Favourite and/or most incomprehensible piece of stunt casting in 80s Doctor Who

damn, I meant to include an option for 'other', what constitutes stunt casting seems fairly indistinct? anyway, write in votes are welcome

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MOJE21NIw68/UoPaVG9k3_I/AAAAAAAABNA/Xe2xO0MhL5Y/s1600/perivale

I was going to reflexively vote for Bonnie Langford as most incomprehensible, but then I was reminded of Hale & Pace. I saw 'Survival' when it was originally broadcast, but my mind has very effectively blocked them out. WTF were they even doing?

Leee John is by some distance the one with the most deleterious effects on the watchability of the story he's in, imo

Dolores Gray perhaps he most baffling, she serves no part in the plot even and (according to the commentary track, or it might have been in the doc) she was only in it because JNT discovered she was in town and thought it would be great if she had a part.

Silver Nemesis also has Courtney Pine and (not) The Queen.

though he looked pretty cool, might have been OK if they didn't give him any dialogue

http://www.assignmentx.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/dr-who-enlightenment.jpg

Michael Kilgarriff's tubby Cyberman is pretty much the opposite (xp)

I considered Courtney Pine but that felt like more of a cameo than stunt casting, which is maybe slightly different? idk. certainly fairly incomprehensible

did they do much of this in the 60s & 70s? It's harder for me to work out how cast members would have been regarded by the audience the further back you go. Bernard Bresslaw as an Ice Warrior presumably counts, though you wouldn't know it was him unless you'd been told

https://38.media.tumblr.com/2388b46ff6ae43c0c77347b5a0e6d1fe/tumblr_mniy3h5TNX1ssuoa0o3_400.png

why does google images think these are the same photo?

https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&sa=G&q=bernard+bresslaw+doctor&tbm=isch&tbs=simg:CAQSZRpjCxCo1NgEGgIIAwwLELCMpwgaPAo6CAISFIwKpAmlC68I4CbJCqIUgwjZFKMLGiDBXQwKiEBYC_1y39dwGjUDd5Z1YYGJEKMXn131ZeQakQwwLEI6u_1ggaCgoICAESBD8JNjAM&ei=hDOlVMHxKNTrar-pgPAG&ved=0CB8Q2A4oAQ&biw=1600&bih=799

Stubby Kaye in Delta and the Bannermen.

There's probably a case to be made for Jean Marsh in Battlefield and Frank Windsor in Ghost Light as stunt casting - Jean is definitely fan service, and I'm sure somewhere (commentary maybe?) someone says Frank is because of Are You Being Served?

Peter Wyngarde in Planet of Fire. JNT probably thought Dallas Adams in the same story was stunt casting of a sort since he was in the press for all the wrong reasons at the time.

I considered Sheila Hancock doing Margaret Thatcher in the Happiness Patrol as well, but I don't know where you draw the line before you just start including any well known actor.
Happiness Patrol also prompted this Daily Mail expose a mere 22 years after the event:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250940/BBC-scriptwriters-tried-use-Doctor-Who-bring-Margaret-Thatcher.html

reminded of Hale & Pace. I saw 'Survival' when it was originally broadcast, but my mind has very effectively blocked them out. WTF were they even doing?

They're in one scene in Perivale, running a corner shop ...maybe being mildly suspicious of outsiders? They're completely fine in it, if you're American they'd be completely undetectable as stunt casting.

(For a low baseline of "fine" - whereas for eg Parsons is genuinely great in Fenric: comes off as a character actor giving it his all on OB video, not a game show host or whatever he was)

Dodd's totally fine in Bannermen too, another one-scene cameo where he pulls off "odd, dishevelled operator of a low-rent spaceport" without any issues

Briers is really pretty good through most of Paradise Towers, his slight essence of ham fitting in with the stylised nature of the script. Obviously it goes completely off the rails with his Zombie Space Hitler turn in the last ep, but even this could have worked if they'd had the budget to make the entire serial look visually convincing, not like a three-minute sketch on an after-school variety show. With a realistic grounding and a sensitive director, his scenery-chewing could have been channelled into scary escalation, not Silly Walks.

