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Did you know a James Bond actor once faced off against the Tenth Doctor? Or that the man behind Logan Roy lent his voice to an Ood? Discover these and other shocking celebrity appearances in this deep dive into the unexpected guest stars of Doctor Who.
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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 Turner's King James VI in The Witchfinders,
00:45or legendary 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 Sim 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.
02:29Timothy 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 that the
02:41President 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 and 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
03:29for 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.
09:28Given 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.
09:42Capaldi 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.
10:02Thank you very much for your call. Have a nice life.
10:042. 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.
10:15This 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.
10:28Decades after her first appearance in the series, June Brown briefly re-emerged in the Doctor Who world via a
10:34short 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 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. Where else would he get it cleaned but in one of TV's last
11:10standing laundrettes?
11:121. 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.
11:50He'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.
12:21And 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.
12:31Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there, and I can be found across various social medias just by
12:35searching Ellie Littlechild.
12:36I've been Ellie with Who Culture, and in the words of Riversong herself, goodbye, sweeties.
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