The best guest actors on season 20 of "Doctor Who
In order from greatest to least.
List activity
339 views
• 0 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
20 people
- Nicholas Courtney was born in Egypt, the son of a British diplomat. His early years were spent in Kenya and France and he was called up for National Service at the age of 18. After 18 months of duty in the British forces, Courtney joined the Webber Douglas drama school. He spent two years there and then did repertory theatre in Northampton. His next move was to London.
During the 1960s, he played some roles in popular TV series. In 1965, he made an appearance on Doctor Who (1963), during the tenure of William Hartnell. The director, Douglas Camfield, remembered him and, in 1967, cast him as "Captain Knight" in "Doctor Who" episode "The Web of Fear". He took the part of "Lethbridge-Stewart", which was to become his most famous role, when the actor originally cast in the part had to drop out. At this time, Patrick Troughton was the star of the series.
Shortly after this, Courtney was offered the chance to play the role regularly and accepted. This guaranteed him work until 1975, when the character was written out of the series. He became a good friend of Jon Pertwee during his time on the programme, and returned in 1983, 1988 and 1989. His other television work has included a comedy with Frankie Howerd. Courtney has maintained a close association with "Doctor Who", narrating the documentary Doctor Who: Thirty Years in the TARDIS (1993) and attending conventions and appearing in spin-offs.Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
(Mawdryn Undead) - He could have been described as the "British Vincent Price". This distinguished actor was probably best known for his voice work. His low, resonant and mellifluous tones were employed to chill and excite for at least half a century. His most famous radio role was as "The Man In Black", back in the late 1940s, but he was making radio appearances as late as 1980 in "The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy", and undoubtedly later, and was in the BBC Television Shakespeare in the year of his death, at 77.Black Guardian
(Mawdryn Undead/Terminus/Enlightenment) - Anthony Ainley was a notable British actor and a member of a distinguished British acting family. His brother was Richard Ainley (1910-1967) and his father Henry Ainley (1879-1945). He worked in the theatre for many years and eventually found work in various historical film dramas in the 1970s. However, his claim to fame is his casting in the role of the Master in the long running science fiction series, Doctor Who (1963). He first appeared in the role in 1981 and would makes further appearances each year up to and including 1986. He then reprised the role one last time in 1989, for the final Doctor Who serial entitled 'Survival'. He retired from acting professionally in the late nineties and played cricket up until the time of his death in May 2004.The Master/Sir Gilles Estram
(The King's Demons) - Actor
- Director
- Music Department
Martin Clunes was born the son of the noted Shakespearean actor Alec Clunes. He was educated at the Royal Russell School in Surrey and the Arts Educational School in Chiswick, London. He made his television debut playing an alien prince opposite Peter Davison in Snakedance: Part One (1983) (director Fiona Cumming later said she cast him because she was struck by his unusual looks and "Mick Jagger lips"). He then won a regular role in No Place Like Home (1983), a fairly traditional middle-class BBC sitcom starring William Gaunt.
Clunes' greatest breakthrough came with starring in British Men Behaving Badly (1992), an anarchic sitcom which proved to be one of the most popular series of the 1990s. He has since established himself as one of the UK's most consistently popular television actors, starring in the long-running Doc Martin (2004), recreating Leonard Rossiter's famous role in a new version of Reggie Perrin (2009) and playing Arthur Conan Doyle in Arthur & George (2015).Lon
(Snakedance)- Actor
- Soundtrack
British stage and screen actor whose characters typically displayed indecision or timidity, usually mild-mannered or naive types who tended to come to a sticky end somewhere along the line. Collings began acting professionally with the Liverpool Repertory Theatre in the early 60s. Though having never attended drama school, he nonetheless segued successfully into television work following the advice of a fellow actor. On screen from 1965, he initially appeared in several prominent cop shows (Z Cars (1962), Softly Softly (1966)) but became ultimately best known for his work in science fiction, often having undergone extensive alien make-up. He was notable as an alien kidnap victim turned into a human bomb in The Psychobombs (1970) and as a 'Vogan' renegade scientist out to destroy (and, of course, expiring in the process) the perennial robotic nemesis in Revenge of the Cybermen. Having enjoyed the experience, he popped up twice more in Doctor Who (1963) instalments: as the driver of a mining vehicle on an extraterrestrial world who suffers from the unfortunate malady 'robophobia' while confronting The Robots of Death and as the titular antagonist (on this occasion playing an immortal, but mutated and disfigured alien scientist) in Mawdryn Undead.
