Doctor Dwarf: Who’s Who?

The world’s longest running science-fiction series (if you ignore the sixteen years where only one actual episode was made) turns 61 today. Doctor Who is without doubt the second best British sci-fi show ever, and unsurprisingly there are multiple connections between it and Red Dwarf. In this article, we list the whopping fifty-five actors who have appeared in both shows, or in the case of Doctor Who, one of its official televised spin-offs. Not all of these people were credited on both shows, and some of them took some significant tracking down, but thanks to resources such as TARDIS Wiki, TOS’s Complete Guide, IMDb’s collaborations search, Movie Dude’s Pictorial Filmography and our very own Smega-Drive, we think we’ve caught them all.

We’re ignoring those who have only ever appeared in one or more of 1000+ audio plays produced by Big Finish, although a special shout-out has to go to Officer Rimmer‘s Captain Herring actor Stephen Critchlow, who appeared in 24 full length productions and almost all of their Subscriber Short Trips mini-episodes. But we start with the first guest actor ever to appear in Red Dwarf…

The third person seen on screen after Chris Barrie and Craig Charles was Robert Bathurst (b. 1957) as Todhunter. An actor of such prolificity that his filmography on Wikipedia is a whole separate page, it’s surprising that it was as recently as 2021 before he added Who to his CV, appearing as General Farquhar, the founder of UNIT, in Survivors of the Flux. Having set the organisation up and recruited Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, he was unfortunately assassinated by one of his key assistants, who turned out to be the big evil alien The Grand Serpent in deep cover.

Fellow The End cast member Mark Williams (b. 1959) appeared in three episodes of Red Dwarf as Petersen, before becoming far too successful to return in Series VIII. Nevertheless, he later portrayed another recurring character in Who, playing Brian Williams, the father of companion Rory (and therefore father-in-law to companion Amy) in the 2012 episodes Dinosaurs on a Spaceship and The Power of Three.

Of course, Johnny Barrs (1933-2018) needs no introduction to anyone with even the most rudimentary of Red Dwarf knowledge, but just in case you’re a complete thicko – he was an uncredited extra in both The End and Stasis Leak. His role in the former was of particular note – I think Joe knows what I’m talking about! And in our first example of someone whose Who appearance came before their Dwarf one, he had a full on credited speaking part in 1970’s The Mind of Evil as Fuller, a prison inmate who helped capture the Third Doctor and Jo Grant on behalf of The Master.

Technically the person with the most Dwarf appearances on our list, even though her name has never graced the credits that roll over the sound of her voice. Jenna Russell (b. 1967) is an Olivier-award winning star of stage and screen, employed in the late eighties by Howard Goodall to belt out lyrics about goldfish shoals, and later appearing in Doctor Who‘s 2005 two-part finale Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways as the Floor Manager of a Dalek-run version of The Weakest Link.

Moving on from The End, we find Stephen Meredith (dates unknown), an uncredited extra in Balance of Power. This could only have been in the disco flashback scene, although I couldn’t tell you for sure which of the assorted party-goers he is. He did however have a proper speaking role in 1983’s Doctor Who 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors, as the Gallifreyan Technician who unsuccessfully attempted to summon the Fourth Doctor and Romana to join the reunion.

Then we come to Noel Coleman (1919-2007), who despite what cast commentary originated folklore will tell you was still only in his sixties when he appeared as the Cat Priest in Waiting For God. That said, he did already look ancient by the time of his superb turn as General Smythe in 1969’s ten-part epic The War Games. Noted for featuring the first appearance of the Time Lords, and being both the Second Doctor’s final story and the last to be shot in black-and-white, Coleman’s character appears at first to be a British WWI officer, but turns out to be an alien War Lord taking part in a sinister simulation.

Ever the versatile comic actor, Lee Cornes‘s (b.1951) role on Doctor Who couldn’t have been much more different to the curmudgeonly Paranoia. He was The Trickster, a brightly coloured tribal jester, in 1982’s Kinda. He confounded Peter Davison’s Doctor with a combination of mime and acrobatics, which was reciprocated with a coin trick. He appeared in the last two parts of the story, although he never said a word, given that all the males of his species were mute. Therefore the planet Deva Loka never developed the podcast.

Already a veteran by the time he played Rimmer’s dad, John Abineri (1928-2000) was one of those actors who would frequently pop up in Classic Who, back in the days before home video and extensive repeats, when reusing guest actors was par for the course. He played four roles between 1968 and 1979, starting with Van Lutyens in Fury From The Deep, a gas rig engineer who falls victim to a parasitic seaweed. He then played major parts in two Jon Pertwee stories: General Carrington, head of the Space Security Service in The Ambassadors of Death (1970), and Captain Richard Railton, a Marine in Death to the Daleks (1974). Finally, he donned an extraordinary amount of green body paint as Ranquin, the leader of the squid-worshipping Swampies in The Power of Kroll.

