As I mentioned a week or so ago, it’s far easier to find the actors from Modern-Who in non Doctor Who projects that their earlier counterparts.
(Daily Doctor Who #14)
I decided to add them to my list from last time, and then maybe to follow it up with another round of appearances that I can think of, until I’m down to whoever I’ve seen in the most stuff.
To be clear, I’m not making a list of everything all of these actors have been in, but rather just what I happen to actually have seen (and in general, can remember).
With Modern-Who, it’s also a little confusing to know who counts as a regular and who doesn’t–there’s a lot of recurring characters who have quite sizable roles. But we’ll do our best.
Actually, it’s also hard to know where Modern-Who actually begins. The Paul McGann TV movie from 1996–Modern or Classic? Well, obviously, it’s not really either. But since we didn’t include it last time, we will here.
Paul McGann (The Eighth Doctor) – Lt. Bush from a number of episodes in the Hornblower series starring Ioan Gruffudd. I liked that show and McGann was solid in it.
Daphne Ashbrook (Grace Holloway) – She was Melora in an episode Deep Space Nine called Melora. Her character was from a low-gravity world, and she ended up in a brief romantic relationship with Dr. Bashir.
Eric Roberts (The Master) – He has been in tons of stuff, obviously. I’ll mention here his role as crime boss Maroni from The Dark Knight.
Christopher Eccleston (The Ninth Doctor) – He played some ancient evil villain dude in the not-very-good movie The Seeker: The Dark is Rising. What I remember about it most is that he gains entrance into the good guy’s house by pretending to be a quirky doctor. Briefly, I could pretend I was seeing him play our Doctor once again.
Billie Piper (Rose Tyler) – I’m pretty sure I’ve seen one of those Sally Lockhart TV mysteries that she has starred in, but I don’t remember what it was called.
Noel Clarke (Mickey Smith) – He played a hapless dude who was blackmailed by Khan into letting him cause a whole lot of trouble in the movie Star Trek Into Darkness.
John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness) – He was charmingly bland as Malcolm Merlyn in Arrow and in other associated shows.
David Tennant (The Tenth Doctor) – There are lots of things I could choose from, of course, but I really enjoyed a movie I saw on TV called What We Did On Our Holiday. It also starred Rosamund Pike and Billy Connolly, and was a quirky dark (but not too dark) comedy in which he played part of a marriage that was breaking up, but keeping it a secret from their children until after their big trip for the grandfather’s birthday.
John Simm (The Master) – He was the star of Life On Mars, as Sam Tyler.
Catherine Tate (Donna Noble) – Amongst many other things, she appeared for a while as Nellie Bertram in later seasons of the American version of The Office.
Bernard Cribbins (Wilfrid Mott) – Can we count his appearance in the big-screen Dalek movie from the 1960’s? Maybe not. We will go with his appearance in the 1966 episode of The Avengers, called The Girl from Auntie, where he played Arkwright, a guy who ran a knitting club like it was a military exercise.
Matt Smith (The Eleventh Doctor) – He was Prince Philip for the first couple of seasons of The Crown. I didn’t see all of that, but I certainly saw enough to count him.
Karen Gillan (Amy Pond) – Karen Gillan probably has more Hollywood success than any other regular from all of Doctor Who. We will mention here her role as the Ruby Roundhouse from the recent Jumanji movies.
Arthur Darvill (Rory Williams) – Let’s go with his role as the Reverend Paul Coates from Broadchurch.
Alex Kingston (River Song) – She was Mrs. Bennet in the TV miniseries Lost in Austen, which I’ve at least some of.
Jenna Coleman (Clara Oswald) – I haven’t seen a huge amount of time, but I’ve caught some of Victoria where she plays the famous queen.
Peter Capaldi (the Twelfth Doctor) – He was in The Personal History of David Copperfield, as Mr. Micawber
Samuel Anderson (Danny Pink) – I’ve seen a episodes of Another Life, where he plays the ship-board artificial intelligence, William.
Matt Lucas (Nardole) – Apparently, he was in an episode of Community, which I guess I’ve seen since I’ve seen nearly all of them, but I don’t remember him.
Jodie Whittaker (The Thirteenth Doctor) – I became aware of her also through Broadchurch, where she played Beth Latimer, in which I thought she was amazing.
Sacha Dhawan (The Master) – I’m counting him even though he’s only been in four episodes, since he’s bound to show up more. He played Manmeet in the sit-com Outsourced.
And that’s it, as far as I can think. That means that even though I can name things that a lot of these people have been in, I haven’t actually seen stuff that features Camille Coduri, Frema Agyeman, Dan Starkey, Neve McIntosh, Catrin Stewart, Jacqueline King, Michelle Gomez, Maisie Williams, Pearl Mackie, Mandip Gill, Tosin Cole or Bradley Walsh.
And I just counted, and it turns out I’ve named 21 Classic-Who actors, and 21 Modern-Who actors, as people I’ve seen in other non-Who projects. It sounds like it’s a perfect set-up for some sort of competition!
Blue Towel Productions 