The Doctors Who's Who (19 page)

An interesting aside regarding McCoy’s introduction to playing the Doctor is a low-budget movie called
Three Kinds of Heat
. Mere months before taking on the role, he appeared in the movie, which also included Mary Tamm (companion and fellow Time Lord Romana from the Tom Baker years) and Trevor Martin (one of the few stage Doctor Whos).

McCoy’s Doctor Who was not a write-off, despite what some critics claim. Although there was a diminishing budget, some quality stories were made, such as ‘The Curse of Fenric’, ‘Silver Nemesis’, ‘Delta and the Bannermen’ with the legendary Ken Dodd, and ‘Dragonfire’, with its scary
Raiders of the Lost Ark
melting-face scene.

McCoy certainly brought back much mystery to the part of the Doctor, especially with the notion that he could have been
Merlin the Magician. But it was his token Dalek story that impressed many. ‘Remembrance of the Daleks’ was the first story to show a Dalek travelling upstairs. It also returned the Doctor to his Earth origins at 76 Totter’s Lane, the junkyard in the very first
Doctor Who
episode.

There was much to like about McCoy’s Doctor, including his final story ‘Survival’, which brought the whole original series to a climax with Anthony Ainley’s last outing as the Doctor’s nemesis, the Master.

McCoy was always thrilled to be Doctor Who. He wrote in his introduction letter to the fans, ‘My new appearance takes place on UK TV screens in September 1987 for 14 action-packed episodes. 1988 is
Doctor Who’s
25th anniversary so there is plenty to look forward to.’

And indeed there was, until the programme was terminated through no fault of McCoy’s. The show, in its old incarnation, had simply run out of steam…

…but McCoy’s career hadn’t. In 1996 he appeared in an episode of
Rab C. Nesbitt
, as would future Doctor Who and fellow Scot David Tennant. McCoy’s episode was entitled ‘Father’, and he played Rab’s mentally ill brother Gash Snr to hysterical effect.

McCoy also appeared as Grandpa Jock in John McGrath’s
A Satire of the Four Estates
(1996) at the Edinburgh Festival. It appears that he doesn’t forget his Scottish roots and it would be great to see the two Scottish Doctors (McCoy and Tennant) in a one-off production.

Another interesting part for McCoy was as Snuff in the dark and macabre BBC Radio 4 comedy series,
The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari
.

In 1997 McCoy appeared as rapist Michael Sams in
Beyond Fear
. The true story of Stephanie Slater (Gina McKee), an estate agent who was kidnapped, raped and held in a coffin-like box for eight days by Sams. The drama focuses on how Slater and her family come to terms with the ordeal and the resulting court case, with flashbacks to the harrowing events.

It is clear that by using flashbacks the opportunity of greater drama is missed. The main theme is the result rape has on its victims and their families and what they are put through in order to appease the justice system. McCoy and McKee are terrific in what is a drama with an average script.

McCoy has had a series of near-misses in the movies. When Steven Spielberg was planning on directing
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
, McCoy was attached to the role of Governor Swann. Also, he was second choice to play Bilbo Baggins in the Peter Jackson
Lord of the Rings
trilogy; but his ship would come in later…

McCoy took the part of the lawyer Dowling in the BBC production of Henry Fielding’s novel
The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling
. He also appeared in the RSC’s
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
, as well as
King Lear
(2007), playing the fool to Sir Ian McKellen’s Lear, a performance that bizarrely allowed McCoy to play the spoons.

In 2008 he performed
The Mikado
(Gilbert and Sullivan) with the Carl Rosa Company. He only performed with the company briefly, for the show’s one-week run at the Sheffield Lyceum.
The Stage
review from 24 September 2008 said: ‘Sylvester McCoy as the Mikado delivers the songs like speeches, in stentorian tones. Convincing performances come too from Gareth Jones…’ Perhaps it was a shame that he had only a butterfly life in the production as the overall review of
The Mikado
was very good, although a little sting in the tail: ‘Such well-known music strikes a happy chord. It just needs
the company to gel together a little more and work not as individuals but as an ensemble.’ Overall the short tour was quite well received.