On the other hand, Angela Bruce (b. 1951) only had one role in Doctor Who, but it was a significant one. A year after appearing as a female version of much-loved male character in Parallel Universe, she played Brigadier Winifred Bambera in Battlefield, the opening story of the final original season. She was only the second leader of UNIT we’d met, following the retirement of the great Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart. While she only made the one televised appearance, the character stuck around in expanded media following the show’s cancellation, in Virgin’s New and Missing Adventure novels, before Bruce reprised the role in audio form, appearing as a regular character in Big Finish’s UNIT spin-off.

Also in Parallel Universe, someone that appeared in one of Red Dwarf‘s most iconic scenes ever, but without getting their name in the credits. Jacqueline Boatswain (b. 1962) is one of the dancers in the Tongue Tied sequence, and she even gets a nice close-up at the start of the extended version seen in Smeg Outs and the Series 2 DVD, pictured above. She’s since gone on to be a very prolific actor, turning up in the Torchwood episode Reset as a scientist working for a pharmaceutical company illegally experimenting with alien biology.

Frances Barber (b. 1958) has a long history of villainous activity, from sucking out the Cat’s vanity in Polymorph, to being a transphobic twat on the internet. But in between these, she had a recurring role in the sixth revived series of Doctor Who (2011) as Madame Kovarian, otherwise known as “Eye Patch Lady”. She made fleeting, mysterious appearances throughout the first half of the run, before taking a starring role in the mid-series finale A Good Man Goes To War. Here it’s revealed that she’s in league with The Silence, and had kidnapped the Doctor’s pregnant companion Amy in order to brainwash the unborn child to eventually become the ultimate assassin, who turned out to be his wife River Song. Typical. She later reappeared in the actual series finale to put her plan into action, only for River to assassinate a robot duplicate of the Doctor instead. Like Angela Bruce, Barber went on to reprise the role for Big Finish, in Series 3 of The Diary of River Song.

Now we’re on to the good stuff. That drug-crazed Nazi transvestite you can see holding Lister is played by Robert Smythe (dates unknown), who was uncredited for his non-speaking part as Herman Goering in Meltdown. And Robert Smythe was no stranger to playing uncredited non-speaking parts in beloved British sci-fi series, racking up a whopping nine distinct appearances as a supporting artist in Doctor Who. For the record, these were: a guard in The Invasion of Time (1978); a different guard in Creature From The Pit (1979); a citizen in Full Circle (1980); a ceremony observer in Snakedance (1983); a police constable in Mawdryn Undead (1983); another citizen in Planet of Fire (1984); a gunrunner in The Caves of Androzani (1984); a Jocondan guard in The Twin Dilemma (1984); and finally, a plain old guard in Vengeance on Varos (1985).

Sticking with Meltdown, but moving on to someone who’s allowed to speak, Einstein was played by Martin Friend (1931-2024). You’d be forgiven for not recognising him from his starring role in the 1975 Doctor Who serial The Android Invasion, in which he was the main alien baddy, Chief Scientist Styggron of the Kraal. As part of a scheme to invade Earth, Styggron made a perfect duplicate of a picturesque English village, populated by life-like androids of its citizens, in order to provide a training scenario for the actual invasion. Not a million miles away from the Waxworld concept…

Now, I must confess that with this one, I’m not even 100% sure I’ve pictured the right person. Kevin O’Brien (dates unknown) is among the many actors to have an uncredited role in Meltdown, with TOS describing him as a “Hells Angel”. So I think that’s him there, second on the left – somebody that we only see for a few seconds, only ever from the back. Thankfully, his work as an extra in Doctor Who was much more prolific, appearing in either eleven or thirteen different stories in the eighties, depending on how you count 1986’s season-long story arc The Trial of a Time Lord. Those roles in full: a Pangol clone in The Leisure Hive (1980); a citizen (with fellow Meltdown-er Robert Smythe) in Full Circle (1981); cricketer in Black Orchid (1982); trooper in Earthshock (1982); photographer in Time-Flight (1982); guard in Arc of Infinity (1983); a Vanir in Terminus (1983); Ranulf’s knight in The King’s Demons (1983); crew member in Resurrection of the Daleks (1984); guard in Timelash (1985); resistance fighter in TToaTL: Mindwarp (1986); and finally a courtroom guard in two segments of The Trial of a Time Lord, Terror of the Vervoids The Ultimate Foe (1986). Phew.

