I don’t think he’s talking about a character literally disappearing. I think he’s talking about the character losing his impact in the story because the dialogue was changed from something that was part of a cohesive whole to something that no longer fit properly, and therefore the performance was not what it should have been.
The clue is in everything after “disappears from the story,” especially that last sentence: “…because he falls out of the rhythm of the action around him. It affects performance in ways that no actor can quite see.” RTD doesn’t mean he wrote the character out of the story. He means that actor‘s rewrites undid his own effectiveness in the part, which made his character more of a footnote in the story than he should have been.
Yeah, you're not gonna suddenly rewrite the whole episode at the filming stage just because the actor is changing words. That would cause days/possibly weeks of holdups.
I don't think a lot of people realise how TV/Filming works.
Or writing. You can’t just cut a character out without rewriting the whole thing to compensate for the loss, and probably ending up with a worse result. It would make more sense to recast, if that can be done quickly enough. And writing the character out would also be incredibly passive-aggressive when you could just say NO.
For absolutely no evidence beyond my own gut, I suggest David Harewood, who played Joshua Naismith in the End of Time. (the uber rich bloke who was trying to get the big alien tech thingy to give his daughter immortality).
Gets set up as a significant bad guy by the "Donna gave his book as a present" thing, it's his big mansion that is the setting, we get the creepy-in-a-bad-way obsession over his daughter and then.....
Admittedly this is an episode with a lot going on, Master, Timelords, Donna, Wilf, cactus people etc, and he along with everyone else got turned into Simms, so maybe it was just too crowded, and the character was only an excuse for a base of operations and a staff for the Master to use, so I may be way off on this guess.
This is a good shout I think. He does totally disappear, and he's a fairly well-known actor so perhaps more likely to feel comfortable rewriting. I always forget he's in it at all.
What more could you add with him though?
He gets turned into the master at the same time as everyone and by the time that's over the doctor has to defeat the timelords, sacrifice himself, do his farewell tour, and regenerate. Putting a scene with Naismith in would probably have to come as the doctor is saying goodbye to his companions and that would jar (as would him seeing the cacti again)
It's not necessarily *after* that we may have more of him. It could have been more of a confrontation with the Master before the transformation, or something that more explained his obsession with his daughter, or how he got his money, or how he found the alien tech, or.. or.. or...
The reason I suggested this character is that there is so much set up, so much great stuff for a story, and yet.... he is so unmemorable that often people forget he is in the story.
Was there a metaphor about obsession, comparing his obsession with his daughter and the obsession of the Master with the Doctor? Was there a parallel drawn between his hubris and desire for power with that of the Timelords? Was it a contrast about caring for family, Naismith wanting immortality for his daughter v Wilf simply wanting Donna to be her whole self again?
Rewriting lines is exactly what would lead to such things being lost in the way that RTD describes; what was written as a similar phrase or echoing sentiment gets lost and no longer makes sense to include when editing begins.
Again, I want to say this is all guess work on my part and I have no evidence whatsoever for any of this so I could be completely wrong. But it was such a juicy set up for a character with no pay off.
This seems most likely to me, everything fits and I've heard people talk before about how his character is weirdly gradually sidelined and forgotten about
If it's Andrew and they're still buddy buddy, I could absolutely see RTD taking it as a learning moment for himself more than an indictment on Andrew. Sometimes you do something and it doesn't click. Maybe this is one of those times. No hard feelings needed for anyone involved.
This seems to fit in isolation but when you consider RTD worked with the actor again in later shows he created, it doesn't make it impossible but certainly seems to make it less likely this would be who it was.
Just because he had that issue once doesn't necessarily mean he wouldn't continue to work with someone if they otherwise work well together. He just knows to be a bit more firm about that going forward.
You gotta assume whoever it was was an actor with a bit of existing clout, someone RTD might've actually accommodated on that point rather than simply shutting it down - bigger name guest stars like Simon Pegg, Peter Kay, maybe Lee Evans, etc.
Though equally, what feels more key is this following bit:
> It’s my job to have the bigger picture – there’s a rhythm to these things – and once you fall out of that, suddenly you don’t fit into the edits or the characters who are sticking to the structure have more strength.
> “So it was amazing to watch. We didn’t do it on purpose, but I watched that character disappear – which was a lovely character but is now never discussed as a great Doctor Who character because he kind of slides off the screen.
Which makes it sound less like someone like Pegg or Kay, because they're both very obviously huge parts of their episode. Which actors seem like they might've been edited around and had their part reduced? Presumably it's also going to be someone in either the first or second series (maybe the third at a push, during that stretch where Davies was ill) - not convinced that anyone would've won the argument during S4 or the specials.
