5. The Seventh Doctor - Ken Campbell
Colin Baker was the only actor considered to play the Sixth Doctor but when it came to the Seventh, the BBC demanded the show hold auditions for a lighter and funnier take on the character. The choice came down to three men - McCoy, Chris Jury and Ken Campbell. McCoy was an old colleague of Campbells having appeared in the Ken Campbell Roadshow stuffing ferrets down his trousers. Campbell himself was, if anything, far stranger. Recognisable by his bushy eyebrows, he blazed his own trail in British theatre by putting on mind-bending productions of The Illuminatus Trilogy and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and turning his hand to improv, ventriloquism and a guest role in Fawlty Towers. He had a uniquely left-brained attitude towards life, even finding time amidst his theatrical provocations to judge the 1980 World Disco Dancing Championship. In full, he sounds like an actual real life version of the Doctor. Its a little baffling, therefore, that he never got a proper crack at the part. What worked against Campbell was his choice of audition piece (one of Dr Manhattans monologues about time from the recently published Watchmen) and the way he played it, which, in his account, was considered too dark by BBC high-ups. And so, arguably the most eccentric actor to have ever been connected to the part became nothing more than a footnote in Who history. Its hard not to think of this as the biggest missed opportunity in the long run of the series.