Ah, now this is one I do know. Don Warrington (b. 1951) is a bona fide acting legend, and portrayed one of Red Dwarf‘s most memorable one-off characters as Commander Binks in Holoship. He had a similarly brief but iconic role in 2006’s Rise of the Cybermen, playing the President of Great Britain in the alternative universe known as Pete’s World, who becomes one of the first people to be de-le-ted by Doctor Who‘s second greatest monsters in the revived series. Prior to that, he also played the legendary Gallifreyan founding father Rassilon for Big Finish, appearing in six stories between 2002 and 2004.

Poor old Simon Day (b. 1967), he’s not even the most famous actor called Simon Day. A fellow crew member of the Enlightenment, he was Randy Navarro, aka Number Two. Twelve years later, he played a key role in only the second episode of the 2005 iteration of the show, as the big blue steward in The End of the World. He has the distinction of being the first character ever to be duped by the Doctor’s psychic paper. A further decade after that, Simon returned to Doctor Who as Rump, a wolf-like alien resident of the trap street in 2015’s Face The Raven. This time he was credited as Simon Paisley Day, presumably to disambiguate from the star of The Fast Show and Brian Pern.

The wonderfully named Trevor St. John Hacker (dates unknown) was uncredited in Red Dwarf, appearing briefly at the start of The Inquisitor as the replacement Thomas Allman. He was, however, fully credited in the 1980 Who story The Horns of Nimon, playing one of the titular horny beasts. The Nimon were a parasitic minotaur-like race who conquered worlds by draining energy directly from its inhabitants. Mr Hacker returned to the series four years later, playing a Dalek trooper in 1984’s Resurrection of the Daleks, this time uncredited.

Another prolific background artist is Michael Leader (1931-2016), who sadly never got a credit on either Dwarf or Who, despite his many appearances. He’s one of the hooded horde from Terrorform pictured above, but it’s hard to tell which one for obvious reasons. His four Doctor Who roles all came in the early 80s: a Pangol clone (alongside the aforementioned Kevin O’Brien) in The Leisure Hive (1980); a Terileptil in The Visitation (1982); a mutant in Mawdryn Undead (1983); and a soldier in The King’s Demons (1983).

Ah, now here we come to our first actor whose only Doctor Who credits are in the expanded universe. Anastasia Hille (b. 1965) was the new Kochanski briefly glimpsed within the game in Back To Reality (although, now I think about it, why would an NPC change so dramatically just because the game has new players?), and made her Whoniverse debut 24 years later in an episode of Class. Remember Class? It was rubbish. Nevertheless, Hille played Orla’ath in the episode Nightvisiting, the sister of Miss Quill, the undercover alien warrior posing as a school teacher. Although, it turned out that she was in fact just a branch of a sentient evil tree in disguise. Typical.

The legend that is Anita Dobson (b. 1949) – star of the most watched British scripted television moment of all time – had a very brief role in Red Dwarf, and was only approached to play Captain Tau in Psirens because Rob and Doug really wanted her husband, Brian May, to double for Lister’s hands in the same episode. It seems that her Doctor Who role is much more significant, even though it’s not 100% clear as to who she is at the time of writing. What we do know is she’s Mrs. Flood, companion Ruby Sunday’s mysterious neighbour, who first appeared in the 2023 Christmas special The Church on Ruby Road, before returning throughout the 2024 series in 73 Yards, The Legend of Ruby Sunday and Empire of Death. Given her penchant for breaking the fourth wall and soliloquising about stories, my current favourite theory is that she’s the Master of the Land of Fiction – check back here in a couple of years’ time to see how wrong I am.

A man with extremely impressive eyebrows even when they’re not doubled up with falsies, Denis Lill (b. 1942) was of course both the Simulant Captain and Brother Death in Gunmen of the Apocalypse. He also had two major roles in Doctor Who, albeit a little more spaced out. Firstly, he was in 1977’s Image of the Fendahl as Dr. Fendelman, a genius scientist and businessman, who fans of nominative determinism will have been unsurprised to learn was unknowingly under the control of the eponymous villain. He found himself in a similar situation in 1984’s The Awakening, where he played Civil War re-enactor Sir George Hutchinson, whose mind ended up being taken over by a massive evil face in a wall.

Gunmen is a particularly busy episode for Dwarf/Who actors, and next on the list is Imogen Bain (1959-2014), known to us as barmaid Lola. While she never appeared in Doctor Who proper, she did star in an episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures, which is easily the show’s best spin-off. In the first story of the first series back in 2007, Revenge of the Slitheen, she played an estate agent called Janine, who was then killed and turned into a skin suit for rogue Raxacoricofallapatorian Florm Rox Fey Fenerill-Slam Slitheen. We’ll just call her Janine Slitheen for short.