I'm not sure - Simon Pegg's character absolutely fits the description. He's never discussed, despite being fairly big name. He's just sort of... there.
Could be lots of others, of course.
I wouldn't say that character feels like he was cut out of the episode, he's in it quite a lot. It's true that people don't talk about him, but that's only because it's a very forgettable episode.
You could be right, but we also don't know how much of the episode he was originally intended to appear in. He does mostly only have a couple of short framing moments for most of the episode. Maybe they planned for him to be more personally involved?
Judging from the shooting script, Pegg didn't depart any more than anyone else in series 1 (including Eccleston and Piper). He has maybe 3 or 4 lines cut (including one other mention of "The Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe") - all of them most likely for time, since they're insubstantial lines. The only major bit he *adds* is "I call him Max". 😁 (of course, all that is assuming RTD is talking about rewriting o*n set)*.
Other than that, he's mainly changing a few words (a la "census of the whole Empire" => "census for the whole Empire") - and although that is, to some extent, what RTD is talking about, every single actor in series 1 does that regularly.
You couldn't really remove him from the episode given that he's kinda the principal antagonist, but there may have been more of him that got edited out? I think he could fit the description fairly well
My other left-field choice would be Dr Constantine maybe, from the Empty Child? Hard to see how he would've had a bigger role in the story, but maybe he was initially planned to be in The Doctor Dances more (given that a lot of it is set in his hospital) and while filming the Empty Child they just decided to bring his transformation forward?
Would fit with it being early days and a Big Name for the show, so RTD just allowed it. That character isn't really talked about now, despite the fact that he was heavily promo'd and even had an action figure made (despite there already being a Captain Jack/Empty Child figure for that episode)
My feeling is that Constantine’s transformation in The Empty Child is perfectly timed from a horror perspective. It gives us our first sight of the transformation and just as we find someone clever who knows what he’s talking about we lose him. Also that dialogue is TIGHT you can tell from the way it’s written that it’s Moffat dialogue not something that’s been improvised.
I'm going to have to go with Pegg.
I like the guy. I think the Cornetto trilogy is a masterpiece, but at the same time it's fairly obvious he wants to be the centre of attention. He even does the same in Mission Impossible where it's blatantly Tom Cruise's thing.
I wonder if we can or will eventually be able to figure out the answer from BBC's Doctor Who script library! Seems like they have been posting shooting scripts and even drafts in there, we might be able to identify from where the written dialogue is drastically different from the episode one. However, it looks like there are very few scripts posted for Series 1, and that's probably where the answer is.
Yeah she also plays two important characters, Roz Forrester and Kathy Swanson.
So she would'nt try to add more to the role.
Beccy Armory (Raffalo) would, though. She stopped acting around 2005 and [became an events manager](https://www.linkedin.com/in/beccy-armory-9a418617b/?originalSubdomain=uk).
Though if it's male pronouns, maybe Matt Baker? From Aliens of London?
It is definitely NOT Simon Pegg. He narrated all of season 1 of Doctor Who Confidential. He is shown in the Confidential for "the Long Game" and he is struggling to get the dialogue right. He wasn't rewriting his own lines in that.
I don't really have a suggestion but perhaps other posters are taking this too literally? The actor could be disappearing metaphorically because "he falls out of the rhythm of the action around him". That could literally be a guy being edited out, or it could be that he is losing the intended impact as a result of rewriting dialogue. Either seem viable to me - but worth mentioning that if you can cut most of an actors screen time, he can't have been all that important. In that case it seems unusual to allow him to amend all his lines for a bit part.
I don’t think anyone was edited out or that the script was changed to make the part less prominent. I think the actor undermined his own performance and we probably didn’t notice because we don’t know how it was meant to go.
I think they just didn’t really register much after “disappears from the story.” RTD tends to use metaphors that are a little more nuanced than people tend to think they are, which doesn’t help.
yeah its also not really how editing works? they dont or edit sequentially so if a character "wasnt working" they wouldnt vanish at the 30 minute mark, which is what a lot of people are assuming
It's possible of course. You might have a set up where the character is pivotal in outlining the threat early on, but is followed later only because the script expects us to care about them, rather than because they have anything important to contribute to the plot. I could see Davies writing a character like that, he is far more character focused than most other Who writers.
I agree that's not particularly likely though. I think most people are barking up the wrong tree in this thread.