(oh, it was the same director as Fenric. I guess he just couldn't be tamed.)

I agree Hale & Pace really do nothing to elevate or diminish Survival, which almost makes casting them all the more perplexing, even in 1989 I can't imagine who would tuning into Dr Who because Hale & Pace were in it that week. I read an interview with Rona Munro where they asked her what she thought of them and she seemed equally as confused.

I like Briers' Zombie caretaker act! I like a lot of these performances to be honest, didn't mean to suggest that they were all bad

Beryl Reid in Earthshock is ludicrous but great whereas Rodney Bewes in Resurrection of the Daleks is ludicrous and awful, Beryl Reid is obviously a more accomplished actor than Rodney Bewes to say the least but even beyond that I think it would be hard predicting which of these would work and which wouldn't just by looking at them on paper

Kate O'Mara's performance is obviously the only thing of any value at all in either of her stories*, but the fact of her casting and the desperate circumstances of her return signify how artless JNT's instincts in this regard were.**

Langford's casting (against all advice, rushing to get the Peter Pan photoshoot) underlines this, especially with the grotesque brief that JNT wrote for her character. But to her credit, she seemed to realise immediately what a poor fit she was for the show at the time & extricate herself. Plus she's v good in two light comic scripts by Roberts & Hickman for Big Finish, showing rapport with both Colin and Sylv.

Brian Blessed seemed to do a Brian Blessed-y job as a space warlord iirc?

Alexei Sayle is the only one I properly knew of when these aired (or since, really), and thus found disappointing. Though I think this may have been because he never met The Doctor or anyone, and had obviously been filmed by himself in a wee box in half an hour, not because he was actually terrible at being a space hospital DJ? idk, I've rewatched almost no Saward-era stories at all since original .au TX, and it'd take a from-the-beginning marathon to get me onto his own scripts.

*except for all that gorgeous location photography in Mark Of, and her marvellously elegant TARDIS interior - the best piece of design on the show for the entire '80s?

** BTW I read the Marson biog a couple of months ago and it's an absolute belter.

Forgot about Eleanor Bron and John Cleese in City of Death. Richard Todd in Kinda might count, he had been a big star in his day.

Jacqueline Hill in Meglos was fan service based on her being available.

Nerys Hughes and Polly James were another two I considered

City Of Death is outside the remit of this poll (also not stunt casting)

he was actually terrible at being a space hospital DJ?

Sayle's good at being a terrible space hospital DJ.
Blessed's performance in Mindwarp is a ham salad, but nowhere near being the worst problem with the story.
I think that Beryl Reid had been in so many TV shows and movies by that point that anything she appeared in had the viewer thinking 'oh that's Beryl Reid'. Joan Sims had this problem to a lesser extent as well. Honor Blackman not so much, although as with Blessed, she's cast in a terrible mess of a story.
Kate O'Mara does a great job of playing the Rani, for the Baker/McCoy eras an actually well written character, especially for a villain.
Michael Kilgarriff, especially in those pre-Internet times, was a casting most people wouldn't have even been aware of the 'significance' of. And it doesn't make any difference to the story at all. These days a similar move would be a HUGE FANBOY THING talked about on 't net months in advance. Maybe the nearest actual equivalent was Bernard Cribbins in Nu-Who a few years ago.
Sarah Greene I don't actually remember being in AotC, although I suppose children's TV probably made a big deal of it at the time. IIRC her costume covered her face completely.

he is my favourite doctor, but would be correct to say that Sylvester McCoy is generally regarded as a Bonnie Langford-esque piece of stunt casting/miscasting by the general public/non-fans? his getting the part seems to used as shorthand for the show's decline in various places and I guess he was better known as an entertainer than an actor, the Secret Policeman's Ball and kids TV etc

Plus she's v good in two light comic scripts by Roberts & Hickman for Big Finish, showing rapport with both Colin and Sylv.

Bonnie Langford is great in all of the Big Finish stuff I've heard, definitely think think the problems with Mel onscreen were due to the material she had to work with rather than any deficiency in her acting ability

I love this thread.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Damn, forgot to vote (but would have been Dolores Gray, so no change to the results).