Next up, Stephen Marcus (b. 1962), who played Bear Strangler McGee. His Who appearance also came in 2007, but this time in the main show, playing the Jailer at Bedlam in The Shakespeare Code. It’s a pretty minor role – he lets The Doctor, Martha and William Shakespeare in, offers to whip some of the inmates for their entertainment, then introduces them to Super Hans. Textbook.

Despite not technically having a speaking part, Dinny Powell (1932-2023) received a credit for his work in Red Dwarf, which is more than can be said for his multiple contributions to Doctor Who. The chicken-munching Brother Famine actor was a stunt man by trade, working on ten James Bond films among many others. For Who, he was a hired heavy in The Ambassadors of Death (1970); the notorious Auton policeman and Captain Yates’s stunt double in Terror of the Autons (1971); both an IMC guard and a primitive in Colony in Space (1971); a Peladonian guard in The Curse of Peladon (1972); and finally a Thal guard in Genesis of the Daleks (1975).

Time to round off our Gunmen of the Apocalypse section with someone who’s super easy to research. Everyone knows John Wilson (dates unknown), right? His role as a cowpoke was uncredited in Gunmen, but he had a full credited role in Doctor Who some nine years earlier. Unluckily for him, it was in 1984’s The Twin Dilemma, frequently cited as the Pete (Part Two) of Classic Who. He was a Jacondan guard who captured companion Peri and delivered her to his alien master, a big slug thingy. That’s him on the right in the Doctor Who pic. Given that his face isn’t visible, he has very few other credits, has one of the most common names imaginable, and is one of around thirty uncredited extras in Gunmen, whether he’s actually in the Red Dwarf picture is anyone’s guess.

One time DwarfCast guest Steven Wickham (dates unknown) is a fan favourite for both shows. He of course played Lister’s GELF bride in Emohawk, before returning nearly twenty years later to play the Chief BEGG in Entangled. With Who, his involvement in the television series itself is somewhat more limited, appearing in uncredited roles as a soldier in The Caves of Androzani and a Gastropod in the following serial The Twin Dilemma, both 1984. But as a long time fan of the show, his Who credentials were well and truly solidified by Big Finish, appearing in over 40 audio stories over the years. This includes several recurring roles, such as Bernice Summerfield’s AI assistant Joseph, and high-ranking Time Lord Valyes in the Gallifrey spin-off.

In possibly the most disproportionately sized role compared to subsequent fame levels of the actor in Red Dwarf history, Hugh Quarshie‘s (b. 1954) voice appeared as the Space Corps Enforcement Vehicle’s computer in Emohawk: Polymorph II. The fledgling young actor accidentally read all of his lines backwards, but this mistake was incorporated into the script. One stint in Holby City and a role in a Star Wars prequel later, he played Solomon, the leader of the Hooverville shanty town in the 2007 two-parter Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks.

Not to be confused with the keyboard playing physicist who has also appeared in Doctor Who, the renowned actor Brian Cox (b. 1946) played the King of Camelot in Stoke Me a Clipper. Having surprisingly dodged the classic era of Who, he eventually appeared as the Ood Elder in David Tennant’s (first) swansong The End of Time (2009-10), one of those characters who has a vision of the future but chooses only to give the Doctor cryptic clues about it rather than the full information he needs to save the day. He also played the show’s founding father Sydney Newman in the 50th anniversary docudrama An Adventure in Space and Time.

Another much-loved and distinguished television actor, one of the great Don Henderson‘s (1931-1997) final roles was as the Simulant in Beyond a Joke, a performance that shines through despite both the actor’s failing health and the audio effects that were added to disguise it. Ten years earlier, he was Gavrok, leader of the eponymous Bannermen in the penultimate story of Sylvester McCoy’s first season, Delta and the Bannermen. In both roles, he was a genocidal hunter who tortured his targets psychologically and physically, before coming to a sticky end himself as the heroes won the day. Plus, in Doctor Who, he got to kill Ken Dodd.

You may not realise it from his brief appearance as the doctor who examines Kryten in Back in the Red (Part Two), but Geoffrey Beevers (b. 1941) played one of the most iconic roles in all of Doctor Who. No, not UNIT soldier Private Johnson in 1970’s The Ambassadors of Death, his other role. Following the demise of his thirteenth and final incarnation (or the untimely death of actor Roger Delgado, IRL), the Doctor’s arch-nemesis the Master somehow clung on to life as his body decayed. This decomposing incarnation, affectionately referred to as the Crispy Master, was first played by Peter Pratt, but Beevers made it his own when he took on the role for 1980’s The Keeper of Traken, reintroducing the character who’d play a huge part in the series over the following decade. At the conclusion of the serial, the Master possesses the eponymous Keeper’s body, which meant that Beevers passed the baton on to Anthony Ainley, but he returned to the role decades later for Big Finish, playing various versions of the Master across dozens of stories.