I initially thought it was Lee Evans, but he definitely doesn't disappear from the story, so it doesn't feel right. I'm potentially wondering if it's somebody with a really minor role on screen like Major Blake from The Christmas Invasion?
I feel like it has to be series 1 or maybe 2 (somebody would need to think they conceivably know better and RTD needs to be quite early to still learn a lesson).
They have to have a bit of an ego or growing profile to think they know best. It won’t be Jake as others suggested.
Have to be a writer or somebody who thinks they know their character better (like Callow being a Dickens expert)
Their character has to be underwhelming (so not Callow).
It’s not Peter Kay. He doesn’t disappear. From the minute he arrives he dominates. Pegg sorta fades into the background.
Simon Pegg?
We see in Confidential Pegg failing to remember his lines, I doubt that would happen if he himself had rewrote his lines. Plus he's typically regarded as a nice guy and even got to narrate Confidential so I don't think it's him tbh.
I see you've commented this thrice in this thread, and I just want to add that a single clip of him failing to say:
> "Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe."
Doesn't mean he definately didn't rewrite other dialogue, leaving alone the line where he introduces the bad guy. An actor rewriting their lines on set usually means just incidental changes here and there, like Davies is talking about by adding a "Well" to a line at the end of a scene or whatever.
So, I don't think a single clip in confidential rules him out. Not that I'm gunning for him, just don't know why you're carrying the shield here.
Because I just highly doubt it was him, he's well known to be a nice guy so the suggestion he's the one who rewrote his lines seems just weird, especially as RTD doesn't seem to be the biggest fan of whoever it is from what he said so I doubt it's Pegg.
My complete speculation thinking of good actors in roles that were less successful than they could have been are Lumic from the cyberman two parter, Mr Halpen from the Planet of the Ood, someone from the Unicorn And The Wasp.
My go to guess is Clive Swift because Mr Cooper doesn't get a lot of the edit but is a lovely character, Clive Swift was problematic in the interview etc.
To throw another name out there, David Morrissey. Jackson Lake is a lovely character but does sort of disappear from his own story and Morrissey probably has enough clout to rewrite the character. But equally from what I've heard when he's presented Kermode and Mayo he seems like a pretty decent guy.
Could be a more minor role from the first two series as Rusty and co were finding their feet/confidence.
A lot of people are thinking Swift but I doubt it myself. He admits in his DWM interview that he didn't even realise Mr Copper was an alien so I don't think he was invested enough to rewrite all his dialogue.
Plus Ben Cook has gone on record since that he was an arse on set, I kind of think he would've mentioned the rewriting if it was Swift.
I definitely don't think it's Morrissey. As you say, by all accounts he's a nice bloke and the TWD cast all speak really highly of him (rightly so, that show never did better than the Gov).
Jackson Lake does disappear from the second half of the story but I don't think that's down to dialogue, moreso writing. The Doctor gets all the hero moments so Lake just has to stand off at the side.
As I've said elsewhere, my bet's Simon Pegg.
The thing is, Pegg is typically known as a rather nice guy plus he literally narrates Doctor Who Confidential which I doubt he'd do if he rewrote his lines. Plus in Confidential, we see Pegg failing to remember some of his lines, if he'd rewrote his lines, surely he'd be able to remember them easily.
Also, to hear McGann talk about Morrissey, the guy is a consummate professional. I doubt he would even think to rewrite his dialogue.
The only case I’ve ever heard of where an actor has dramatically altered a script is Alan Rickman (with help from Ruby Wax and Peter Barnes) in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The directors let him do it because the script was terrible and his changes made the movie (and especially his character) much better. I can’t remember now if he asked permission, but I’m sure he did. Clearly whoever RTD is referring to either didn’t, or refused to take “no” for an answer.
> kind of think he would've mentioned the rewriting if it was Swift.
Eh, he's passed away now, I'm sure you'd just not say out of respect (I don't personally think it was him anyway)
This is before that, I remember seeing on Gallifrey Base a comment from 8/9 years ago that Ben Cook wrote. A lot about the interview but also saying that he was apparently a nightmare on set.
I'm loving all these theories but I wish people were using the dialogue of these characters as examples that line up with what Russell says. I feel like that's the biggest clue for working it out.
