I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. cCoy in 2008, literally in the middle of the sidewalk. I just said, "Doctor?" and he just smiled, stuck his hand out, and we spent a good 3, 4 minuets just talking. Great, great man!
You are a lucky person and that is such a sweet and unexpected way to meet such a wonderful person! I now am grinning like an idiot while picturing what you wrote in my head and I can't stop. :)
Ha, I can just imagine the seventh doctor standing their, waving his brolly at the mass of spaceships while saying this speech. Sylvester McCoy is my favourite Doctor!
One thing he can really do (and he shows it off here), is that he can take something and make it sound really menacing, even though the actual text isn't. Some actors can do that, others can't.
that final fascicle expression did it for me, Why can't we have an episode were all the doctors come back, like 11 gets saved by a bunch of old men blows them all of not realizing until the end it was his past selfs.
Imagine if he'd done the speech with the authority of his speech in " Battlefield ": SSSTTTOPP ! I COMMAND IT ! THERE - WILL - BE - NO - BATTLE HERE !!! With a little rehearsal, he'd have all the elements of power and menace in the right places. And he was playing partially for comedy to the audience after all. Nice reading Sylve !
I agree completely... if McCoy had lines like this. his doctor would have gone on. he was fabulous in my opinion of the old series him, pertwee and tom baker were the best of the originals
Got chills! It's funny how differently he delivers this speech. With Smith it was badass in the "Fuck yeah!" kind of way, while McCoy, when he delivered that last line of 'let somebody else try first' was really scary!
Thanks for posting this, it was hilarious to watch. I love Sylvester McCoy. This right here shows how playful, funny, and menacing his Doctor could be.
Okay, this is amazing, I've seen Paul McGann, Sylvester McCoy AND Colin Baker say this speech and all of them somehow do it more in character and with more believability than Matt Smith.
I watched my dad's DVD's of Tomb of the Cybermen and The Five Doctors and immediately became a fan because of a) Patrick Troughton's Doctor, b) Doctors 1, 3, 4, and 5 too, c) Being terrified as the Cybermen emerged from their icy tombs, d) Being wracked with fear as a Dalek mercilessly pursues the First Doctor and Susan down a corridor shrieking it's immortal battle cry, and e) Complex, endearing stories. The reason Matt Smith is my Doctor is because he reminds me of Patrick Troughton.
Great! Not quite as he would've played it for real, but that end bit has some of the 7th Drs familiar menace. A great Doc and I hope he comes back for the anniversary!
I totally agree. McCoy is a great actor and was a superb Doctor. Too bad that Michael Grade pulled the plug on the show just when McCoy was starting to enjoy it. But think about it, had the show not been put to bed, would we have the amazing series we have today?
I've only ever seen McCoy as the Doctor in this and at the start of the straight to TV movie because I was told that it was because of him that Dr Who got cancelled. However after watching this and reading the comments here has made me realise that I need to see every single one of his episodes.
It's been three years - did you go back and watch him? If not, you absolutely have to watch Remembrance of the Daleks, Curse of Fenric and Greatest Show in the Galaxy at the VERY least. There are other good stories, too. Problem with the 80's was BBC tried so hard to bury the show - cut the budget, put it up against Coronation Street so the ratings would dip, and basically left it up to McCoy, Aldred and Cartmel to get the show back on form - and as you can see in S26, they were getting there - but then they axed the show anyway. McCoy still jokes at conventions that he killed Doctor Who - but it wasn't him at all. He used to record clips with fans, create audio-dramas and do lots of things when the show was cancelled. He showed more love to Doctor Who than the owners of the show ever did.
The 7th Doctor really knew how to give a speech...that's why I loved his incarnation. Now if only he didnt roll his "R's" , But still he was my favorate.
Maybe they should try and get Matt to recite Sylvester's monologue from the end of "Survival". Just tweak the ending to "Come along, Pond. We've got work to do!"
@tjhornikel He had at least three great ones that I can remember. Threatening the guards to kill him on Iceworld. The dressing down of Davros in the 1963 Dalek story. Then, the scene with the cafe owner about the nature of time in the same Dalek story was one of the Doctor's best of all-time. And his farewell to Mel was one of the best scenes in the history of the show as well. He was not to blame for the gap, the blinkered philistines in the BBC were.
the doctor gives a great and threatening speech to scare his enemies away and then proceeds to eat his sonic screwdriver and stick spare ones in his ears
@ffmarkm I read somewhere that McCoy was hired because the BBC wanted to cancel the show. They aired it at the same time as Corrie on ITV, so it wouldn't pull in the viewers. He grew into the role, and I think if he was allowed another series it would have been the best one yet (with McCoy I mean).
Mccoy is such a showman, and a glorious actor too. But I think he was miscast as a relatively estoic doctor back in the 80s, his acting screamed for a crazy, comic role more open to improvisation. Kind of what Tom Baker was supposed to be in the 70s and the new doctors are now, minus Capaldi.