Sticking with Back in the Red (Part Two), Jemma Churchill (b. 1960) played the imaginatively named First Woman Officer, the one who reprogrammes Kryten, with a somewhat evil glint in her eye as she does. The karmic punishment for this was delivered to her Doctor Who character, Jean in 2021’s Village of the Angels. Firstly, her foster child Peggy goes missing, then while she’s looking for her she gets sent back in time by a Weeping Angel. Arriving in 1901, she then gets set upon by another Weeping Angel, is turned to stone and dies in agony. Churchill also makes an appearance in Peter Davison’s semi-official 50th anniversary romp The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, as well as several Big Finish audios.

Sticking with Back in the Red (Part Two) and numbered women officers, the Second Woman Officer was played by Sue Kelvin (dates unknown). She’s one of the many women who Rimmer coerces into sexual encounters, this one being particularly hilarious because she’s a bit fat. This characteristic was also key to her Doctor Who role as Suzette Chambers, friend of Sylvia Noble and customer of Adipose Industries, in 2008 series opener Partners in Crime. We see her enjoying a lovely night out when suddenly all her body fat is converted into tiny alien creatures. Luckily the Doctor reverses the process just in time, and she survives.

Sticking with Back In The Red, although this time it’s (Part Three), and nameless women who mainly exist as sexual objects for the main cast, Yasmin Bannerman (b. 1972) played the first Ground Controller, ie the attractive one that the Cat woos with the inexorable Blue Midget dance. Six years later, she turned up in the second ever episode of New Who, The End of the World (2005), playing the hugely memorable character of Jabe, a tree person who befriends the Doctor and ultimately sacrifices her life so that he can save the day. She also has several roles in the expanded universe, such as police officer Kathy Swanson in the Torchwood episode They Keep Killing Suzie (2006), and Seventh Doctor companion Roz Forrester for Big Finish.

Currently starring in an advert for funeral care that makes it look like he’s actually died himself, Shend (b. 1957) is well-remembered for many hardman roles in 90s and 00s comedies, including of course Warden Knot in both Cassandra and Pete (Part One). He’s never been in Who proper, but he did have a prominent role in the same Torchwood episode that Yasmin Bannerman was in, They Keep Killing Suzie. Shend plays Max Tresilian, an associate of the deceased team member Suzie Costello who was unknowingly brainwashed by her into becoming a Trojan horse. Having killed three people in order to get locked up in the Torchwood vault, he then recites some poetry which triggers a lockdown of the hub, trapping the team inside so that the dead Suzie can be resurrected. Every time he hears the word “Torchwood”, he reacts with a violent attack of fear and despair, making him the most relatable character in the entire series.

An incredibly difficult man to research, Dana Michie (d. 2012) is thankfully the last person on this list whose contributions to both shows went uncredited. He was an unnamed Canary in Cassandra, whereas around a quarter of a century earlier he was an unnamed prisoner in 1973’s Frontier in Space. Totally typecast.

And now we reach the last person on this list who was uncredited in Red Dwarf, but at least they have a really distinctive name to make them easy to research. Mark Jones (1939-2010) was a Canary in Pete (Part One). Sigh. There are only a handful of scenes containing Canaries in that episode, and none of them look old enough to be pushing 60 at the time of recording, so I’m going to say that’s his arm just on the right of frame there. His Doctor Who role was much more substantial though, playing Arnold Keeler in the 1976 season finale The Seeds of Doom. Keeler was a botanist employed by the villainous Harrison Chase, who stole an alien plant alongside Boycie from Only Fools and Horses. Whilst examining the specimen, he became infected and started turning into a plant himself, specifically a giant Krynoid.

If that Before They Were Famous show was still a thing, then Holly Earl‘s (b. 1992) appearance in Red Dwarf would be a prime candidate. She was just six years old when she played the Young Kochanski in Pete (Part One), and unable to correctly pronounce the word “Vimto”. She continues to be a very active actor as an adult, and was in her late teens when she appeared in Doctor Who‘s 2011 Christmas special The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe as the eponymous widow’s eldest daughter Lily Arwell. She went on to reprise this role for Big Finish, with the adult Lily serving as an elderly Winston Churchill’s nurse. Of course.

Rounding off 20th Century Dwarf with someone who guested in its very last episode. David Verrey (dates unknown) played the excellently named Big Meat in Only The Good…, and like Imogen Bain his chunkier qualities were also at the forefront of his Who role, in the 2005 two-parter Aliens of London / World War Three. He was Joseph Green, a backbench MP who temporarily became Acting Prime Minister due to a series of unfeasible events during a UFO crisis. It turns out that Green had been killed and turned into a skin suit for a Slitheen some time earlier, and had manipulated events in order to gain power. He was killed when the Doctor blew up Downing Street with a big missile.