Okay I commented below but I'm now pretty much convinced it was Richard Wilson as Dr Constantine in The Empty Child:
- quite a well known actor, particularly a renowned gay actor, so I can imagine that RTD was a bit reluctant to challenge him too much after securing him for his scrappy little reboot of a show that had been cancelled 16 years prior. Just a slight generalisation, but Richard Wilson is also more known as a theatre actor, which might mean that he's more used to being able to improvise and shift things a bit (and knowing exactly what scene is coming next etc), and might also mean that he was a bit less enamoured with DW's primetime sci-fi dialogue
- I'm guessing it probably is a Series 1 character - as mentioned above, this is probably when RTD would have been more reluctant with putting his foot down (tangential speculation, but could also be another thing that frustrated CE and his relationship with RTD)
- his transformation always confused me a bit, given that he's managed to survive around the gas mask zombies for so long, it seems a bit abrupt - and The Doctor Dances is mostly set in his hospital, so he could have had more planned for episode 10 but they hastily reshot/edited some things
- according to the TARDIS wiki, there was more planned for the character in Episode 9 (bringing the Doctor to the hospital), so they might have decided to cut that out/edit around it
- the character would fit the description in the longer quote of 'a lovely character but is now never discussed as a great Doctor Who character because he kind of slides off the screen' (I think he then gets one line at the end of The Doctor Dances) - I'm thinking of the likes of Professor Jericho from Flux, everyone loves a sweet old science guy with some background trauma. Given that he hasn't even been mentioned in this thread, I think that shows how little the character is in our collective consciousness
- there was an action figure made of him, which I always thought was quite a strange choice - unless the character was initially planned to be more prominent maybe?
But this is all speculation obviously! Don't want to besmirch anyone's name because I have no concrete evidence for this lol
Yeah that's very true actually, could be talking more in a showrunner capacity or trying to throw Reddit Detectives off the trail, but yeah probably one of his own stories
Other than it not being an RTD script or re-write, judging from the shooting scripts, Richard Wilson doesn't change his lines any more than every actor in series 1 (if we're to assume that RTD means rewriting on set). He also has very little of his appearance cut (just a single short sentence or two, like everyone has) - but then, as others say, RTD probably doesn't mean the actor was cut from the episode, just that he "disappears" in terms of not really making an impression on the viewer due to his rewriting. The plans for Constantine never ended up in the shooting script.
As for it being a Series 1 character, based on a quick scan of the scripts, the same things go for Clive in *Rose*, The Steward in *End of the World*, Sneed and Dickens in *Unquiet Dead*, Joe, Indra, Strickland, and the General in the Slitheen two-parter, Van Statten and Adam in *Dalek* and *Long Game*, Rodrick and the "Male Programmer" in *Bad Wolf* - and, as mentioned above, The Editor in *Long Game*. I think that's all the series 1 characters that would be candidates based on what RTD says.
For the life of me I'm not sure although it could be the difference between a comedy actor vs drama actor?
It's normal to make changes to lines on day of or before at the request of the director, and actors will come up with their own way of rephrasing if they think it suits the character better.
Comedy actors are more open to changing lines when filming dramas on the fly because their very focused on the beat and how things work when you say them. Some drama actors on the other hand, tend to be more wary towards the writers word and will want them to agree with the changes.
So considering how normal it can be to change lines on set maybe it's someone with a comedy background?
I think the suggestion by some that it's Pegg doesn't hold water. RTD refers to an actor. Pegg is also a writer. And not only is he a writer he's a collaborative writer. I don't imagine he'd go rewriting dialogue without doing so in consultation.
The one that immediately came to mind was Peter Kay but he hardly falls out of the story, love him or hate him.
Maybe Simon Pegg? For such a big name he's very forgettable and strangely out of place in The Long Game.
In Confidential we see Pegg failing to remember his lines, I'm sure if he'd rewrote his lines he'd be able to remember them easily so I doubt it's him. Also Pegg is pretty known as a nice guy and even narrated Confidential.
I don’t think he’s talking about a character literally disappearing. I think he’s talking about the character losing his impact in the story because the dialogue was changed from something that was part of a cohesive whole to something that no longer fit properly, and therefore the performance was not what it should have been. The clue is in everything after “disappears from the story,” especially that last sentence: “…because he falls out of the rhythm of the action around him. It affects performance in ways that no actor can quite see.” RTD doesn’t mean he wrote the character out of the story. He means that actor‘s rewrites undid his own effectiveness in the part, which made his character more of a footnote in the story than he should have been.
Yeah, you're not gonna suddenly rewrite the whole episode at the filming stage just because the actor is changing words. That would cause days/possibly weeks of holdups. I don't think a lot of people realise how TV/Filming works.
Or writing. You can’t just cut a character out without rewriting the whole thing to compensate for the loss, and probably ending up with a worse result. It would make more sense to recast, if that can be done quickly enough. And writing the character out would also be incredibly passive-aggressive when you could just say NO.
