Sylvester McCoy

Sylvester McCoy
Other names:	Percy James Patrick Kent-Smith, Sylveste McCoy
Birth date:	20 August 1943
Work in the DWU
Main roles:	Seventh Doctor
Main jobs:	Actor
Stories:	See Credits Section
Main time period active:	1987-1989, 1996, 1999-present
Career highlights
Notable non-DWU work:	The Ken Campbell Roadshow, Vision On, Dracula, Tiswas, Jigsaw, Eureka, The Last Place on Earth, Jackanory, Rab C. Nesbitt, The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, Hollyoaks, The Bill, Doctors, King Lear, The Hobbit movies, Zapped, Sense8
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Sylvester McCoy (born 20 August 1943 as Percy James Patrick Kent-Smith) played the Seventh Doctor from 1987 to 1989 and 1996, beginning from Time and the Rani to Survival, before returning for Doctor Who.

He has reprised the role in the game show Search Out Space, the 1993 Children in Need special Dimensions in Time and Big Finish Productions' audio adventures since 1999, as well as an alternative version in the webcast Death Comes to Time.

He is sometimes credited as Sylveste McCoy.

Profile

Prior to Doctor Who

McCoy was born Percy James Patrick Kent-Smith in Dunoon, Scotland. In his youth, he trained for the priesthood but gave this up and worked for a time in the insurance industry. He worked in The Roundhouse box office for a time, where he was discovered by Ken Campbell. He was a bodyguard for the Rolling Stones.

He came to prominence as a member of the comedy act The Ken Campbell Roadshow. His best-known act was in a play called An Evening with Sylveste McCoy, in which the title character was a stuntman whose stunts included putting a fork and nails up his nose and stuffing ferrets down his trousers. As a joke, in order to make the audience believe the character really existed, the cast listing in the programme billed Sylveste McCoy as being played by "Sylveste McCoy". After a reviewer missed the joke and assumed that Sylveste McCoy was a real person, Kent-Smith adopted it as his stage name. Some years later, he added an "r" to "Sylveste" — possibly because of there being thirteen letters in "Sylveste McCoy".

Notable television appearances before he gained the role of the Doctor included roles in Vision On (where he played Pepe, a character who lived in the mirror) and Tiswas. McCoy also played in one-man shows on the stage as two famous movie comedians, Stan Laurel and Buster Keaton. He appeared as Bowers in the 1985 television mini-series about Robert Falcon Scott's last Antarctic expedition, The Last Place on Earth, and had a small non-speaking role in the 1979 film version of Dracula, with Laurence Olivier and Frank Langella. (McCoy had also played the title role onstage.) In his Sylveste McCoy persona, he appeared in the first Secret Policeman's Ball film, a comedy/musical program in support of Amnesty International. The film was released to DVD in Region 1 in early 2009 as part of a box set of the Secret Policeman's benefits.

Only months before being cast as the Seventh Doctor, McCoy played a villain in a B-film entitled Three Kinds of Heat, which featured appearances by a number of Who alumni including Trevor Martin and, most notably, onetime Romana I actress Mary Tamm, whose character was killed by McCoy's character.

As the Seventh Doctor

The television years

McCoy took over the lead role of Doctor Who from Colin Baker in 1987 and remained until the series was shelved in 1989. He would in turn hand over to Paul McGann in 1996.

McCoy was one of several actors considered for the role. In 2010, audition tapes for several actors were included on the DVD release of the Seventh Doctor's debut story, Time and the Rani. In this audition, McCoy played opposite Janet Fielding (companion Tegan Jovanka from the Peter Davison era), who portrayed a villain in the scene.[1] Another audition piece was released on the Dragonfire DVD release.

McCoy actually has the distinction of having played two incarnations of the Doctor; when Baker declined an invitation to record the regeneration scene in Time and the Rani, McCoy put on a wig and Baker's costume and, with his face obscured by special effects, filled in for the role.

In his first season, McCoy, a comedy actor, portrayed the character with a degree of clown-like humour, but script editor Andrew Cartmel soon changed that. The Seventh Doctor developed into a much darker figure than any of his earlier incarnations, manipulating people like chess pieces and always seeming to be playing a deeper game. McCoy generally approved of this, as it allowed him to play more of a dramatic role.

