Line #49 Creator/SylvesterMcCoy


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5	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sylvestermccoywikisize.png]]
6	[[caption-width-right:350:Cast an entertainer as the Doctor and you've got a master of comic relief. Cast a ''Scottish'' entertainer and you'll wind up with a [[LargeHam humongous ham]] on [[UsefulNotes/ScottishEnglish bannock bread]].]]
7	->''"There's still a part of me that believes what was great about Series/DoctorWho in the early days was that you had a superhero who didn't wear his underpants on the outside of his trousers, who used his brain rather than his brawn."''
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9	Sylvester [=McCoy=] (born Percy James Patrick Kent-Smith; 20 August 1943 in Dunoon, UsefulNotes/{{Scotland}}) is a Scottish actor. He came to prominence as a member of the comedy act "The Ken Campbell Roadshow". His best known act was as a stuntman character called "Sylveste [=McCoy=]" in a play entitled "An Evening with Sylveste [=McCoy=]", where his stunts included putting a fork and nails up his nose, stuffing ferrets down his trousers and setting his head on fire. He later became a pantomime performer for ''Series/VisionOn'', a long-running 70's children show targeted specifically at deaf children, primarily as a denizen of a topsy-turvy world available through a magic mirror.
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11	He's nowadays best known for playing the magnificently [[LargeHam hammy]] Seventh Doctor on ''Series/DoctorWho''. By technicality, he's also the first actor to play two different incarnations of the Doctor, {{Fake Shemp}}ing for the recently-fired Creator/ColinBaker for the opening of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS24E1TimeAndTheRani "Time and the Rani"]]. He also has the distinction of being the last Doctor in the regular television series (he regenerated into Creator/PaulMcGann at the start of [[Recap/DoctorWhoTVMTheTVMovie the TV movie]]) until the revival in 2005. He was also the first Doctor to be webcast, voicing the 7th Doctor in the special "Recap/DeathComesToTime" (which was never intended to be particularly canonical, and has since been well and truly disproved).
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13	Despite his tenure being cut criminally short by the network (he planned to stay on for just one more season before leaving, but the show got canned before his departing episode could even be decided on), he remained the canonical Doctor during the bulk of ''Who'''s cancellation years, long enough to appear in a lot (and we mean ''a lot''[[note]]We'd list all of them, but - and we're ''not'' exaggerating - we would, quite literally, ''be here until the end of time itself'' if we tried.[[/note]]) of ''Franchise/DoctorWhoExpandedUniverse'' novels. Freed from the constraints of G-rated telly and providing the equivalent of ''Doctor Who'' methadone for the fans, the ''[[Literature/DoctorWhoNewAdventures New Adventures]]'' books (barring [[FanonDiscontinuity a few significantly less canonical ones]], like ''Lungbarrow'') had an enormous lasting impact on future writers of the TV series; most notably Creator/RussellTDavies and Creator/StevenMoffat. A Tenth Doctor story, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E8HumanNature "Human Nature"]] (and its accompanying second part, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E9TheFamilyOfBlood "The Family of Blood"]]), was adapted from an ''NA'' book of the same name.
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15	[=McCoy=] still regularly enjoys new adventures in ''AudioPlay/BigFinishDoctorWho''. Because he is a darling and an entertainer at heart, [=McCoy=] is also notorious for having returned to the role often in less-than-legal circumstances, such as the Wilderness Years Creator/BBVProductions audio series about [[DoctorWhomage "The Professor & Ace"]] (as part of which Creator/RobertShearman, later to write "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E6Dalek Dalek]]" for the revived series, got his first crack of the whip at the Doctor), the fanfilm ''Gene Genius'', or, as recently as 2019, ''WebVideo/DoctorWhoTheMovie''.
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17	In 2022, he briefly reprised his role as the Seventh Doctor onscreen for the BBC Centenary Special "[[Recap/DoctorWho2022CENThePowerOfTheDoctor The Power of the Doctor]]".
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19	Has the dubious distinction of being the shortest actor to play the Doctor at 5'6", a record he now shares with fellow 5'6" Creator/JodieWhittaker.
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21	Other works featuring [=McCoy=] include 1985 miniseries ''Series/TheLastPlaceOnEarth'', in which he played a member of Robert Scott's doomed South Pole expedition. He tried out for the role of Bilbo Baggins in Creator/PeterJackson's ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings''. While that role went to Creator/IanHolm, Sylvester [=McCoy=] would later get cast as Radagast the Brown Wizard in ''Film/TheHobbit'' film trilogy. In 2017 he made a quite surprising break from his typical family-friendly roles as "The Old Man of Hoy" in ''Series/{{Sense8}}'', an extremely paranoid Sensate whose first line is "Holy shit!"