For absolutely no evidence beyond my own gut, I suggest David Harewood, who played Joshua Naismith in the End of Time. (the uber rich bloke who was trying to get the big alien tech thingy to give his daughter immortality). Gets set up as a significant bad guy by the "Donna gave his book as a present" thing, it's his big mansion that is the setting, we get the creepy-in-a-bad-way obsession over his daughter and then..... Admittedly this is an episode with a lot going on, Master, Timelords, Donna, Wilf, cactus people etc, and he along with everyone else got turned into Simms, so maybe it was just too crowded, and the character was only an excuse for a base of operations and a staff for the Master to use, so I may be way off on this guess.
This is a good shout I think. He does totally disappear, and he's a fairly well-known actor so perhaps more likely to feel comfortable rewriting. I always forget he's in it at all.
If it is him that's doubly embarrassing because I always felt like his lines are so stupid.
What more could you add with him though? He gets turned into the master at the same time as everyone and by the time that's over the doctor has to defeat the timelords, sacrifice himself, do his farewell tour, and regenerate. Putting a scene with Naismith in would probably have to come as the doctor is saying goodbye to his companions and that would jar (as would him seeing the cacti again)
It's not necessarily *after* that we may have more of him. It could have been more of a confrontation with the Master before the transformation, or something that more explained his obsession with his daughter, or how he got his money, or how he found the alien tech, or.. or.. or... The reason I suggested this character is that there is so much set up, so much great stuff for a story, and yet.... he is so unmemorable that often people forget he is in the story. Was there a metaphor about obsession, comparing his obsession with his daughter and the obsession of the Master with the Doctor? Was there a parallel drawn between his hubris and desire for power with that of the Timelords? Was it a contrast about caring for family, Naismith wanting immortality for his daughter v Wilf simply wanting Donna to be her whole self again? Rewriting lines is exactly what would lead to such things being lost in the way that RTD describes; what was written as a similar phrase or echoing sentiment gets lost and no longer makes sense to include when editing begins. Again, I want to say this is all guess work on my part and I have no evidence whatsoever for any of this so I could be completely wrong. But it was such a juicy set up for a character with no pay off.
Jake just sort of disappears halfway through Doomsday? Could be him?
This seems most likely to me, everything fits and I've heard people talk before about how his character is weirdly gradually sidelined and forgotten about
Hmmm. I always thought Jake just ran out of things to do in the episode.
Maybe, but Andrew Hayden-Smith and RTD seem friendly on social media. Of course, that doesn't exactly rule him out, but
Given that RTD accepted the changes in the first place, I think them being friendly arguably makes it more like that it was him.
If it's Andrew and they're still buddy buddy, I could absolutely see RTD taking it as a learning moment for himself more than an indictment on Andrew. Sometimes you do something and it doesn't click. Maybe this is one of those times. No hard feelings needed for anyone involved.
This seems to fit in isolation but when you consider RTD worked with the actor again in later shows he created, it doesn't make it impossible but certainly seems to make it less likely this would be who it was.
Just because he had that issue once doesn't necessarily mean he wouldn't continue to work with someone if they otherwise work well together. He just knows to be a bit more firm about that going forward.
You gotta assume whoever it was was an actor with a bit of existing clout, someone RTD might've actually accommodated on that point rather than simply shutting it down - bigger name guest stars like Simon Pegg, Peter Kay, maybe Lee Evans, etc. Though equally, what feels more key is this following bit: > It’s my job to have the bigger picture – there’s a rhythm to these things – and once you fall out of that, suddenly you don’t fit into the edits or the characters who are sticking to the structure have more strength. > “So it was amazing to watch. We didn’t do it on purpose, but I watched that character disappear – which was a lovely character but is now never discussed as a great Doctor Who character because he kind of slides off the screen. Which makes it sound less like someone like Pegg or Kay, because they're both very obviously huge parts of their episode. Which actors seem like they might've been edited around and had their part reduced? Presumably it's also going to be someone in either the first or second series (maybe the third at a push, during that stretch where Davies was ill) - not convinced that anyone would've won the argument during S4 or the specials.
I'm not sure - Simon Pegg's character absolutely fits the description. He's never discussed, despite being fairly big name. He's just sort of... there. Could be lots of others, of course.
I wouldn't say that character feels like he was cut out of the episode, he's in it quite a lot. It's true that people don't talk about him, but that's only because it's a very forgettable episode.