Into the Dave era, a time when Red Dwarf and Doctor Who are in production at the same time, thus providing ample opportunities for jobbing British actors to ply their trade in both of this country’s leading sci-fi institutions. The first such figure is Mr. Cholmondley-Warner himself Jon Glover (b. 1952), who played the complex character of “Man” in Back To Earth (Part Two). While he hasn’t been in Doctor Who proper, his Whoniverse contributions are numerous. In 2010, he voiced characters in two Sarah Jane Adventures stories, playing a Shansheeth in Death of the Doctor and a pair of robots in The Empty Planet. Additionally, he lent his vocal cords to the 1985 Radio 4 serial Slipback, and multiple Big Finish adventures.

Lucy Newman-Williams‘s (b. 1976) role in these two shows have both involved being television presenters of some kind. She was All-Droid Jayne in Trojan, demonstrating the Stirmaster, as well as being one of the voices on the end of the phone when Lister is trying to order one. Whereas in Who, she was a newsreader in 2015’s The Magician’s Apprentice, announcing to the world that all the aeroplanes had stopped in mid-air.

While it was common for people to play different characters in different serials in the classic era, it’s much more rare in modern times. Mark Dexter (b. 1973) is one of the few actors (other than those who specialise in creatures and prosthetics) to have managed it, with appearances sandwiching his memorable turn as Howard Rimmer in Trojan. He appeared in River Song’s debut story, Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead in 2008, playing “Dad”, a simulated father figure in a virtual landscape, charged with looking after CAL, a little girl who’d been turned into a computer or something. His second role was as a real historical figure, the mathematician, inventor and computing pioneer Charles Babbage, in 2020’s Spyfall, where he crosses paths with the Doctor in her pursuit of the latest incarnation of the Master.

Everyone’s favourite Series X guest actor, Kerry Shale (b. 1952) played the Medi-Bot and Denti-Bot in Fathers & Suns, along with the absolutely fine and completely inoffensive character of Taiwan Tony. Based on this, you may have expected him to have been in the 1977 Doctor Who classic The Talons of Weng-Chiang, but instead he turned up in 2011’s Day of the Moon as Dr Renfrew, the director of an orphanage who was unknowingly being controlled by The Silence. The orphanage itself had long been closed down, but Renfrew stayed on to take care of its one remaining resident, a little girl who grew up to become River Song.

One of several Dave-era guests whose entire contribution to Red Dwarf played out on a diegetic screen, Emma Campbell-Jones (dates unknown) was the woman in the black-and-white film the crew briefly watch in Entangled. She’s had two roles in Who, the first being Dr Kent in The Wedding of River Song (2011), a scientist monitoring time anomalies in an alternate timeline. The second has become rather more significant over time. She played Cass in the 2013 webisode The Night of the Doctor, which unexpectedly brought back Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor in a prequel to the forthcoming 50th anniversary special The Day of the Doctor. A decade later, Big Finish decided to do some classic Big Finishing, and brought the character back as a full-blown companion of the Eighth Doctor, with Campbell-Jones reprising the role, starting with the 2023 audio anthology appropriately titled Cass.

In a unique case of the eras crossing over in this direction, Gary Cady (b. 1959) is the only guest star of the Dave era of Red Dwarf whose sole contribution to Doctor Who was in its classic era. Long before his memorable turn as Dominator Zlurth in The Beginning, a very young man with the same distinctive Kevin Keegan style chin played Luke Ward in 1985’s The Mark of the Rani. An assistant of train nerd George Stephenson, Luke was hypnotised by the Master and made to lure companion Peri into a minefield. Unfortunately for him, Luke stepped on a mine himself instead, and was transformed into a sentient tree. Typical.

For a man that has been in literally every television programme ever made, Kevin Eldon (b. 1959) left it relatively late in the lifespans (to date) of Britain’s top two sci-fi series before making his mark. He didn’t get round to Red Dwarf until the Series XI opener Twentica, and he waited until 2018’s It Takes You Away before bothering with mainline Doctor Who. Here he played Ribbons, a mysterious alien trader who dwelled in an anti-zone between universes, who is eventually killed and eaten by moths. However, this was not Eldon’s first contribution to the wider Whoniverse. In 2001, deep into the dark of the Wilderness Years, BBCi (as the online output of the broadcaster was then known) produced Death Comes To Time, a lengthy and extremely dull animated adventure, designed to bring the series to a close by killing off the Doctor permanently. Eldon played new companion Antimony, an android who had been adopted by the Doctor as a son, and didn’t know that he was an android. But he didn’t even last til the end of his debut story, being shot to death by John Sessions.