Collings also specialised in period drama, particularly effective as the often mistreated and underpaid clerk Bob Cratchit in Scrooge (1970), the spy John Barsad (aka Solomon Pross) in A Tale of Two Cities (1980), the Russian liberal politician Pavel Nikolayevich Milyukov in Fall of Eagles (1974) and British Tory Prime Minister William Pitt in the miniseries Prince Regent (1979). On stage, he portrayed Lord Stanley in a National Theatre production of Richard III and the King of France in Henry V at the Royal Exchange in Manchester. He provided the voice for Legolas in the BBC 4 radio serial The Lord of the Rings.Mawdryn
(Mawdryn Undead)- Christopher Brown is known for The Remains of the Day (1993), Sense and Sensibility (1981) and Miami Vice (1984).Marriner
(Enlightenment) - Keith has said that his fear of a sadistic school teacher turned him to acting as to get out of school he joined an amateur drama group then became a student at Sheffield Playhouse otherwise he would have very likely joined his family's wholesale business, At the playhouse he met Mary who was a scene painter They married and had a son and at one point used to own a restaurant.Striker
(Enlightenment) - Brian Miller was born on 17 April 1941 in Birmingham, England, UK. He is an actor, known for Brazil (1985), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1984) and The Punk (1993). He was previously married to Elisabeth Sladen.Dugdale
(Snakedance) - John Carson was a hugely prolific actor who appeared constantly on UK screens throughout the mid-50s until the mid-80s. He has appeared alongside many of the UK's stars and became hugely popular as a villain or hero. The secret of John's success was his versatility and his wonderful silky voice. He appeared in 3 Hammer films which led to an ever-increased popularity amongst film fans. John moved to South Africa from England in the 80s and, sadly, his appearances became far more sporadic although he always kept working, even producing and filming his own short documentary, "African Spirit". He returned to England in 2007 and has been involved in a few films, such as The Deal (2008). He attended a John Carson Celebration Day in London (July 2009). This was the first time he had talked publicly about his long career in television, film and stage. The day was a huge success and, aside from a showing of two of his films, John gave an interview on stage and then signed autographs. The day was a huge success and this was proved so by a large attendance and the queues for his autograph and photos. John returned to South Africa in 2014 where he spent time with his family and got to relax a little. He sadly passed away on November 5th, 2016, a few weeks before his 90th birthday. He was a fine actor and leaves behind a legacy of his versatility on screen.Ambril
(Snakedance) - Gerald Flood was born in Portsmouth, son of a Naval family. He was a wireless operator during the War and worked as a filing clerk after the War ended until he landed a job with the Farnham Repertory Company. It was there that he met his future wife, Anne. He toured in rep, and appeared in productions including "Hamlet," "Power and Glory" and "Charley's Aunt." In 1960 he performed in "The Complaisant Lover" at the Globe Theatre and went on to appear in "The Formation Dancers," "Children's Day" and "There's A Girl In My Soup." In the 1960's he appeared in a science fiction series called "Pathfinders in Space" (1960), and its sequels "Pathfinders to Mars" (1960-1961) and "Pathfinders to Venus" (1961). Other television roles followed, including "The Ratcatchers" (1966/67), "A Sharp Intake of Breath," "Third Time Lucky" and "Bleak House." He also guested on shows like "Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased): A Disturbing Case" (1969), "Strange Report" (1969), "Steptoe and Son: What Prejudice" (1970) and "Return of the Saint" (1979). His films included "Black Beauty" (1946), "Patton" (1970), "Smokescreen" and "Frightmare" (1974). He died in April 1989.Kamelion/King John
(The King's Demons) - Actor
- Soundtrack
Staffordshire-born actor who achieved popularity as Detective Chief Superintendent John Watt on Z Cars (1962) and Softly Softly: Task Force (1969). The son of an accountant, he studied at London's Central School of Speech and Drama and began his career on radio before proceeding to the classical stage. A co-founder of the Elizabethan Theatre Company (formerly the Oxford and Cambridge Players), he toured Britain and India and first appeared on screen in 1955. At the outset, his theatrical training made him ideal casting for powerful historical figures, beginning with BBC's seminal Shakespearean anthology series An Age of Kings (1960) in which he played (among others) the Earl of Warwick and Sir Walter Blunt. A stalwart acting veteran whose career spanned almost five decades, he was for much of it typecast as senior policemen (attributable to his fame as John Watt, his alter ego in hundreds of TV episodes between 1962 and 1978). Windsor occasionally broke out of the mold: scientist Dennis Bridger in the cult science-fiction classic A for Andromeda (1961), the head of a Rolls Royce for-hire business in Flying Lady (1987) and title roles in the miniseries Headmaster (1977) and The Real Eddy English (1989). He also appeared to good effect as the luckless chancery suitor Gridley in BBC's second adaptation of Masterpiece Theatre: Bleak House (1985) by Charles Dickens.Ranulf