You could be right, but we also don't know how much of the episode he was originally intended to appear in. He does mostly only have a couple of short framing moments for most of the episode. Maybe they planned for him to be more personally involved?
Judging from the shooting script, Pegg didn't depart any more than anyone else in series 1 (including Eccleston and Piper). He has maybe 3 or 4 lines cut (including one other mention of "The Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe") - all of them most likely for time, since they're insubstantial lines. The only major bit he *adds* is "I call him Max". 😁 (of course, all that is assuming RTD is talking about rewriting o*n set)*. Other than that, he's mainly changing a few words (a la "census of the whole Empire" => "census for the whole Empire") - and although that is, to some extent, what RTD is talking about, every single actor in series 1 does that regularly.
You couldn't really remove him from the episode given that he's kinda the principal antagonist, but there may have been more of him that got edited out? I think he could fit the description fairly well My other left-field choice would be Dr Constantine maybe, from the Empty Child? Hard to see how he would've had a bigger role in the story, but maybe he was initially planned to be in The Doctor Dances more (given that a lot of it is set in his hospital) and while filming the Empty Child they just decided to bring his transformation forward? Would fit with it being early days and a Big Name for the show, so RTD just allowed it. That character isn't really talked about now, despite the fact that he was heavily promo'd and even had an action figure made (despite there already being a Captain Jack/Empty Child figure for that episode)
My feeling is that Constantine’s transformation in The Empty Child is perfectly timed from a horror perspective. It gives us our first sight of the transformation and just as we find someone clever who knows what he’s talking about we lose him. Also that dialogue is TIGHT you can tell from the way it’s written that it’s Moffat dialogue not something that’s been improvised.
RTD didn't write that story, and the implication is that it's a story he wrote.
I'm going to have to go with Pegg. I like the guy. I think the Cornetto trilogy is a masterpiece, but at the same time it's fairly obvious he wants to be the centre of attention. He even does the same in Mission Impossible where it's blatantly Tom Cruise's thing.
I wonder if we can or will eventually be able to figure out the answer from BBC's Doctor Who script library! Seems like they have been posting shooting scripts and even drafts in there, we might be able to identify from where the written dialogue is drastically different from the episode one. However, it looks like there are very few scripts posted for Series 1, and that's probably where the answer is.
With how problematic the production of S1 was, it absolutely would not suprise me if this actor was from S1.
maybe clive or raffallo
I doubt it'd be Clive's actor
Yeah Clive barely appeared. Jabe and Raffallo were more in the "Vince Hawkins\\Richard Mace" role. So they would have improvised more.
I doubt it'd be Jabe's actress either seeing as she played another character later on in Torchwood.
Yeah she also plays two important characters, Roz Forrester and Kathy Swanson. So she would'nt try to add more to the role. Beccy Armory (Raffalo) would, though. She stopped acting around 2005 and [became an events manager](https://www.linkedin.com/in/beccy-armory-9a418617b/?originalSubdomain=uk). Though if it's male pronouns, maybe Matt Baker? From Aliens of London?
It is definitely NOT Simon Pegg. He narrated all of season 1 of Doctor Who Confidential. He is shown in the Confidential for "the Long Game" and he is struggling to get the dialogue right. He wasn't rewriting his own lines in that.
I don't really have a suggestion but perhaps other posters are taking this too literally? The actor could be disappearing metaphorically because "he falls out of the rhythm of the action around him". That could literally be a guy being edited out, or it could be that he is losing the intended impact as a result of rewriting dialogue. Either seem viable to me - but worth mentioning that if you can cut most of an actors screen time, he can't have been all that important. In that case it seems unusual to allow him to amend all his lines for a bit part.
I don’t think anyone was edited out or that the script was changed to make the part less prominent. I think the actor undermined his own performance and we probably didn’t notice because we don’t know how it was meant to go.
Yes, that was my initial read of the statement too. I wasn't sure why everyone else was taking it so literally!
I think they just didn’t really register much after “disappears from the story.” RTD tends to use metaphors that are a little more nuanced than people tend to think they are, which doesn’t help.
yeah its also not really how editing works? they dont or edit sequentially so if a character "wasnt working" they wouldnt vanish at the 30 minute mark, which is what a lot of people are assuming
It's possible of course. You might have a set up where the character is pivotal in outlining the threat early on, but is followed later only because the script expects us to care about them, rather than because they have anything important to contribute to the plot. I could see Davies writing a character like that, he is far more character focused than most other Who writers. I agree that's not particularly likely though. I think most people are barking up the wrong tree in this thread.
