Repeat Offenders

This is not the Sixth Doctor.

There are only so many actors in the world, and it is therefore quite likely that sooner or later, any long-running TV show will begin to reuse the same ones in different roles. Paul Barber has had five different  guest spots in Casualty over twenty years, for example. But this article isn't about him, it's about Doctor Who.

The 2005 revival frequently featured actors who'd appeared in the original 1963-89 run, the first such example being William Thomas, who appeared in a small role in part 2 of Remembrance of the Daleks in 1988 before getting killed off in the pre-titles sequence to 2005's "Boom Town". He then went on to play the recurring role of Gwen Cooper's father in the 2006-11 spin-off series Torchwood. However, until the tenth series of the revival in 2017, it was uncommon for the show to reuse actors who'd already appeared in another episode of the revival (excepting very minor roles and people in monster costumes). Then Jennifer Hennessy, previously Valerie in 2007's "Gridlock", showed up in two episodes as Bill's foster mum, Moira, and Joseph Long - who turned in a heartbreakingly good performance as Mr Colasanto in 2008's "Turn Left" - played the Pope in the rather less-good "Extremis".

So, continuing on this theme, here are some particularly notable repeat performances in the show's 54-year history...

Fiona Walker (Kala / Lady Peinforte, 1964-88)
Having been cast in one of her earliest television roles in the show's very first season, 1964's The Keys of Marinus, Walker was intentionally cast in the show's 25th anniversary story, Silver Nemesis. Nice touch.

Jean Marsh (Joanna / Sara Kingdom / Morgaine, 1965-89)
Depending on how you view Sara Kingdom (a companion, but for one unusually long serial only), then Jean Marsh is the only person to appear as a companion and then in a guest spot, albeit 24 years later. And she'd already played another guest part before Sara, earlier that year; one of the first examples of the quick turnaround in the 60s leading to repeat roles in quick succession. She's also one of a select few to appear with both the first and last Doctors of the original run, and surely the only person to appear with only the first and last Doctors and none of the others!

Martin Jarvis (Hilio / Butler / Governor, 1965-85)
Martin Jarvis appeared in Doctor Who once in the 60s (The Web Planet), once in the 70s (Invasion of the Dinosaurs) and once in the 80s (Vengeance on Varos), each roughly a decade apart, never with consecutive Doctors and always with one-word character names. You've got to give the man credit for consistency.

Peter Purves (Morton Dill / Steven Taylor, 1965)
I'll take it as read that you're already aware that Colin Baker and Peter Capaldi had already appeared in Doctor Who as different, one-off characters prior to landing the title role, so there's no need to go into them here. Peter Purves also achieved the feat of appearing as both a guest star and a regular, but what makes it particularly noteworthy is the speedy turnaround, which led him to feature as both in the same serial. Purves first pops up as American tourist Morton Dill in the third episode of The Chase, "Flight Through Eternity", and proved so popular with the cast and crew that they quickly hit upon the idea of casting him as the new companion; Purves duly returns as Steven Taylor just three weeks later, in the story's conclusion "The Planet of Decision".

Kevin Stoney (Mavic Chen / Tobis Vaughn / Tyrum, 1965-75)
Mr Stoney is notable for playing the lead villain in two unusually long sixties serials; 1965-66's twelve-part epic The Daleks' Master Plan, and 1968's eight-parter The Invasion. One featured William Hartnell and the Daleks; the other, Patrick Troughton and the Cybermen. This rather interesting symmetry is only partially spoiled by the fact that he later appeared in the rubbish Tom Baker serial Revenge of the Cybermen. Fun fact: the extended episode count of two of his serials meant that Mr Stoney appeared in more episodes than two full-time companions.

Sheila Dunn (Blossom Lefavre / Telephone Operator / Dr. Petra Williams, 1965-70)
One of the reasons for so many actors appearing as different characters is the same director working with the same actors, building up their own company repertory. Sheila was cast by her husband, Douglas Camfield, on three separate occasions: in the infamous Christmas episode of The Daleks' Master Plan, as the phone operator in The Invasion, and finally as Dr Williams in 1970's Inferno.

Michael Sheard (Rhos / Dr Summers / Laurence Scarman / Lowe / Mergrave / Headmaster, 1966-88)
This article obviously wouldn't be complete without a mention of Mr. Bronson, who clocks up a staggering six different guest characters across 22 years and five Doctors, with Patrick Troughton and Colin Baker the only ones he missed out on. He even managed to make a Big Finish appearance opposite Paul McGann in 2001's The Stones of Venice; truly impressive stuff.

