Who's Latest

Publication: Starlog
Date: number 199 (February 1994)
Author: Joe Nazzaro
Page:
Language: English

As "Doctor Who" celebrates a 30th anniversary, Sylvester McCoy recalls his recent time in space.

It would have been nice to carry on for at least another year; to actually finish off chiseling the character in concrete."

Those words are spoken by Sylvester McCoy, the seventh, and to date, last actor to star in the British SF series, Doctor Who. McCoy played the mysterious traveler in time and space for just three seasons before the BBC put the long-running series on indefinite hiatus.

The Scottish actor has just cause to be disappointed. While his early Doctor Who stories featured a spoon-playing, proverb scrambling, absent-minded professor-type, that interpretation slowly began to change. His Doctor became darker, more enigmatic. He frequently knew what events were about to take place, and using that knowledge, he could manipulate a situation to his own advantage. One adventure—the 25th anniversary story, "Silver Nemesis"—even hinted that there was much more to the mysterious Time Lord than he was willing to admit. Sadly, these developing plot threads were abruptly cut when the series went off the air.

McCoy credits an enthusiastic group of young Doctor Who writers for those changes, as well as his own increasing input into the stories. "I think that's true, as far as my character is concerned. I was very lucky that the script editor [Andrew Cartmel] and I seemed to agree quite a lot on where we wanted the Doctor to go, and [producer] John Nathan-Turner gave us the amount of freedom we needed to go that way.

"What I wanted to do was bring out more of the Doctor's inner self—what's inside, his turmoil. He has been alive now for something like 950 years and I wanted to pursue—not in an obvious way—the question of long life. It was something that was never really explored, the inner self; those inner problems. I wanted his real feelings to come out, because I don't think I saw it in my first season.

"I also wanted to bring an anger and a seriousness to it as well," the actor continues, ticking off ideas from his mental checklist. "Towards the end, I was managing to get more of that in. It wasn't so much absentmindedness as it is his enthusiasm for other things that gets in the way of what he should really be concentrating on."

McCoy proved to be the bane of many a Doctor Who director's existence, because of his love of improvisation. Many last-minute ideas would find their way into the final shooting script, whether it was a spoon-playing scene in "Time of the Rani," or a throwaway bit in "Dragonfire," where the Doctor tries to touch a child's alien pet (an animated puppet built by the FX crew), only to have the creature snap at his hand.

Reminded of these spontaneous additions to Who history, the actor readily admits to his predilection for last-minute ideas. "In the beginning, some people found that a bit disconcerting. I read an interview that Sophie [Aldred, who played the Doctor's companion, Ace] did, where she was chatting about the fact that I can keep on improvising right up to the very last minute.

"I keep changing, thinking, 'I've got an idea, let's do this,' all the time, and this can be a great frustration to the director. He thinks he has his shot set up and knows where he's going, and I suddenly say, 'Hey! Wouldn't it be a great idea if that thing bit me on the way out?' I just do it instinctively. I didn't know it was a problem until I read the interview with Sophie. She was saying that it was rather good, that she enjoyed it, because it keeps it alive all the time."

It wasn't just McCoy who enjoyed taking an active part in his role. Co-star Aldred also began working closely with the writers in later seasons. That was just fine, according to McCoy, who enjoyed the chemistry developing between their two characters. "I was keen that the companion have a more reasonable role in it, and be less the 'female' role. Certainly the area that Ace developed was part of that.

"Then, of course, when Sophie became part of that discussion, we were all for it. That was always part of my belief: That the companion should have more of a say.'

McCoy is flattered by the fan response to the Doctor/Ace relationship, considered one of the most successful teams in the show's history. "It was the feeling that the Doctor has taken aboard this rather reckless young girl," he says, offering his own opinion for that success. "She would have no fear, and get into very dangerous situations and incredible trouble, and the Doctor's role was to balance all of this somehow, and get them out of any sticky situations.

"The Doctor rather likes Ace's rebelliousness, because in a sense, it reflects his own personality. At the same time, he has to try to deal with it so he doesn't get them into in trouble. That's how I see it: A love/hate or like/dislike relationship, because the girl is trouble, and that's always going to be fun!"

With only three, 14-episode seasons to his credit before Doctor Who was put on hold, McCoy now wishes he had been given more time to establish himself as the seventh Doctor. "I had half years," he explains. "I did something like 42 half-hours, which isn't much. For me, it was much better as an a actor, because I was able to do half-a-year on Doctor Who, and the other half doing all sorts of other things. That's what keeps you fresh, so that was very enjoyable, and under those terms, I could most likely have gone on for a long time.