(The King's Demons)- Michael J. Jackson was born on 19 January 1948 in Liverpool, England, UK. He is an actor and writer, known for Wish Me Luck (1987), Sweeney 2 (1978) and Doctor Who (1963).Sir Geoffrey de Lacey
(The King's Demons) - Tony Award-winning English actor Michael Gough, best known for playing the butler Alfred Pennyworth in the first four Batman (1989, 1992, 1995 & 1997) movies and for playing the arch-criminal Dr. Clement Armstrong in The Avengers (1961) episode "The Cybernauts", was an accomplished performer on both stage and screen. He was nominated twice for Tony Awards, in 1979 for Best Featured Actor in a Play for Alan Ayckbourn's "Bedroom Farce" and in 1988 in the same category for Hugh Whitemore's "Breaking the Code", winning in 1979. Though he never achieved on the small screen and silver screen what he did in the theater, Gough's career in television and movies spanned sixty-plus years over eight decades. Michael Gough died at age 94 on March 17, 2011 at his home near Salisbury, Wiltshire, England.Councillor Hedin
(The Ark of Infinity) - Cyril Luckham was born on 25 July 1907 in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for A Man for All Seasons (1966), The Guardians (1971) and The Barchester Chronicles (1982). He was married to Violet Lamb. He died on 8 February 1989 in London, England, UK.The White Guardian
(Enlightenment) - Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Colin Baker was born in 1943 in the Royal Waterloo Lying-In Hospital in London during an air raid. He spent his earliest years in London with his mother, while his father served in the armed forces. He narrowly avoided an early death during the wartime blitz when a piece of flying shrapnel just missed him, embedding itself in the side of his cot. After the war, Baker's father took a job as managing director of an asbestos company in Manchester. The family moved north to live in Rochdale, although Baker attended school in Manchester.
It was during his early schooling that - through the mother of one of his fellow pupils, who was a casting director at Granada TV - he had his first experience of acting. It was 1954 and the series was called My Wife's Sister (1956), starring Eleanor Summerfield, Martin Wyldeck and Helen Christie. Colin Baker went on to attend St. Bede's College in Manchester, where he was invited to take part in their annual productions of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. The twelve-years-old Baker appeared in the chorus for a production of "Yeoman of the Guard" and, a year later, landed a more major part - playing the female lead, "Phyllis" - in "Iolanthe".
After completing his schooling, Baker went on to study law. One day during this period, he and his mother went to see an amateur production of "The King and I" at the Palace Theatre, Manchester. Inspired by the performance and encouraged by the president of the company that had staged the Amateur Dramatic Society and quickly became hooked on acting. Baker took a job as a solicitor but, as time went on, became less and less interested in this career. Finally, at the age of twenty-three, he decided to become a full-time actor.
Baker joined the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), where he trained for three years. At the end of this, he was summoned with two of his fellow students to see the head of the drama school, who gave them rather gloomy predictions for their future prospects as actors and suggested that they seek alternative careers. These predictions proved somewhat wide of the mark as not only did Baker go on to great success but so too did his fellow students - David Suchet (who - amongst many other achievements - starred in LWT's award-winning productions of Agatha Christie's "Poirot") and Mel Martin (whose numerous credits include the series Love for Lydia (1977), also for LWT). After leaving LAMDA, Baker took a temporary job driving a taxi in Minehead in order to be near his then-girlfriend. He then received a call to come to London to audition for a part in a BBC2 drama series called The Roads to Freedom (1970), which he won. This led to further TV roles, including two more for BBC2: "Count Wenceslas Steinbock" in "Balzac's Cousin Bette" (1971) and "Prince Anatol Kuragin" in an ambitious twenty-part serialisation of Lev Tolstoy's "War and Peace" (1972-72). He also took on a wide range to theatre work, including several William Shakespeare festivals, appearing in productions of "Macbeth" and "Hamlet".
In the mid-seventies, Baker landed the role that would make him "the man viewers love to hate". This was "Paul Merroney" in the BBC1 series The Brothers (1972). After "The Brothers", Baker married actress Liza Goddard, who had played his on-screen wife in the series, but the marriage eventually ended in divorce. Baker later married actress Marion Wyatt. Theatre work kept Baker almost constantly busy for the next five years including appearances in everything from comedies to thrillers, as well as more Shakespeare. He also had a few further TV roles, including one as "Bayban" in "Blake's 7: City at the Edge of the World" (BBC, 1980) and one opposite Nyree Dawn Porter and Ian Hendry in the drama series, For Maddie with Love (1980) (ATV, 1980).
