor Who for Mark Gatiss.
03:30He never got the chance, but in the RTD era, it was only right that the Welsh James Bond
03:35Timothy Dalton joined the show.
03:378. Burt Kwok
03:38Burt Kwok was a British screen legend, born in Lancashire in 1930 and raised in Shanghai.
03:44After the Communist Revolution, Kwok returned to the UK, where he embarked upon a prolific career
03:49in film and television, which included a small role in Goldfinger.
03:53He is best known for 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 Prisoner of War drama Tenko.
04:06It was around the same time as Tenko that Kwok would appear in Peter Davidson's first serial as the Doctor,
04:124 to Doomsday.
04:13Kwok plays Lin Futu, who was kidnapped by the frog-like monarch and converted into an android.
04:19When the Doctor reveals that he's been deceived by the monarch, Lin Futu and his fellow androids assist the Doctor
04:24and his companions in foiling the monarch's plan.
04:27Davidson and Kwok would meet again years later on the set of The Harry Hill Show, where they took the
04:32helm off the Enterprise in a Star Trek-inflected version of Pulp's Disco 2000.
04:37In many ways, it's less weird than anything in 4 to Doomsday.
04:417. Ronnie Corbett
04:43There have been all manner of Doctor Who charity sketches and crossovers over the years, but it's rare for one
04:48of the spin-off shows to get in on the act.
04:50Torchwood, for example, never crossed over with Hollyo's. It just felt like it did.
04:54One exception was the Sarah Jane Adventures, which got involved with Red Nose Day in 2009 to raise money for
05:01comic relief.
05:02In a sketch known as From Raxacoracophallopatorius with Love, Sarah Jane and her team come face to face with an
05:08alien ambassador played by UK comedy legend Ronnie Corbett.
05:12Given that it's comic relief, the alien part is a very thin veil, as Corbett deploys his various trademarks, a
05:18love of golf, delivering monologues from a comfortable chair,
05:21and, of course, Sarah Jane gets to say a goodnight from him when she dispatches him once his true colours
05:26are revealed.
05:27For Ronnie, or Ranius, is revealed to be a Slothene who is intent on capturing K9 and using the robot
05:33dog's knowledge and capabilities to rule the galaxy.
05:36He is very quickly found out and dispatched in a fun throwaway scene that also has the honour of introducing
05:41deadly dealy-boppers to the world of Doctor Who.
05:456. Michael Sheen
05:46Michael Sheen has been about to play the next Doctor since Christopher Eccleston's departure was announced in 2005.
05:53The Welsh actor certainly fits the bill as an idealised version of what some fans see as the Doctor, but
05:58it feels unlikely that he'll ever get the keys to the TARDIS.
06:01He'll just have to take the Doctor's ship by force, and he's already got experience in that department.
06:07Neil Gaiman's acclaimed Doctor Who story, The Doctor's Wife, casts Sheen as the voice of the villainous house.
06:12He was a non-corporeal entity that survived by consuming ARTRON energy from captured TARDIS's on his junkyard planet.
06:20He is defeated by the TARDIS in the form of Idris, who expels the entity from the Doctor's ship.
06:26Sheen's voice is quite unrecognisable, unsurprising given his talent for mimicry.
06:30It's a spine-chilling performance, and despite recording all his lines separate from the filming, you get a real sense
06:36of Sheen going toe-to-toe with Matt Smith in the fantastic Fear Me scene.
06:40Sheen and Gaiman are of course firm friends, and continue to work with each other on the anticipated second series
06:46of Good Omens.
06:475. Stephen Fry
06:49You could be forgiven for forgetting that Stephen Fry appeared in Spyful, given how brief his role as the head
06:55of MI6 was.
06:56However, 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 back in 2001.
07:05With the series come back four years away, other revival options were being considered.
07:09One of these options was an audio serial entitled Death Comes to Time, which picked up the story of the
07:15seventh Doctor and Ace.
07:17It's a murder mystery, an epic intergalactic battle, and steeped in new Time Lord mythology.
07:22It also just happened to kill off the Doctor, seemingly for good.
07:26Joining a returning Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred was an extraordinary guest cast that included John Sessions and Anthony Head.
07:33Stephen Fry played the Minister of Chance, a fellow Time Lord who breaks the laws of non-intervention in a
07:38catastrophic fashion.
07:40It's a great performance by Fry, and the closest you'll likely get to him playing the Doctor.
07:44If the series had taken off, the plan was to have the Minister of Chance adopt the Doctor's title to
07:49redeem his prior actions, which led to the Doctor's death.
07:52It wasn't to be.
07:534. Ricky Gervais
07:55This is probably more a case of a Doctor that you forgot appeared in something else.