Prior to her great guest turn as the cheating harlot Professor Barker in Samsara, Maggie Service (dates unknown) had a very minor role in Peter Capaldi’s debut story Deep Breath in 2014. She was Elsie, one of the people who witnessed a great big dinosaur thrashing around in the River Thames in the late Victorian era, alongside her husband Alf who insisted it was all a fake, part of a government conspiracy of some kind. Blink and you’ll miss her.

The man behind the creepiest character in Red Dwarf history – Give & Take‘s Asclepius – is Jami Reid-Quarrell (b. 1978), who cornered the market for extremely creepy villains for a brief period in the mid-2010s. He appeared as three different characters in 2015’s Series 9 of Doctor Who alone, starting with Colony Sarff in the opening two-parter The Magician’s Apprentice / The Witch’s Familiar. As his title suggests, Davros’s assistant Sarff was actually a group of snakes, able to co-ordinate and contort into a vaguely humanoid form. Then he portrayed the Doctor’s ultimate nightmare in the seminal Heaven Sent, where he was Time Lord fairy tale monster The Veil, before becoming a Cloister Wraith – an apparition of a dead Time Lord – in the finale, Hell Bent. Oddly, he’s yet to appear in Who again after this huge purple patch, but did put in a turn as a robot Ofsted inspector in the spin-off Class the following year.

The man who gives arguably the best guest performance of the Dave era as Butler in Krysis, Dominic Coleman (b. 1970) has a scandalously minor role in the Whoniverse. He plays a generic policeman in the Torchwood Series 2 episode Sleeper (2008), attending the scene of an attempted burglary turned suspected murder. He lets the Torchwood team in and is promptly shut out by Captain Jack, never to be seen again. Damn you, Barrowman.

Sticking with Krysis, Butler’s old mate Equahecta was played by Robert Nairne (b. 1989), who went on to become the only Red Dwarf guest star to appear in the Fourteenth Doctor’s extremely brief era. He was one of the Wrarth Warriors in the comic adaptation The Star Beast (2023), before swiftly returning for the 2024 series opener Space Babies as the Bogeyman, a man literally made of bogeys. Curiously, his name changed in the seven years between his Dwarf and Who appearances, and he now goes by Robert Strange. How nairne.

Here we have a curious case where it’s not just the actor who’s appeared in both shows. The Mercenoid in Can of Worms was played by Bentley Kalu (b. 1972), who had previously been in the Ponds’ 2012 swansong The Angels Take Manhattan. Here he played Hood, henchman of crime boss Julius Grayle, who locked Rory in a basement with a load of baby Weeping Angels. Even more interestingly, the costume he wore in Dwarf came from Doctor Who itself, having originally been that of the Ultramancer in 2013’s godawful The Rings of Akhaten. It was subsequently used in a space-themed sketch on the short-lived Walliams and Friend, so it’s still awaiting the opportunity to appear in something half decent.

In The One Where Everyone’s Kryten, one of the ones who was a Kryten was actually one of The Inbetweeners, James Buckley (b. 1987). Keen to avoid Red Dwarf‘s folly of making one of its most famous and contemporary guest stars almost entirely unrecognisable, when he appeared in the 2020 Doctor Who episode Orphan 55, they put him in a wig that was identical to his usual hair aside from it being green. He played Nevi, a mechanic who lived and worked with his son at a spa resort on unknown planet that had been devastated by pollution and war, which turned out to be Earth all along when the Doctor found the Statue of Liberty buried on a beach or something.

The poor sod who had to play the flute-playing Guru (aka Derek) in Timewave was Paul Leonard (dates unknown), who went on to appear in 2021’s The Halloween Apocalypse, the opening chapter of the lockdown-affected mini-series Flux. He played James Stonehouse, the real life figure who was a sceptical associate of Joseph Williamson, who built an elaborate system of tunnels underneath the city of Liverpool, which still exist to this day. The purpose of these tunnels is unknown; in the show, it was to provide refuge during a cataclysmic space-time disaster, but in real life it’s presumably to do with the acquisition of hubcaps.

Another actor with the misfortune to be cast in Timewave was Joe Sims (b. 1980), whose performance as Tutt Johnson is easily the best thing about the episode. Five years later, he turned up in the pre-titles sequence of 2022’s The Power of the Doctor, the BBC centenary special and Jodie Whittaker’s swansong. He played Arnhost, the Deputy Marshall of a space train that gets raided by Cybermasters (Cybermen/Time Lord hybrids), and is injured before being rescued by The Doctor, Yaz and Evil John Bishop. Like many others, Sims also has a notable role in the Big Finish audios, as Mark Seven – an android originally conceived as part of a proposed Dalek spin-off series in the 1960s, now audio-only companion of the Tenth Doctor.