The Academy
(2009) was a one-off drama starring Sir Ian McKellen as the head of a run-down creative arts academy in Clapham. The academy has seen better days and greater popularity, so it is decided that they form a documentary to raise awareness and funds, but the bittersweet concoction of a famous brother (to McKellen) and a staff that has lost direction is almost a step too far. McCoy plays the disabled Felix in what was a well-suited role for his eccentric sense of fun.

McKellen’s presence dominates throughout, but McCoy is thoroughly entertaining in this quirky mockumentary. A little gem that is likely to be forgotten, despite the fact that a spin-off TV series was considered – perhaps
The Lord of the Rings
and
The Hobbit
postponed that decision briefly.

‘In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit.’

The Hobbit
 
J. R. R. Tolkien

Although Sylvester McCoy missed out as far as
The Lord of the Rings
trilogy was concerned, he was not forgotten by
Doctor Who
fan Peter Jackson, when he was casting the prequel,
The Hobbit
.

McCoy was cast as Radagast the Brown and soon flew over to New Zealand to film the episodic movie (released from 2012).

He had always brought a tinge of madcap humour to his roles, but with Radagast he threw caution to the wind, playing him as a totally crazy wizard with all the energy of a new millennium
Doctor Who
– even though nearing 70 Earth years of age by this time.

It was during
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
press conference that McCoy explained his Tolkein screen-legacy: ‘I was up for the part [the old Bilbo Baggins] all those years ago and got down to the last two actors, and the other one was the amazing Ian Holm. I was a bit miffed, but I was also delighted to be in such company… And then when I met Peter [Jackson] and his team later they said to me, “Well maybe it’s a good thing you didn’t get it because we’ve written you a rather interesting part”… and I think maybe they’re right.’

In fact they were completely right. Radagast was the perfect vehicle for McCoy’s talents. Although there might be some prestige to playing an old Bilbo, it was not the kind of role that an actor such as McCoy could bury himself him to the extent that he did with Radagast. Both roles were eventually cast extremely well.

Sylvester McCoy never started out with the intention of being an actor. Like his hippy beginnings, events in his life tended to happen around him, both impressive and diverse. This theatrical wandering allowed him – like so many other Doctor Whos – to brush shoulders with Laurence Olivier. It was a non-speaking part in the Frank Langella 1979 production of
Dracula
, but, yet again, the great actor had a presence in the life of a Doctor. Perhaps the great ‘Larry’ was indeed the Doctor that got away.

McCoy hasn’t been an over-used actor, but that doesn’t seem to bother him. His career has been full and successful and it appears the threat of typecasting in any way has never entered his mind. And even though his
Doctor Who
years are not considered to be the most impressive in terms of visual effects or scripts, his portrayal of the Doctor did hark back to those more formative years of the show, when no one was really certain if he was an alien or even Merlin the Magician.

‘After bidding farewell to the second supporting party, Captain Scott and his four companions, Wilson, Oates, Bowers, and Petty Officer Evans, entered on what might be called the last phase of the polar journey…’

No Surrender
 
Harold Avery

CHAPTER NINE

PAUL MCGANN

‘… but abide the change of time…’

Cymbeline
 
William Shakespeare

ALTHOUGH HAVING HAD
the shortest on-screen reign as the Doctor, Paul McGann has been involved with
Doctor Who
ever since appearing in its first true TV movie in 1996. In fact, because of the amount of work he has done with audio, radio drama and his likeness appearing in comic strips too, there is a school of thought that considers him the longest-serving Doctor.

McGann’s Doctor is significant, because he provided some significant milestones in the evolution of the programme. In fact, if it wasn’t for
Doctor Who – The Movie
, the new millennium show would not be as developed and therefore as successful as it is. McGann was the first Doctor to kiss a companion, he had the first new TARDIS interior (something in line with the series since Christopher Eccleston’s tenure), and the first feature-length one-off episode (OK, it
was
called a
movie but it was a continuation of the TV legacy, unlike its earlier movie counterparts).