"I remember thinking towards the third year's end, 'Maybe I should stop now,' but when the decision had to be made, I didn't want to leave just yet. I thought I could carry on a bit doing half-a-year and then this and that, but since it has all stopped, I kind of wish I had done a 26-episode season, just so I would have had a good run at it."

For McCoy, playing a centuries-old Gallifreyan, traveling through time and space in a battered blue police box is probably no more unusual than some of his other career choices. As a young man, he originally came to London, not as an actor but to work in the decidedly unglamorous world of insurance. It was the last normal job he ever had.

"I was working at Lloyds," recalls McCoy, "but as luck would have it—good luck, really—the company I was working for went bust, and I ended up dropping out in the '60s and '70s. I had long hair, a hippie mustache, beard, beads, dangly bits; I was kind of a hippie, but I was a hippie who could count, and I had a friend who worked in the theater at the restaurant where I was working—very much a hippie theater. The Rolling Stones played there, before they went on their infamous American tour.

"One of my jobs was to be a bouncer for the Rolling Stones on stage, keeping people off that might want to mob the stage. For those who don't know me, I'm only 5-foot-6, so that's not a very big bouncer!"

As McCoy recounted in STARLOG #120, he was working in the box office when the theater director Ken Campbell came in, seeking a replacement for an upcoming road show. When the ticket collector recommended McCoy, Campbell offered the young hippie his break in show business.

"That was in the very early days of British fringe theater," remembers the now-beardless—and beadless—actor, "which had its heyday in the late '60s and early '70s. We were trailblazing for a new type, or an old theater type which had long since died. It also came from the American fringe, like Hair, which affected Britain very much. Out of that exploded the British fringe theater, and I was part of that explosion. We toured all over Europe, Israel and Britain, doing shows that were very anarchistic and humorous. We started a whole new era. We played on streets, we played clubs where no one would go before; doing sketches, and eventually we became a cult in the theater itself."

After spending two years on the road, McCoy decided to try his hand at serious acting, and joined Joan Littlewood's theater workshop in Stratford East. "She specialized in using unusual people to play classical roles, and revolutionized British theater at the time. I worked with her for a long time, and then went to work in the more traditional repertory theaters around Britain. I did lots of Shakespeare and classical plays by George Bernard Shaw and Samuel Beckett. I like Beckett very much, because he's part of that dangerous world where I started in theater. It was dangerous not because the audience was going to hurt you, but because you're not behind the safety of the fourth wall on stage."

Many Parts

In the late '70s, McCoy decided to expand his horizons into the world of television, starting with the highly acclaimed children's series, Vision On. "It was an award-winning series," he elaborates. "It has been shown in some areas of America and regularly in Canada, and it kept winning all sorts of awards. I did that for three years, and when it finished, I went on to do lots of other television and the odd film."

McCoy also did plenty of children's television, including Eureka and Jigsaw, costarring with the late David Rappaport (STARLOG #96) as two bumbling space supermen. During that period, his film work also grew, with roles in Dracula opposite Frank Langella and Laurence Olivier ("If you blink, you might miss me!") and Fireworks, which was later retitled Three Kinds of Heat. In the latter, McCoy played a Peter Lone-type villain carrying an Uzi. "I was playing a serious role, but I don't think the film was serious. It was a very tongue-in-cheek, kung fu kind of film about this organization that had moved from China to the West. I was the courier for the leader of this mysterious tribe. The Mafia was trying to bump them off, and the CIA or whoever was trying to keep me alive to find out who the leader was. There was an American police woman chasing me, as well as a 6-foot-2 Hong Kong police woman! Good fun."

The actor continued to appear in the theater, doing everything from French farce to Italian comedies; opera to musicals. It was while he was starring in the musical The Pied Piper that he chose to pursue the title role in Doctor Who.

"I heard that Colin [Baker] was leaving," he remembers, "and when they were changing Doctors three or four years before, I applied. People kept saying to me, 'You would make a good Doctor—you should go out for it.' A friend of mine, who was a BBC producer, phoned up John Nathan-Turner, who replied, 'We've already cast it.'

"This time I thought, 'Well, I'll have another go,' so I phoned my agent and told him that it was on the news, and he phoned John Nathan-Turner. Coincidentally, this same producer friend phoned him and said, 'You should see Sylvester McCoy; he would make a great Doctor.' It was just pure coincidence.