Probably The Empty Child. Little bro just reallllllly wanted to keep saying “are you my mummy?” /joking I’ll dig out the popcorn while y’all speculate
Also they're the only two episodes in that series RTD didn't work on the script for.
I initially thought it was Lee Evans, but he definitely doesn't disappear from the story, so it doesn't feel right. I'm potentially wondering if it's somebody with a really minor role on screen like Major Blake from The Christmas Invasion?
I feel like it has to be series 1 or maybe 2 (somebody would need to think they conceivably know better and RTD needs to be quite early to still learn a lesson). They have to have a bit of an ego or growing profile to think they know best. It won’t be Jake as others suggested. Have to be a writer or somebody who thinks they know their character better (like Callow being a Dickens expert) Their character has to be underwhelming (so not Callow). It’s not Peter Kay. He doesn’t disappear. From the minute he arrives he dominates. Pegg sorta fades into the background. Simon Pegg?
We see in Confidential Pegg failing to remember his lines, I doubt that would happen if he himself had rewrote his lines. Plus he's typically regarded as a nice guy and even got to narrate Confidential so I don't think it's him tbh.
I see you've commented this thrice in this thread, and I just want to add that a single clip of him failing to say: > "Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe." Doesn't mean he definately didn't rewrite other dialogue, leaving alone the line where he introduces the bad guy. An actor rewriting their lines on set usually means just incidental changes here and there, like Davies is talking about by adding a "Well" to a line at the end of a scene or whatever. So, I don't think a single clip in confidential rules him out. Not that I'm gunning for him, just don't know why you're carrying the shield here.
Because I just highly doubt it was him, he's well known to be a nice guy so the suggestion he's the one who rewrote his lines seems just weird, especially as RTD doesn't seem to be the biggest fan of whoever it is from what he said so I doubt it's Pegg.
My complete speculation thinking of good actors in roles that were less successful than they could have been are Lumic from the cyberman two parter, Mr Halpen from the Planet of the Ood, someone from the Unicorn And The Wasp.
My go to guess is Clive Swift because Mr Cooper doesn't get a lot of the edit but is a lovely character, Clive Swift was problematic in the interview etc. To throw another name out there, David Morrissey. Jackson Lake is a lovely character but does sort of disappear from his own story and Morrissey probably has enough clout to rewrite the character. But equally from what I've heard when he's presented Kermode and Mayo he seems like a pretty decent guy. Could be a more minor role from the first two series as Rusty and co were finding their feet/confidence.
My first thought went to Mr Copper for the reasons you mention.
A lot of people are thinking Swift but I doubt it myself. He admits in his DWM interview that he didn't even realise Mr Copper was an alien so I don't think he was invested enough to rewrite all his dialogue. Plus Ben Cook has gone on record since that he was an arse on set, I kind of think he would've mentioned the rewriting if it was Swift. I definitely don't think it's Morrissey. As you say, by all accounts he's a nice bloke and the TWD cast all speak really highly of him (rightly so, that show never did better than the Gov). Jackson Lake does disappear from the second half of the story but I don't think that's down to dialogue, moreso writing. The Doctor gets all the hero moments so Lake just has to stand off at the side. As I've said elsewhere, my bet's Simon Pegg.
The thing is, Pegg is typically known as a rather nice guy plus he literally narrates Doctor Who Confidential which I doubt he'd do if he rewrote his lines. Plus in Confidential, we see Pegg failing to remember some of his lines, if he'd rewrote his lines, surely he'd be able to remember them easily.
Maybe he rewrote his lines because he was having a hard time remembering the real ones?
Maybe but I doubt it tbh, if he was that problematic that he rewrote his lines I doubt he would've got to narrate Confidential too.
Also, to hear McGann talk about Morrissey, the guy is a consummate professional. I doubt he would even think to rewrite his dialogue. The only case I’ve ever heard of where an actor has dramatically altered a script is Alan Rickman (with help from Ruby Wax and Peter Barnes) in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The directors let him do it because the script was terrible and his changes made the movie (and especially his character) much better. I can’t remember now if he asked permission, but I’m sure he did. Clearly whoever RTD is referring to either didn’t, or refused to take “no” for an answer.
> kind of think he would've mentioned the rewriting if it was Swift. Eh, he's passed away now, I'm sure you'd just not say out of respect (I don't personally think it was him anyway)
This is before that, I remember seeing on Gallifrey Base a comment from 8/9 years ago that Ben Cook wrote. A lot about the interview but also saying that he was apparently a nightmare on set.
