It’s seventh heaven for Doctor Who fans

When Sylvester McCoy was cast as the seventh Doctor in the long-running science fiction television series, Doctor Who, it came at a difficult time for the program.

Sylvester McCoy acknowledges a ‘friendly rivalry’ with other Doctors who occasionally share a stage at Doctor Who fan conventions. Picture: Adam Head

When Sylvester McCoy was cast as the seventh Doctor in the long-running science fiction television series, Doctor Who, it came at a difficult time for the program. His predecessor, Colin Baker, had been sacked and some BBC executives wanted to axe the show altogether.

But McCoy’s casting in the late 1980s gave the iconic program a stay of execution and his portrayal of the renegade time-traveller, crisscrossing the universe in a blue Police Box trying to save galaxies from evildoers, would influence the rebirthed series a generation later.

“Producer John Nathan-Turner handed me the keys to the TARDIS and said, ‘Get on with it’,” McCoy, 79 (pictured), recalls. “We made it up as we went along. I arrived with a bag of tricks, because I did a lot of comedy, and started off as a Charlie Chaplinesque and Buster Keaton-type of Doctor.”

The vaudevillian seventh Doctor was partly a reaction to the often grumpy and rude sixth Doctor. The first season was disappointing. But the seventh Doctor evolved into a more layered and complex iteration of the Time Lord from Gallifrey who still used humour and trickery to bewilder foes but was wise and enigmatic with glimpses of a darker and melancholic side.

“I realised I had been handed one of the great TV roles and you could do anything with it,” McCoy explains. “(Script editor) Andrew Cartmel and I agreed we should make him mysterious again and make people question who he is – the ‘Who’ would be very important.”

Over three seasons, from September 1987 to December 1989, the seventh Doctor battled Daleks, Cybermen, The Rani and The Master, along with other monstrous villains such as vampires, sinister clowns and poltergeists.

McCoy was playing the Pied Piper for the National Theatre when he auditioned for Doctor Who, which first aired in November 1963 starring William Hartnell.

Born Percy James Patrick Kent-Smith – he adopted McCoy as a stage name – he had earlier worked in a comedy troupe (putting ferrets down his trousers) which led to television and film. Incredibly, McCoy reveals that he nearly declined the Doctor Who role.

“There is a lot of my past life experience in the seventh Doctor,” he says. “My grandmother, who brought me up, lived to be 100 and I thought I should bring some of that long life experience – the sadness, the tragedy and the joy – to my Doctor.”

The seventh Doctor, with trademark Panama hat and knitted question-mark vest, was joined by Mel (Bonnie Langford) and, later, Ace (Sophie Aldred). Mel was enthusiastic, loyal and stereotypically shrieking, whereas Ace was a streetwise Doc Martens-wearing companion for a new age, who belted a Dalek with a baseball bat and carried Nitro-9 explosive canisters in her backpack.

A fourth season had been agreed and sketched out, but the show was cancelled. Fans were devastated. McCoy calls it a “very sad and very stupid” decision that was as much about “politics” at the BBC as anything else. However, McCoy’s Doctor brought a depth to the role that would inspire program makers when the series returned in 2005.

In 1996, McCoy handed the baton to Paul McGann as the eighth Doctor in a one-off movie. He continues to portray the Doctor in Big Finish audio plays and provides commentaries for Blu-ray releases of the classic series. “I haven’t given it up and it hasn’t given me up,” McCoy says. So, would he return as the seventh Doctor for the 60th anniversary in November 2023?

“Oh gosh, yes,” McCoy answers. “We all would. I know that because we all chat about it. We also know that fans all over the world want us to, as they did for the 50th. But the producers didn’t listen to the fans for the 50th. One hopes that, maybe, they might listen to the fans this time. We haven’t heard anything yet.”

McCoy acknowledges “a friendly rivalry” with other Doctors who occasionally share a stage at fan conventions.

“I tease Colin and he teases me,” McCoy says. “Paul McGann was a friend before Doctor Who and we are still friends. It is always a delight to see Peter Davison and I have worked with him as well. I am always slightly in awe of Tom Baker because he has a huge personality and you don’t even try to compete with that.”

Fans of Doctor Who are as loyal as they are legion. Director Peter Jackson purchased the seventh Doctor’s costume and cast McCoy as Radagast the Brown in The Hobbit films. And McCoy recently landed a part in the forthcoming film reboot of The Munsters without an audition because producer Rob Zombie is a Doctor Who fan.

I confess to McCoy over Zoom that he was “my Doctor” because I became a devoted fan of the show at age 12 when his first series was broadcast in Australia in October 1988. It later prompts a discussion about the enduring impact of ­Doctor Who and the secret to its longevity.

“We want to know that there is someone out there, we hope, who will come down and save us, if not from the enemy, at least from ourselves,” McCoy says.

“Because, at the moment, we need someone like that.”

Doctor Who: The Collection – Seasons 24 and 26 are available on Blu-ray.