"Then, John came to the National Theatre, and as luck would again have it, the part of the Pied Piper, the way it was written, had been written for me and was a very good audition piece for Doctor Who."

As McCoy recounts, Nathan-Turner invited him in for an interview, which ultimately lasted two-and-a-half hours. "I kept thinking, 'I haven't got any more charm! He'll find out who the real me is. How can I con my way into this job?'

"He then asked me to come back, and again the interview lasted for hours. Then, I went to see the Head of Drama and Serials at the BBC, and there was talk of going to see [controller] Michael Grade, but that didn't happen. Instead, they changed their minds and said, 'Do a screen test,' so I did a screen test with three other actors, and they still gave me the job!"

Half a decade later, McCoy still finds it difficult to divorce himself from the part he once lobbied so hard to play. "The thing about it is, I do want to move on and do other things, and I am, but the way the world of Doctor Who is now, with conventions and so forth, it's a very localized thing. It's no longer universal, and I quite enjoy going back to it. I love traveling, so going to America is always a great treat. I think I've seen more of America than most Americans, and so have my sons."

New Pursuits

McCoy came close to appearing in a 30th anniversary special, which would also have featured former Doctors Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison and Colin Baker, but the 90-minute production was ultimately cancelled before most of the actors had signed on. "They got in touch to say that they were going to do it," says McCoy, "and I was interested. They sent the script, and I read it, but it never got any further. We never got into any negotiations, and I never even got to the point of saying yes or no when it was suddenly cancelled."

He admits to having major reservations about the script, in which his Doctor is seemingly killed at the beginning, and Tom Baker's Doctor assumes a major role. "It would have been very good in its own terms, slotted into another season, and that might have started a new tradition of one Doctor per season popping in and having a major role within the current Doctor's season. That would have been good, but not as the special with all the Doctors.

"That was how we felt. Whether or not we would have gotten further in discussion, and things would have been rewritten and changed we'll never know. They left it to the last moment, when they should have done it much earlier and spent more time planning it. We could have all made ourselves available.

"If they had only said, 'In six months' time, we're going to do a Doctor Who special; you're all playing good parts in it,' we all would have done it, no doubt. It was all mismanaged."

Despite the special's cancellation, McCoy had two opportunities to work with his fellow Doctors in 1993: First in director Bill Baggs' video The Airzone Solution, and more recently, a pair of short Doctor Who films produced by John Nathan-Turner for Britain's annual Children in Need campaign. Far from being proprietary about his character, the actor embraced the opportunity of sharing the spotlight with his predecessors. "Absolutely! Being an admirer of the other actors, it was good to work with them."

McCoy has spent most of his time on the stage recently, returning to his first love as an actor. "I'm doing The Government Inspector in Northern Ireland. I'm enjoying that, because it's working in a slightly different culture than my own. It's very different, very interesting, and horrifying at the same time. I was curious about this incomprehensible war that's going on, which I couldn't really understand in human terms, and the best way to get to know a society is to work in it.

"After that, I come back to Britain and start rehearsals for The Invisible Man by Ken Hill. I've been in lots of his plays in the past, and this is a very funny, imaginative work. You see the Invisible Man taking his things off on stage, and he even smokes cigarette. This is the touring version, and I'll be doing that for nine months."

With Doctor Who now a part of his past, and new projects awaiting, Sylvester McCoy is content with the direction his career is taking. "I'm quite happy," he confirms. "I'm doing adventurous work with The Government Inspector, and then I'm doing merry, enjoyable and humorous work with The Invisible Man. I know America is a television culture, and people there would imagine I would be happier doing that, but I'm much happier doing theater."

JOE NAZZARO, New Jersey-based writer, profiled Peter Davison in issue #197.

Captions:

"What I wanted to do was bring out more of the Doctor's inner self—what's inside, his turmoil," explains Sylvester McCoy.

Improvisation became a McCoy staple on Who, including a spoon-playing scene in "Time of the Rani" co-starring Kate O'Mara (left) and Bonnie Langford.

Before he traveled the spaceways and time streams. McCoy worked on the stage in the early days of British fringe theater.

The five-Doctor Dr. Who special was abandoned, but McCoy's still excited about teaming with his fellow Doctors elsewhere.

"It isn't so much absentmindedness as it is his enthusiasm for other things that gets in the way," McCoy notes.

Nevertheless, McCoy declares, "I could most likely have gone on for a long time [with Doctor Who]."

"I do want to move on and do other things," McCoy announces.

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