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23	!!Selected filmography:
24	* ''Film/{{Dracula\|1979}}'' (1979) as Walter
25	* ''Series/{{Jigsaw\|1979}}'' (1979) as O-Man
26	* ''Series/{{Tiswas}}'' (1981) as various characters
27	* ''Series/{{Eureka}}'' (1982-86) as various characters
28	* ''Series/TheLastPlaceOnEarth'' (1985) as Lt. "Birdie" Bowers
29	* ''Series/DoctorWho'' (1987-89) as The Seventh Doctor
30	** ''[[Recap/DoctorWho30thASDimensionsInTime Dimensions In Time]]'' (1993)
31	** ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoTVMTheTVMovie Doctor Who]]'' (1996)
32	** "[[Recap/DoctorWho2022CENThePowerOfTheDoctor The Power of the Doctor]]" (2022)
33	* ''Series/RabCNesbitt'' (1996) as Gash Senior
34	* ''Series/{{Casualty}}'' (2001, 2008) as Kev the Rev/Ashley Millington
35	* ''Series/TheBill'' (2002, 2006) as Ian Drew/Morris Shaw
36	* ''Film/TheHobbit'' (2012-14) as Radagast the Brown
37	** ''Film/TheHobbitAnUnexpectedJourney'' (2012)
38	** ''Film/TheHobbitTheDesolationOfSmaug'' (2013)
39	** ''Film/TheHobbitTheBattleOfTheFiveArmies'' (2014)
40	* ''Series/{{Sense8}}'' (2017-18) as The Old Man of Hoy
41	* ''Series/HolbyCity'' (2018) as Clive Brooker
42	* ''WesternAnimation/ThunderbirdsAreGo'' (2019) as Aezethril the Wizard (voice)
43	* ''Film/TheMunsters'' (2022) as [[TheIgor Igor]]
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45	!!Tropes associated with this actor's roles include:
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47	* CoolOldGuy: And HOW. Playing the Doctor and Radagast, and attracting 90% youngsters to his panels (whereas a small portion of their audience were the people who grew up with him)? Major cool points there.
48	* DarkerAndEdgier: Although Creator/ColinBaker was trumpeted as a return to the show's darker roots, the ''New Adventures'' are about as 'adult' as ''Doctor Who'' is ever going to get; experimenting with {{Cyberpunk}}, {{Cosmic Horror}}s and (gasp!) sex and swearing. The [=7th=] Doctor himself is quite menacing in cold print, and though he's on the side of the angels, there is a clear divide separating the nigh-omnipotent Time Lord from human beings. These themes would be revisited in the Creator/DavidTennant era. Although less extreme than the ''New Adventures'', the last two of his three TV seasons had introduced the characterisation of his Doctor as a sometimes-ruthless [[TheChessmaster Chessmaster]], and were considerably darker than his very comedic first season.
49	* LargeHam: [[https://youtu.be/QhlmNkk5r0k?t=93 Just watch him perform one of the Eleventh Doctor's speeches]]. He manages to out-ham Creator/MattSmith by several ''light years''. Not many people - if any - can manage this, given that Matt Smith is a ''literal child in the body of an adult'' who's eaten too much sugar.
50	* ThoseTwoGuys: With Ian [=McKellen=]. They first appeared together as the Fool and King Lear in the RSC's 2008 production of ''King Lear'', and later in ''The Hobbit'' movies, where Sylvester played Radagast to Ian's Gandalf. A joke in ''Recap/TheFiveishDoctorsReboot'' revolves around [=McKellen=] first having no idea who [=McCoy=] is, and then, when he remembers, he states that shooting an upcoming scene without him might actually be an improvement.
51	* TrrrillingRrrs: One of his trademarks. Creator/BigFinish, of course, frequently uses it in ''AudioPlay/BigFinishDoctorWho''. Just try listening to stories like "[[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho085Red Red]]", sorry, "''Rrrrrrred!''"
52	* {{Vaudeville}}: [=McCoy=] came to prominence with the Ken Campbell Roadshow, which resurrected classic music-hall and variety acts and tropes (sometimes with a post-modern twist). He put his talents at stage magic and proper clowning to good use in ''Doctor Who'', where he's forever [[ThrowItIn throwing in little bits]] to make a more interesting visual or a little joke, as Creator/PatrickTroughton used to do.
53	* WhatCouldHaveBeen: He was the second choice for Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson's ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' trilogy. The role, instead, would go to Sir Creator/IanHolm.

Context Creator / SylvesterMcCoy