This guy surely wins the award for having changed the least between their appearances in these shows, despite them taking place a decade apart. Having served as the regular warm-up guy for almost every studio recording of the Dave era, Ian Boldsworth (b. 1973) finally followed in Tony Hawks’s footsteps by making an on-screen appearance as Steve in M-Corp. This came ten years after his role in the iconic Doctor Who episode Blink (2007), where he played Banto, owner of the video store where Sally Sparrow came to piece together the Doctor’s Easter Egg messages to her.

Aaaaaand finally, ensuring that at least one actor from every single Red Dwarf production block has been in Doctor Who, we have Mandeep Dhillon (b. 1990), Sister Luna in The Promised Land. Her Who role was as Shireen, a close friend of companion Bill Potts, in 2017’s Knock Knock. Shireen and Bill rented a house together as part of a larger group, only to discover that the landlord was intending to use them as food for a race of alien woodlice who were keeping his terminally ill mother alive by turning her into wood. Typical.

So there we have it – fifty-five actors who have appeared in both Red Dwarf and Doctor Who. But the connections don’t stop there. We could have included the various stunt performers who worked on both, such as Gareth Milne (stunt co-ordinator on various episodes of RD III-V; double for Peter Davison in two 1984 stories), Nick Hobbs (uncredited stuntman in Terrorform; multiple roles in Who including Aggedor in The Curse and The Monster of Peladon), or Tom Lucy (another uncredited Terrorform stunt performer; later stunt co-ordinator throughout Series 3 and 4 of New Who and the first three series of Torchwood).

Plus of course, there’s the crew behind the scenes. We estimate that at least 90 people have credits on both shows, many of whom in the field of special effects. Our beloved Peter Wragg worked on four Classic Who stories, as well including playing the Fendahleen in 1977’s Image of the Fendahl. Several members of the Model Unit were around in those days, and indeed for the new series too, such as Paul McGuinness, Nick Kool and Peter Tyler. This lot were of course responsible for the easter egg of the hidden TARDIS in Red Dwarf’s landing bay. Other visual effects artists to work on both shows include Jim Francis, Steve Howarth and of course Neill Gorton, who along with the rest of the Millennium FX team was responsible for the majority of prosthetic and make-up effects in Dwarf from Series XI onwards, and almost all of modern Who and its spin-offs.

Other notable figures include editors Graham Hutchings and Nick Ames, director of photography Ed Moore, graphic designer Matthew Clark, production designer Keith Dunne, technical manager Jeff Jeffrey and costume designer Howard Burden. He’s been with Red Dwarf ever since Series III, and was across Series 7 and 8 of modern Who, designing the iconic looks for three Doctors – Eighth, War and Twelfth. He even went as far as borrowing the badges from the uniforms in Trojan and using them in the Doctor Who episode Nightmare in Silver. As a side note, a bit of the Eleventh Doctor’s TARDIS console later ended up being part of the groinal exploder in Entangled.

Finally, a special mention has to go to Mike Tucker, a bona fide legend for both fandoms. He’s provided visual effects on Red Dwarf for Series 1-VII and XI-XII, but his contributions to the Whoniverse are almost incalculable. As well as his effects work on both eras of the show – and miscellaneous spin-offs such as 30th anniversary mini-episode Dimensions in Time, documentary 30 Years in the TARDIS, the reconstructed version of half-finished Tom Baker story Shada and various trailers for The Collection Bluray releases – he’s also a prolific writer. He’s written or co-written fifteen Doctor Who novels (including At Childhood’s End with Ace actress Sophie Aldred, and the recent The Evil of the Daleks novelisation with Jamie actor Frazer Hines), multiple short stories, comics, non-fiction books and half a dozen Big Finish audios.

Red Dwarf and Doctor Who really are two peas in a pod, and with at least one of these series still in active production with no signs of stopping, this list will no doubt expand in the years to come. Our fond hope is that one of the main cast members crosses over into the other show at some point, rather than just having many mutual guest stars. The closest we’ve come so far is that Hattie Hayridge was in four episodes of the Big Finish spin-off The Adventures of Bernice Summerfield, while the narrator of the 2020 documentary series Red Dwarf: The First Three Million Years was one David Tennant, who’s probably best known as the Caretaker in the 2003 web animation Scream of the Shalka. But perhaps Chris, Craig, Danny or Robert could be a new companion’s grandad, or maybe Sylvester McCoy would make a great rogue simulant. Or Norman Lovett might finally land the role of Davros. With all of time and space to play with, the possibilities are endless.