A distinguishing feature of McCoy's performances was his manner of speech. He used a slight Scottish accent (the only Doctor to have used a Scottish accent on a regular basis until Peter Capaldi began as the Twelfth Doctor), rolled his "r"s, and often placed emphasis on unusual syllables or words. This has the added (possibly intentional) effect of sounding a little alien and wrong-footing the audience. It also made the viewer question established speech patterns often taken for granted. At the start of his tenure, he used proverbs and sayings adapted to his own ends (e.g. "There's many a slap twixt cup and lap" — Delta and the Bannermen), although this characteristic was phased out during the later, darker seasons of his tenure.

McCoy saw out the end of the original run with 1989's Survival, the last regularly airing Doctor Who story until Rose, which aired in 2005. He later reprised the role in the 1996 one-off, Doctor Who, in which the Doctor regenerated into his eighth incarnation, portrayed by Paul McGann.

Although previous actors have reprised their incarnations for various specials (TV: The Five Doctors, TV: Time Crash for example), McCoy is the only actor to portray the "current" Doctor in a broadcast television adventure over a span of 10 years.

At 5'6", he remains the shortest man to play the Doctor.

Post-cancellation

Although McCoy only appeared on television as the Doctor for three extremely abbreviated series, his Doctor was treated as the "current" one from his debut in Time and the Rani in 1987 to his regeneration scene in Doctor Who in 1996 by many fans and organisations. According to this line of thought, McCoy's Doctor, therefore, lasted for nine years, outlasting Tom Baker's seven-year run as the Fourth Doctor. However, he does not hold the title of "longest-serving current Doctor" by the same reasoning, a title held by Paul McGann despite having only appeared on television for the TV movie and the mini-episode The Night of the Doctor, together totalling only 96 minutes of screen time.

Sylvester McCoy in 2008.

McCoy has remained an active supporter of the franchise from 1987 to the present. In addition to the 1996 telemovie, he also returned for the 1993 charity special, Dimensions in Time, and in a short segment for British educational television called, Search Out Space. He appeared in several independent, Doctor Who-inspired productions by BBV Productions, including The Airzone Solution and the spoof Do You Have a Licence to Save this Planet? in which he played a parody of the Doctor called The Foot Doctor. He also reprised the role of the Doctor for the animated webcast Death Comes to Time, the first made-for-internet Doctor Who story. He has also reprised the role of the Seventh Doctor multiple times a year for Big Finish Productions since the company's gaining of a Doctor Who license. Like most other "Doctor actors" that have been involved with the company, he has made far more appearances as the Doctor on audio than on television.

Post-Doctor Who career

McCoy's more recent roles have included Michael Sams in the 1997 telemovie Beyond Fear, shown on the first night of broadcast of Channel Five.

He has also acted extensively in theatre in productions as diverse as pantomime and Molière. He played the role of Snuff in the macabre BBC Radio 4 comedy series The Cabaret of Dr Caligari, and The Fool in a Stratford production of King Lear by the Royal Shakespeare Company, opposite Sir Ian McKellan.

When the news of David Tennant leaving Doctor Who was announced and quickly spread, Sylvester McCoy said in an interview that he believed Andrew Sachs (best known for his role as Manuel in Fawlty Towers, who had appeared in the Shada webcast) would be best for the role. Regardless he approved of the casting of Matt Smith and has recited Smith's famous speech from The Pandorica Opens at conventions.

Recently, in "The Lollipop Man", an episode of the medical soap opera Doctors, McCoy played the role of Graham Capelli, a retired actor best known for playing the title character in a 1980s children's television character similar to the Doctor. The role was written as a tribute to McCoy. The episode featured several references to Doctor Who.

McCoy was attached to play Governor Swann in Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl when Steven Spielberg was attached to direct it in the early 90s, Disney didn't give permission for the film to be made then. When the movie was greenlit the role was played by Jonathan Pryce.

In 2010 McCoy was announced to play the part of the wizard Radagast in the three-part movie adaptation of The Hobbit.

In 2013, Sylvester and his co-star Sophie Aldred partnered up for the Doctor Who edition of the game show "Pointless Celebrities". Later the same year he also appeared as himself in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, in which he and fellow actors Peter Davison and Colin Baker attempt to appear in the 50th Anniversary episode The Day of the Doctor.

Descendants

Sylvester has a son Sam Kent-Smith who is an artist and was a 3D artist for the Doctor Who video game Return to Earth.

Sam also made an uncredited cameo as a Haemovore in The Curse of Fenric.