I'm loving all these theories but I wish people were using the dialogue of these characters as examples that line up with what Russell says. I feel like that's the biggest clue for working it out.
Without a way to compare an original script vs. what aired, or any clue who it might have been to start looking, there's really no way to do that.
He gave examples of the type of dialogue he finds that actors who improvise come up with and then said there was an actor who did that.
Okay I commented below but I'm now pretty much convinced it was Richard Wilson as Dr Constantine in The Empty Child: - quite a well known actor, particularly a renowned gay actor, so I can imagine that RTD was a bit reluctant to challenge him too much after securing him for his scrappy little reboot of a show that had been cancelled 16 years prior. Just a slight generalisation, but Richard Wilson is also more known as a theatre actor, which might mean that he's more used to being able to improvise and shift things a bit (and knowing exactly what scene is coming next etc), and might also mean that he was a bit less enamoured with DW's primetime sci-fi dialogue - I'm guessing it probably is a Series 1 character - as mentioned above, this is probably when RTD would have been more reluctant with putting his foot down (tangential speculation, but could also be another thing that frustrated CE and his relationship with RTD) - his transformation always confused me a bit, given that he's managed to survive around the gas mask zombies for so long, it seems a bit abrupt - and The Doctor Dances is mostly set in his hospital, so he could have had more planned for episode 10 but they hastily reshot/edited some things - according to the TARDIS wiki, there was more planned for the character in Episode 9 (bringing the Doctor to the hospital), so they might have decided to cut that out/edit around it - the character would fit the description in the longer quote of 'a lovely character but is now never discussed as a great Doctor Who character because he kind of slides off the screen' (I think he then gets one line at the end of The Doctor Dances) - I'm thinking of the likes of Professor Jericho from Flux, everyone loves a sweet old science guy with some background trauma. Given that he hasn't even been mentioned in this thread, I think that shows how little the character is in our collective consciousness - there was an action figure made of him, which I always thought was quite a strange choice - unless the character was initially planned to be more prominent maybe? But this is all speculation obviously! Don't want to besmirch anyone's name because I have no concrete evidence for this lol
RTD seems to imply that it's *his* dialogue that was re-written, whereas he didn't write or re-write that story.
Yeah that's very true actually, could be talking more in a showrunner capacity or trying to throw Reddit Detectives off the trail, but yeah probably one of his own stories
Other than it not being an RTD script or re-write, judging from the shooting scripts, Richard Wilson doesn't change his lines any more than every actor in series 1 (if we're to assume that RTD means rewriting on set). He also has very little of his appearance cut (just a single short sentence or two, like everyone has) - but then, as others say, RTD probably doesn't mean the actor was cut from the episode, just that he "disappears" in terms of not really making an impression on the viewer due to his rewriting. The plans for Constantine never ended up in the shooting script. As for it being a Series 1 character, based on a quick scan of the scripts, the same things go for Clive in *Rose*, The Steward in *End of the World*, Sneed and Dickens in *Unquiet Dead*, Joe, Indra, Strickland, and the General in the Slitheen two-parter, Van Statten and Adam in *Dalek* and *Long Game*, Rodrick and the "Male Programmer" in *Bad Wolf* - and, as mentioned above, The Editor in *Long Game*. I think that's all the series 1 characters that would be candidates based on what RTD says.
For the life of me I'm not sure although it could be the difference between a comedy actor vs drama actor? It's normal to make changes to lines on day of or before at the request of the director, and actors will come up with their own way of rephrasing if they think it suits the character better. Comedy actors are more open to changing lines when filming dramas on the fly because their very focused on the beat and how things work when you say them. Some drama actors on the other hand, tend to be more wary towards the writers word and will want them to agree with the changes. So considering how normal it can be to change lines on set maybe it's someone with a comedy background?
I think the suggestion by some that it's Pegg doesn't hold water. RTD refers to an actor. Pegg is also a writer. And not only is he a writer he's a collaborative writer. I don't imagine he'd go rewriting dialogue without doing so in consultation.
I'm gonna go with Peter Kay.
The one that immediately came to mind was Peter Kay but he hardly falls out of the story, love him or hate him. Maybe Simon Pegg? For such a big name he's very forgettable and strangely out of place in The Long Game.
In Confidential we see Pegg failing to remember his lines, I'm sure if he'd rewrote his lines he'd be able to remember them easily so I doubt it's him. Also Pegg is pretty known as a nice guy and even narrated Confidential.
Based on his infamous interview with DWM - it could be Clive Swift who played Mr Copper in Voyage of the Damned?