Many
Doctor Who
fans have wondered why McGann has never been offered an opportunity to do a few seasons as the Doctor. Even now there is nothing to stop him. He wasn’t a failure in the role; he signed a contract that was to last longer than his one-off special. And what harm would there really be in going back to the eighth Doctor after Peter Capaldi? As the programme informs us, time is relative and the 13th Doctor is meant to be the last, so only one more actor left after Peter Capaldi… apparently!

‘A Time Lord has 13 lives and The Master had used all of his.’

The Doctor 
Doctor Who – The Movie

Paul McGann is the Doctor everybody wants to see a little more of, but probably won’t get the opportunity. So how has his career been affected by the programme? It is something he once did on screen, much as he once did a film called
Withnail and
I
. It was a one-off, but nevertheless one that gave him much prestige.

McGann’s interpretation of the Doctor is riveting, even if the story itself wasn’t. The Edwardian clothes didn’t quite work and Russell T. Davies must have picked up on this. A more modern look should have gone with a more modern forward-looking Doctor; but the movie didn’t take that radical step. Strange really, as the TARDIS interior was dramatically changed and the potential of a love interest marked a departure for the Doctor. Well, McGann was certainly heroic in the role, rather than the respectable elder statesman.
Paul McGann was born on 14 November 1959 in Liverpool. He was the third of six children. In 1958, his mother Clare gave birth to twins, Joseph and John, but John died shortly after birth. Joe, along with his three younger brothers, Paul, Mark and Stephen, are all actors. His sister – Clare – works behind the scenes in TV.

McGann’s first significant role in television was as Mo Morris in the BBC series
Give Us a Break
(1983). He was the fresh-faced snooker ace in a show that capitalised on the TV snooker boom of the early 1980s, where charismatic players such as Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins and Jimmy ‘Whirlwind’ White captivated huge TV audiences. The show had its moments as early-evening light entertainment but soon ran out of steam, despite a quality appearance from Robert Lindsay after his
Citizen Smith
days.

In 1986, McGann took on the role that would be a significant milestone in his career:
The Monocled Mutineer
. Based upon the 1970s novel by William Alison and John Fairley, he played Percy Toplis, a vagabond, deserter and criminal.

The show was highly praised at the time and McGann received many plaudits. However, it was blasted by the Conservative Party as left wing in its interpretation of a sensitive action during the war (the Etaples Mutiny), which Toplis was apparently involved in.

The Monocled Mutineer
was never repeated on the BBC, although it has since been released on video and DVD. It showcased the very best of the young Paul McGann and, like other BBC series of that time (such as the mini-series
House of Cards
), it is remembered fondly by those who watched it.

McGann is generally known to a younger audience for his part in the classic movie
Withnail and I
. Noted as a student film
(i.e. that it is primarily student audiences who watch it), it follows two out-of-work actors, Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and Marwood, aka ‘I’ (McGann). With drink, drugs and more than a hint of homosexual angst, the film is student self-indulgence to excess. The movie is set in the 1960s and is meant to be based upon the director’s (Bruce Robinson) own formative years.

McGann enjoyed making the movie, but only really got to see it 20 years later at the anniversary screening on London’s South Bank. He called it ‘an extraordinary piece of work’, because it is a film of words, a film where the actors have to act and not hide behind props and special effects. To a degree, he is right. To me, the film lacks a little substance in its plot, but that’s not to say that the performances are lacking; they are not. In fact Richard E. Grant, who is famously teetotal, was made hideously drunk by Robinson to assist the reality of the part he was playing.

Withnail and I
is a carefree, buddy movie. The characters are frustrated, unemployed actors, lusting for the spotlight while living in squalor. It’s a kind of high-class version of the 1980s comedy,
The Young Ones
. Grant is very dramatic and camp, while McGann is the fresh lamb being led to the slaughter – yet somehow surviving.