Doctor Who: 20 Things You Didn't Know About The Ninth Doctor

13. Richard E. Grant Was The Original Ninth Doctor

Alison Cheney Scream Of The Shalka Doctor Who Richard E Grant
BBC

Before Doctor Who returned in a live-action form in March 2005, a short animated series was produced to celebrate the show's 40th anniversary in 2003.

Scream of the Shalka featured Richard E. Grant as the Ninth Doctor, and Sophie Okonedo as his companion Alison. However, when Eccleston was cast and the show was rebooted on TV, Grant's Ninth Doctor was essentially swept under the rug... until he was re-canonised (sort of) via a hologram cameo in the 2024 episode Rogue.

Interestingly, Scream of the Shalka featured a whole bunch of actors who would later appear in the show properly.

Grant and Okonedo appeared opposite the Eleventh Doctor as the Great Intelligence and Queen Liz, respectively, and the Shalka Master was voiced by Derek Jacobi, who went on to play the same character in 2007's Utopia.

Also, keep your ears peeled for David Tennant, who appears in a teeny-tiny role and is easy to miss. It's a Doctor Who anniversary though, of course he had to appear somewhere!

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Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.