- published: 21 May 2014
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Sylvester McCoy (born Percy James Patrick Kent-Smith; 20 August 1943) is a Scottish actor. As a comic act and busker he appeared regularly on stage and on BBC Children's television in the 1970s and 80s, but is best known for playing the seventh incarnation of the Doctor in the long-running science fiction television series Doctor Who from 1987 to 1989 – the final Doctor of the original programme – and a brief return in a television film in 1996.
Born as Percy James Patrick Kent-Smith in Dunoon,Scotland on the Cowal peninsula, to an Irish mother and English father. His father had been killed in action in World War II a month before he was born.
He was raised primarily in Dublin. In his youth, he trained for the priesthood, but gave this up and spent time working in the insurance industry. He worked in The Roundhouse box office for a time, where he was discovered by Ken Campbell. He currently resides in London.
Paul McGann (born 14 November 1959) is an English actor who made his name on the BBC serial The Monocled Mutineer, in which he played the lead role. He is also known for his role in Withnail and I, and for portraying the Eighth Doctor in the 1996 Doctor Who television movie and subsequent tie-in media.
McGann was born in Kensington, Liverpool, England in 1959 into a Roman Catholic family[citation needed]. His mother, Claire, was a teacher, and his father was a metallurgist. His parents encouraged him and his siblings to develop their talents from an early age. McGann's talents were further developed when he attended Cardinal Allen Grammar school in West Derby, Liverpool. One of McGann's teachers advised him to enter the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and to pursue a career as an actor. Acting on his teacher's advice, McGann enrolled at the Royal Academy and went on to enjoy a successful acting career spanning over two decades.
McGann is the third of six children in the McGann family. His mother had twin boys, Joseph and John, who were born in 1958, but John died shortly after birth. McGann has three younger siblings: Mark (born in 1961), Stephen (born in 1963) and Clare McGann (born in 1965). All three of his brothers are also actors and the four of them starred together (as four brothers) in the 1995 television TV serial The Hanging Gale about the Irish Famine. The same year he played the role as Grigori Potemkin in TV film Catherine The Great, with Mark and Stephen too. These brothers also formed the pop quartet The McGanns, releasing the single "Shame About the Boy". McGann's sister, Clare, is a programme finance manager for Five.
The Sixth Doctor is the sixth incarnation of the protagonist of the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who. He was portrayed by Colin Baker. Although his televisual time on the series was comparatively brief and turbulent, Baker has continued as the Sixth Doctor in Big Finish's range of original Doctor Who audio adventures.
Within the series' narrative, the Doctor is a centuries-old Time Lord alien from the planet Gallifrey who travels in time and space in his TARDIS, frequently with companions. When the Doctor is critically injured, he can regenerate his body; in doing so, his physical appearance and personality change.
The Sixth Doctor's brightly coloured, mismatched clothes and brash, overbearing personality set him apart from all his previous incarnations, in some ways hearkening back to the early irascibility and initial undertones of untrustworthiness of the First Doctor.
The Sixth Doctor appeared in three seasons. His appearance in the first of these was at the end of the final episode of The Caves of Androzani which featured the regeneration from the Fifth Doctor and thereafter in the following serial The Twin Dilemma, the end of that season. The Sixth Doctor's era was marked by the decision of the BBC controller Michael Grade to put the series on an 18-month "hiatus" between seasons 22 and 23, with only one new Doctor Who story, Slipback, made on radio during the hiatus, broadcast as 6 parts (at 10 minutes each) on BBC Radio 4 from 25 July to 8 August 1985, as part of a children's magazine show called Pirate Radio Four. Colin Baker had been signed up for four years, as the previous actor Peter Davison had left after only three years.
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