Credits

Television

Doctor Who

• Time and the Rani
• Paradise Towers
• Delta and the Bannermen
• Dragonfire
• Remembrance of the Daleks
• The Happiness Patrol
• Silver Nemesis
• The Greatest Show in the Galaxy
• Battlefield
• Ghost Light
• The Curse of Fenric
• Survival
• Doctor Who

Doctor Who mini-episodes

• Search Out Space
• Dimensions in Time

Direct-to-video

• The Zero Imperative - Dr Dove
• Do You Have a Licence to Save this Planet? - Foot Doctor

Other

• The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot

Webcasts

BBCi

• Death Comes to Time

The Collection Blu-Ray Trailers

• 24 Carat - Seventh Doctor

Audio

Doctor Who Main Range

• The Sirens of Time
• The Fearmonger
• The Genocide Machine
• The Fires of Vulcan
• The Shadow of the Scourge
• Dust Breeding
• Colditz
• The Rapture
• Bang-Bang-a-Boom!
• The Dark Flame
• Project Lazarus
• Flip-Flop
• Master
• Zagreus (also as Walton Winkle)
• The Wormery - Mysterious patron
• The Harvest
• Dreamtime
• Unregenerate!
• Thicker Than Water
• LIVE 34
• Night Thoughts
• The Settling
• Red
• No Man's Land
• Nocturne
• Valhalla
• Frozen Time
• The Dark Husband
• The Death Collectors / Spider's Shadow
• Kingdom of Silver / Keepsake
• Forty-Five
  • False Gods
  • Order of Simplicity
  • Casualties of War
  • The Word Lord
• The Magic Mousetrap
• Enemy of the Daleks
• The Angel of Scutari
• A Thousand Tiny Wings
• Survival of the Fittest / Klein's Story
• The Architects of History
• Project: Destiny
• A Death in the Family
• Lurkers at Sunlight's Edge
• Robophobia
• The Doomsday Quatrain
• House of Blue Fire
• Protect and Survive
• Black and White
• Gods and Monsters
• The Shadow Heart
• Persuasion
• Starlight Robbery
• Daleks Among Us
• 1963: The Assassination Games
• Afterlife
• Revenge of the Swarm
• Mask of Tragedy
• Signs and Wonders
• The Defectors
• We Are The Daleks
• The Warehouse
• Terror of the Sontarans
• You Are the Doctor and Other Stories
  • You Are the Doctor
  • Come Die with Me
  • The Grand Betelgeuse Hotel
  • Dead to the World
• The Two Masters
• A Life of Crime
• Fiesta of the Damned
• Maker of Demons
• Shadow Planet / World Apart
• The High Price of Parking
• The Blood Furnace
• The Silurian Candidate
• Red Planets
• The Dispossessed
• The Quantum Possibility Engine
• Warlock's Cross
• Muse of Fire
• The Monsters of Gokroth
• The Moons of Vulpana
• An Alien Werewolf in London
• Dark Universe
• The Psychic Circus
• Subterfuge
• The Flying Dutchman / Displaced
• The Grey Man of the Mountain
• The End of the Beginning

Special Releases

• Last of the Titans
• Excelis Decays
• Return of the Daleks
• The Four Doctors
• The Light at the End
• The Legacy of Time
  • The Split Infinitive
  • Collision Course

The Lost Stories

• Thin Ice
• Crime of the Century
• Animal
• Earth Aid

The Sixth Doctor Adventures

• The Brink of Death

The Seventh Doctor Adventures

• Silver and Ice
  • Bad Day in Tinseltown
  • The Ribos Operation

Novel Adaptations

• Love and War
• The Highest Science
• Damaged Goods
• Theatre of War
• All-Consuming Fire
• Nightshade
• Original Sin
• Cold Fusion

Classic Doctors, New Monsters

• Harvest of the Sycorax

Doom Coalition

• The Eleven

The Companion Chronicles

• Project Nirvana

The Diary of River Song

• The Unknown
• The Eye of the Storm

The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield

• The Final Amendment (uncredited)
• Many Happy Returns - Late Arrival
• The Revolution
• Good Night Sweet Ladies
• The Lights of Skaro
• The Pyramid of Sutekh
• The Vault of Osiris
• The Eye of Horus
• The Tears of Isis

The Eighth of March

• The Big Blue Book

UNIT

• Dominion

External links

• Sylvester McCoy at the Internet Movie Database
• Sylvester McCoy - The Unofficial Site