Baker's next TV role after "For Maddie with Love" was as "Maxil" in the Arc of Infinity: Part One (1983) story, "Arc of Infinity". Shortly before Baker took the role of the Doctor on "Doctor Who", he and his wife suffered the loss of their baby son, Jack, to cot death syndrome. Baker subsequently became a passionate fund raiser for the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths, with many of is personal appearance fees being donated to the charity. Baker's time as the sixth Doctor was cut unexpectedly short, initially by BBC One controller Michael Grade's hiatus between the twenty-second and twenty-third seasons and then by the decision of Grade to oust him from the role.
After his departure from "Doctor Who", the actor returned to the theatre, appearing in highly successful runs of "Corpse" and "Deathtrap" and having a four-month stint in the West End farce, "Run for Your Wife", with Terry Scott. TV work included a guest appearance in the BBC's Casualty (1986) and presenting assignments on programmes for the Children's Channel. After directing a play called "Bazaar and Rummage", Baker was asked to play the Doctor once again - this time on stage, taking over from Jon Pertwee in the Mark Furness Ltd production, "The Ultimate Adventure". This tour proved to him that, despite the brevity of his time as the Doctor on TV, he had amassed a loyal following amongst younger viewers.
In the 1990s, Baker had continued to pursue a successful career, mainly in the theatre. He has made regular appearances in pantomime, and his stage work has included roles in the musical adaptation of Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations" and in a comedy entitled "Fear of Flying". He has also starred in the "Stranger" series of videos made by Bill Baggs Video, alongside a number of other actors known for their work on "Doctor Who".Commander Maxil
(The Ark of Infinity)- Actress
- Producer
Isla Blair was born in Bangalore, British India, to Scottish expat tea planter Ian Baxter Blair-Hill and his wife Violet Barbara (née Skeoch). After graduating from RADA, Blair made her stage debut at London's Strand Theatre as Philia in a 1963 production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. She joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-Upon-Avon for a year in 1971 and then embarked on a tour of the Middle East as Viola in Twelfth Night with the Prospect Theatre Company.
Her career on the screen commenced in 1964 with a bit part in the Beatles' musical A Hard Day's Night (1964). A highly versatile actress, Blair has since appeared in films of diverse genres, including Battle of Britain (1969), Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) (as an unwilling blood donor), Alien Attack (1976) (a spliced-together prequel for the TV series Space: 1999 (1975), as a bulbous-headed alien), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) (as the wife of the main antagonist, played by her real-life husband Julian Glover) and Johnny English Reborn (2011).
On television, she was one of the stars of Granada's highly rated episodic series The Liars (1966). Other roles included the star's on-screen wife in the sitcom The Dickie Henderson Show (1960), titled Lady Caroline in the period drama When the Boat Comes In (1976), manipulative behavioral psychologist Flora Beniform in The History Man (1981), neighbour Laura Miles in The Bounder (1982) and (as co-star) lawyer Katherine Dunbar in The Advocates (1991), a legal drama series set in Scotland. Blair has guest-starred in episodes of The Avengers (1961) (as a foreign agent), Department S (1969), Fall of Eagles (1974) (as Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna of Russia), Blake's 7 (1978), Taggart (1983), A Touch of Frost (1992), Dalziel and Pascoe (1996) and Midsomer Murders (1997) (as a psychological profiler). A prolific voice actress, she has also narrated audio books and provided voices for audio adaptations of Doctor Who spin-off novels.
Blair has been married to the actor Julian Glover since 1968. Their son Jamie Glover is also an actor. As a family, they have appeared together on stage in Hamlet, with Jamie in the title role, Julian as King Claudius of Denmark and Isla as his wife Gertrude.Isabella
(The King's Demons)- Colette O'Neil was born on 18 November 1935 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK. She was an actress, known for Mortdecai (2015), Couples (1975) and Bad Girls (1999). She was married to Michael Ellis. She died on 11 July 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK.Tanha
(Snakedance) - Angus Newton Mackay (15 July 1926 - 8 June 2013) was an actor.
Despite his Scottish name Angus Mackay was a most English performer. Usually bespectacled and always fastidious, he was forever popping up on television playing repressed and officious factotums, effete Etonians or kindly clergymen. Some of those little roles linger long in the memory, such as the amorous waterbed salesman in Steptoe and Son (1974). But Mackay's passion was the stage, where, in a 50-year career, he brought a piquant precision to everything from Stoppard to Shaw.
