4. Graham Crowden - The Horns Of Nimon
"Lord Niiiiimon! Lord Niiiimon! It is Iiiiii, Soldeed!" Character actor Graham Crowden was one of the original choices to play the Fourth Doctor before losing out to Tom Baker. It's possible his performance as Soldeed, servant of the minotaur-like Nimon, was a calculated form of revenge. Most British TV drama pre-90s was multi-camera, meaning that the action was filmed without pause from several different angles at the same time. It was, effectively, produced in the same way as theatre- often performed that way too. Here, Crowden is all maniacal laughter and grand flourishes, which is fine if you're playing to the cheap seats, but overkill times thirty on a TV screen. His sibilant Scots accent (try actually saying that with a sibilant Scots accent) turns even the simplest dialogue into a baroque parody of Shakespearean oratory, and launches the more self-consciously ridiculous lines ("You meddlesome hussy!") into orbit around a distant solar system where the inhabitants have yet to discover the Stanislavsky method. Basically, he's having a laugh, and who can blame him? It's the only sensible reaction to the sight of the Nimon, evil space bulls who clomp around unsteadily on platform boots. With an actor's intuition that BAFTA glory was out of reach, his performance is somehow, magically, the biggest load of bull amongst a big (well, at least four) load of bulls.
Most OTT Moment: A thorough ham if nothing else, Crowden crams every single cliché of the death scene into ten glorious seconds. Soldeed is shot while activating a nuclear chain reaction. "You fools!" he cries, eyes flashing madly- "You're dooooomed!" Apparently Crowden thought the take was actually a rehearsal, and can't quite stifle a little self-amused giggle as he topples grandiloquently to the floor. What an absolute bloody legend.