One rather curious thing about Mr Sheard's Who resume is that he only once appeared in every episode of any of the TV serials he was in. Mostly this was due to getting killed off partway through, but The Ark completely changes narratives partway through and The Mind of Evil sees him missing from one episode before reappearing:

• The Ark (1966) as Rhos - episode 2 only
• The Mind of Evil (1971) as Dr Summers - episodes 1-4 & 6
• Pyramids of Mars (1975) as Laurence Scarman - episodes 1-3
• The Invisible Enemy (1977) as Lowe - all four episodes
• Castrovalva (1982) as Mergrave - episodes 3 & 4
• Remembrance of the Daleks (1988) - episodes 1 & 2

Donald Sumpter (Enrico Casali / Commander Ridgeway / President, 1968-2015)

Mr Sumpter holds an impressive amount of time elapsed between appearances: after one showing apiece opposite Patrick Troughton (The Wheel in Space) and Jon Pertwee (The Sea Devils), he next shows up to bother Peter Capaldi in "Hell Bent", some 43 years after we last heard from him, and making him one of a select few to appear in the show in both monochrome and high-definition. He also found the time to put in an appearance in The Sarah Jane Adventures in 2009.

Philip Madoc (Eelek / War Lord / Solon / Fenner, 1968-79)

I have to admit I don't have much to say about Mr Madoc, but he was the villain in both The War Games and The Brain of Morbius, so it would seem remiss of me not to mention him here. There's a rather tight turnaround between his first two appearances, meaning he appears as two different characters opposite the same Doctor/companion lineup (Two, Jamie and Zoe in both The Krotons and The War Games). He also managed to put in appearances opposite both Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy for Big Finish, and the second Peter Cushing film, giving him a rather impressive Doctor count of five overall.

Christopher Benjamin (Dr Keith Gold / Henry Gordon Jago / Colonel Hugh, 1970-2008)

This is an interesting one, because I can't think of any other case where one of the multiple Who roles played by one actor overshadows all of the others. Despite appearing in two highly-regarded classic serials and in the new series at the peak of its powers, Henry Gordon Jago is unquestionably the only Who role of Christopher Benjamin's that anyone remembers - when "The Unicorn and the Wasp" went out, people were thrilled to see Jago again. It's not every part that spawns 13 boxsets of audio drama, after all.

Rex Robinson (Dr. Tyler / Gebek / Dr. Carter, 1972-76)

Not only did he play two different doctors, the close proximity of Mr Robinson's three appearances is interesting; according to the production subtitles for The Hand of Fear, there was meant to be an enforced gap of a few years between the same actor playing different roles on the show, and Rex seems to have skated the line very finely. He also appears with three consecutive Doctor/companion combinations - Three/Jo, Three/Sarah Jane and Four/Sarah Jane.

Michael Cochrane (Lord Cranleigh / Redvers Fenn-Cooper, 1982-89)

Here's a man who's here for the vast difference in tone between his two appearances. Black Orchid and Ghost Light are both set in Victorian era stately homes, but that's where the similarity ends. The former is the only 'straight' historical attempted after Patrick Troughton's second story, and Cochrane plays the rather dim heir to the Cranleigh estate. The latter is completely bonkers, off-the-wall insane and borderline impenetrable, and sees Cochrane play a big game hunter who's been driven insane by an alien light and at the end goes off in a spaceship made of stone to catalogue the universe.

David Warner (Various Big Finish roles / Professor Grisenko, 2003-17)

It seems faintly astonishing that David Warner never appeared in the show's original run. However, he was able to put this right thanks to Big Finish, playing an alternative version of the Third Doctor in a parallel universe on several occasions, as well as putting in appearances opposite Tom Baker, Peter Davison and Paul McGann, as well as their Second Doctor stories (with Frazer Hines doing a fine impression of his late co-star), before finally appearing in the TV show proper in 2013's "Cold War".

Miranda Raison (Tallulah / Constance Clarke, 2007-17)

Although she only made one television appearance (in 2007's "Daleks in Manhattan" / "Evolution of the Daleks"), Miranda subsequently played a regular companion opposite Colin Baker for Big Finish. This is the sort of information that could be extremely annoying in a pub quiz.

David Bradley (Solomon / The First Doctor, 2012-17)

Having first played the villain in 2012's "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship", Bradley went on to play William Hartnell in 2013's superb docudrama An Adventure in Space and Time, which led him to take up Hartnell's mantle as the original, you might say, in 2017's Christmas special "Twice Upon a Time".