07:59Given that the Extra's Christmas special features Gervais' character playing a role in a fictionalised version of Doctor Who alongside
08:06David Tennant, it counts.
08:08Andy Millman takes on a part in Doctor Who when his career hits the skids.
08:12Watching the scene in question, it's clear that neither Gervais or Merchant have actually watched Doctor Who since the 1980s.
08:19The slug-like character that Millman is playing and the use of salt by Tennant's tenth Doctor to defeat him
08:24are ripped directly from 1984's The Twin Dilemma.
08:27Clearly, Colin Baker's debut story had a profound effect on the pair.
08:31It's a surprise not to see a producer wandering around in a Hawaiian shirt, a la AT's producer John Nathan
08:37-Turner.
08:38It's an odd moment, given how many big stars have played villains in real-life Doctor Who by this point
08:43in the new series' history.
08:44The idea of playing a Doctor Who monster as a low point feels outdated in 2007.
08:49It's almost as if Gervais is prone to making sweeping, 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 his Doctor-ish, slightly
09:02quirky-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 that saw the world of Harry
09:13Potter crossover with Doctor Who.
09:15The sketch involves Newt Scamander, a role that incidentally Matt Smith reportedly turned down, call round various fictional characters to
09:22ask if they'd seen Pudsey.
09:24The one-eyed yellow 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 as to his intentions for the
09:35bear.
09:35One of the calls he makes is to the 12th Doctor, who lists a variety of strange alien creatures that
09:40may or may not be Pudsey.
09:43Capaldi is on fine form, relishing in rattling off elaborate creature descriptions and delivering the best gag in the whole
09:49sketch that Pudsey has destroyed whole worlds with a death ray.
09:53Redmayne, meanwhile, blandly simpers and pouts his way through it.
09:57As for calls for Redmayne to be the next Doctor, maybe the 12th Doctor should answer those. Thank you very
10:02much for your call. Have a nice life.
10:04Number 2. June Brown
10:06The late, great June Brown appeared in Doctor Who back in the 1970s, going toe-to-toe with John Pertwee
10:13in The Time Warrior.
10:14This was before she landed the iconic role that would define her career, Dot Cotton in EastEnders.
10:20Through Brown's incredible performance, Dot is firmly embedded in British popular culture, to the point that she once made friends
10:26with Lady Gaga on The Graham Norton Show.
10:29Decades after her first appearance in the series, June Brown briefly re-emerged in the Doctor Who world via a
10:34short sketch.
10:35And we're not talking about dimensions in time.
10:382011's National Television Awards channeled the spirit of Billy Crystal at the Oscars via a whistle-stop TARDIS tour around
10:45TV history.
10:46The central conceit is that presenter Dermot O'Leary has slept in for the ceremony, and needs the Doctor's help
10:52to get him to the NTAs on time.
10:53The TARDIS travels a hundred years into the future to find an advert-laden BBC, and returns to Albert Square.
11:00When Dermot emerges onto Albert Square, he's immediately recognised by Dot Cotton as not being the Doctor.
11:06After all, he's only got one outfit.
11:08Where else would he get it cleaned but in one of TV's last standing laundrettes?
11:12Number 1. Ian McKellen
11:14Ian McKellen has regularly worked with Seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy, both in King Lear at the RSC and in Peter
11:20Jackson's Hobbit trilogy.
11:22It was while they were filming this that McKellen and Jackson submitted a short scene for the celebratory comedy The
11:28Five-ish Doctor's Reboot back in 2013.
11:31However, McKellen had already appeared in Doctor Who 11 months earlier as an evil snow globe.
11:36If anyone can lend the required gravitas to something as ostensibly silly as an evil snow globe, it's Sir Ian
11:42McKellen.
11:43McKellen's voice performance as the Great Intelligence is a superb addition to 2012's Christmas special, The Snowmen.
11:49He's warm and paternal as he entrances the lonely young Simeon, then shifts to frosty malevolence as the Doctor discovers
11:57the extent of the plot.
11:58It's the sort of star casting that became expected of the Doctor Who Christmas specials since Catherine Tate, who, lest
12:04we forget, was huge in the UK in 2006, appeared in the TARDIS at the end of Doomsday.
12:09Despite him only being a voiceover, McKellen's portrayal of a classic villain like the Great Intelligence is indicative of Doctor
12:16Who's increasing popularity in the run-up to the 50th anniversary in 2013.
12:22And that concludes our list. If you can think of any that we missed, then do let us know in
12:26the comments below, and while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe and tap that notification bell.
12:30Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there, and I can be found across various social medias just by
12:35searching Ellie Littlechild.
12:37I've been Ellie with Who Culture, and in the words of Riversong herself, goodbye, sweeties.
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