Born in 1926, the son of a Methodist minister, Mackay was raised in Bournemouth, and after National Service in Belfast read English at Cambridge. He was an indefatigable student actor: an adroit Heartfree in Vanburgh's The Provok'd Wife in 1949, and a "neat and polished" Antipholous in a Comedy of Errors staged as Victorian farce. It transferred to the Watergate Theatre in London in 1950, by which time he had been Warwick to Julian Slade's Dauphin in St Joan, a meeting that was to change his life.
Slade wrote an undergraduate musical for May Week, Lady May. Mackay proved both funny and melodious in the cast, and when Slade went on to study at Bristol Old Vic, he formed a writing partnership with actress Dorothy Reynolds as librettist. Mackay would go on to act in many of the pair's hits, (most notably as a comedy curate in the record-breaking Salad Days), and marry Dorothy.
Encouraged by a notice from Kenneth Tynan urging him to turn professional, Mackay left Cambridge with a parting shot of Jack in The Importance of Being Earnest. His career kicked off at the Bristol Hippodrome in JB Priestley's Treasure on Pelican (1951). Mackay was in good company from the off; Olivier cast him as a footman in The Sleeping Prince at the Phoenix in 1953 alongside Vivien Leigh. At Birmingham Rep he appeared in Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra with Albert Finney, and in 1958 he joined the Sheffield Playhouse for a season which began with Peter Ustinov's The Banbury Nose.
He and Dorothy had long associations with three theatres: the Bristol Old Vic, the Salisbury Arts and the Everyman Cheltenham. All three were under threat at various points and saved by campaigns the couple were active in. He played in Meet Me by Moonlight opposite his wife in Salisbury and at Cheltenham, where he was also a diffident Stephen Bent in Slade and Reynolds' Wildest Dreams (1960), and a dashing Mr Knightley to Helen Dorward's Emma in 1962. He and his wife loved Austen, and at the Salon in Ranger's House, Blackheath in summer 1967 the pair performed readings to mark the 150th anniversary of her death. England's Jane was then performed by them at the Purcell Rooms and around the country, beginning at Cheltenham and Salisbury, where they were always welcome.
It was hardly surprising that he would be kept busy for over 30 years with small roles for television: he was acute and meticulous, an actor of quietness and slightness. His most celebrated television performance was in Julian Bond's play Breakdown (1976), as the psychiatrist administering to a crumbling Jack Hedley.
Appearing in Wings of Song by CP Taylor for Granada three years later Mackay met the young actor Simon Callow. The two became great friends, and Mackay later scripted and performed in Nicolson Fights Croydon at the Offstage Downstairs at Chalk Farm in 1986, which Callow devised and directed, an intimate study of the patrician politician Harold Nicolson marooned in a drab hotel room during an election campaign as the England of 1949 is vividly evoked. Mackay adored the piece and won superb reviews. In James Mundy's Sinners and Saints at the Croydon Warehouse in 1986, by turns a grim and uplifting story of angels in dirty places, Mackay was described as "astonishing, Noel Coward crossed with Jean Genet".
In 1977 Dorothy died from motor neurone disease. The house at Manchuria Road in Clapham felt very empty, and so Mackay pinned up a notice at Rada offering lodgings to impoverished drama students. A young Kenneth Branagh saw the notice, and in his book Beginnings fondly remembers first entering the house which seemed to contain every edition of Plays and Players ever printed. Mackay was deeply versed in theatrical history, wrote copious diaries and kept thousands of press clippings. His archive was a paradise for a rising actor like Branagh and his devotion to theatre was an inspiration to all who came into contact with him. Simon Callow says in tribute to his friend: "I was enchanted to meet someone with such knowledge, and with such high standards which you wanted to live up to."
He left the business in 1993, regretfully feeling that what he had to offer was no longer required. He was quite wrong. The need for performers with immaculate manners, mellifluous voices, and, to use that very apt word again, "polish", lives on. And thanks to his archive, which there are plans to make accessible, and the wonders of videotape, so too does he.
He died in 2013 aged 86.Headmaster
(Mawdryn Undead) - Actor
- Soundtrack
Jonathon Morris was born on 20 July 1960 in Urmston, Manchester, England, UK. He is an actor, known for The Fantasticks (2000), Bread (1986) and Beau Geste (1982).Chela
(Snakedance)- Martin Potter was born on 4 October 1944 in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England, UK. He is an actor, known for Fellini Satyricon (1969), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971) and The Legend of Robin Hood (1975). He has been married to Susie Blake since 1978.Eirak
(Terminus)