Ian McKellen: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

...And Five That Sucked

5. The Great Intelligence - Doctor Who (2012)

Doctor Who has long since been an arena for actors to flex their genre muscles, to have a bit of fun on a stage that's a little more respected than a panto, but still allowing them a similar degree of silliness, fun, and generally hamming it up. David Morissey did it. So did Toby Jones. And there was that one episode that Mike Skinner from The Streets was in for some reason. Unfortunately, Sir Ian McKellen's turn wound up being far less memorable. For one thing, he was playing a character that had already appeared on the show being played by someone else. Two other people no less, as The Great Intelligence first appeared in a Doctor Who serial from 1967, where he encountered Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor and was played by Wolfe Morris. He returned a year later, accompanied by his Yeti robot bodyguards, this time played by one Jack Woolgar. The Great Intelligence is one of those vaguely-defined Doctor Who villains. Not a monster, not a guy in a suit, but one of those abstract concepts that nonetheless poses a threat to all of space time, and can talk. McKellen's turn in the 2012 Christmas special is so phoned in you could be forgiven for not even noticing it is one of the greatest actors of several generations voicing that sentient jar of fake snow.