Can't say I agree - McCoy is at his strongest in melancholic moments (eg. the 'ripples' speech in Remembrance) - his weakness was conveying raw anger (eg. Battlefield), but you don't need to convey anger to show darkness. Check out his speech against Ace in Curse of Fenric as a prime example. This was a Doctor who, post amnesia-regeneration, was shown as being a bumbling idiot, slowly turning into that dark, devious chess-master we all love. Going from the spoon-playing prat-faller to a Doctor who has to utterly smash his companions faith in him was heartbreaking - and he delivered it perfectly.
This is why I think Seven was The Adorable Doctor. :) (No weapons worth a damn *cheekily points sonic*) LOL! I've also seen Colin Baker reading Matt's Rings of Akhaten speech. You've gotta love all Doctors Past, but I think this shows just HOW great an actor Matt Smith is. "...and then, AAAAANNND THEN!.." "SO COME OOOONNNN THEN!" No other actor but Matt will deliver those lines the same powerful way. IMO.
true, each doctor has a speech that is purely their's and Akhaten belonged to Matt, no one can match his heartbroken fury, but Pandorica, 6th and 7th actually do it better. 1st and 2nd dont do too bad a job either!!
@redfinale - not in character for his Doctor - that wasn't McCoy up there... it was Seven :) and Seven wouldn't have shouted that... he'd have whispered it, make 'em GUESS who it is ^_^ Amazing to see how he just 'sank' back into his role as the Doctor throughout that speech... totally brilliant ^_^
Yes, the commonly accepted belief is that the Pete's World and Mondasian Cybermen met and merged technologies, because Pete's World cybermen were seen on a Mondasian style ship in A Good Man Goes To War, hence the Pete's World Cyberman in Nightmare in Silver.
we havent found a suitable replacement for 2nd yet, but could manage everyone else. David Bradley had proven to be a worthy first, SEAN Pertwee looks and sounds just like his dad, and 4th through 12th are still alive
I believe that if there had been less sci-fi haters in the BBC at the time, ( Michael Grade put Doctor Who into Room 101 he hated it so much.) better, more assertive production that Sylvester McCoy's era would have been longer and Doctor Who would never of been cancelled in the first place. Like costume drama, good sci-fi takes up an awful lot of money, and as we all know, even at it's most generous, the BBC tartan is small cheques. Good read through of the speech by Mr McCoy though.
one more time people...this is MY video...,. not a discussion forum for you to agrue with each other in. If the bickering does not stop I will report the guilty parties to RU-vid as trolls!!!
EP1: Hostile takeover from an alien threat. This is the very basis of some of the oldest SF to date, and the most popular. It is used time and time again. EP2: End of the world, 5 billion years down the line, was an idea first popularized in HG Well's The Time Machine. This episode is a perfect example of the "dying earth" branch of SF. EP3: We get a touch on soft SF with a clairvoyant woman and a hole between worlds. I could go on for each episode, but why bother?
@LegoDaleks Opinions and criticism are not the same thing. From a story-writing angle, R.T. Davies does have childish tendency, but his understanding of SF motifs go well beyond the majority of commonday television. Moffat may not have as strong understandings of SF motifs, but his ability to develop complex narratives is amazing, as evidenced through his entire carreer in Doctor Who as well as other works. The original show was entertaining scifi, even with some legitimate SF.
Sylvester McCoy (In my opinion) is one of the best! They're all really good though and I'll agree that his acting wasn't fantastic at that time but you don't need to be a good actor to play the Doctor; you just need to act weird in a sense that it's "Alien".
Sorry, no, you can't play a good Doctor as a bad actor - and saying McCoy is a bad actor (as someone who toured the stage alongside greats like Ian McKellan, with 40+ years of TV & movie experience to his name) is laughable at best. Just being 'weird' or 'quirky' is not a good Doctor. A good Doctor is undoubtedly super-intelligent and the most important person in the room, yet sticks out a mile due to being an ancient alien who isn't quite human. Just "acting weird" is just acting weird.
@ffmarkm That he never had the acting talent is your opinion. He and Sophie always rose above whatever they were given in my opinion. A lot of modern Doctor Who has not been any better. It has just had better special effects technology.
Perhaps the unpopular opinion here, but I think Smith did this one better. What makes me say that is the "I am talking!" part. I think that was what defined this speech for me. Also, the questions part. I thought the pace was a bit slow in this rendition. I can honestly say that I think Smith did it better. With that in mind, Smith's performance has all those ships flying above him and them halting when the Doctor yells. Should McCoy be given the chance to do that, maybe he could change my mind
Lovely bloke and he has been an exellent ambassador for the show since he left the role. But he never had the acting talent to pull the part off. This just reminds of the nigthmare that Dr Who was during his reign. I am just grateful Sophie Aldred isn't in it aswell. And its not a patch on Matt Smiths version of this speach.