< Large Ham

Large Ham/Doctor Who

Doctor Who, in all its myriad incarnations, is a bountiful supply of ham. It's one of the things that makes the series so fun.

  • Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor:
    • The Mark of the Rani is one big three-way Ham-fest between Baker ("DON'T MOVE, PERI! THE TREE WON'T HURT YOU!"), Anthony Ainley as the Master ("SHE'LL HAVE A SEIZURE!"), and Kate O'Mara as the Rani ("AND SO WILL ANYONE ELSE WHO INTERFERES!").
      • Good rule of thumb: the more Time Lords in a story, the bigger your serving of ham.
      • Speaking of The Master, Peri parodies this trope with him

The Master: I am the Master!
Peri: So what? I'm Perpugilliam Brown, and I can shout just as loud as you!

  • This especially fits Tom Baker, who hams it up to almost Brian Blessed levels both in the show and off it. Apparently there's a gene in any person with the surname Baker that transforms them into concentrated ham when in the presence of a TARDIS.
  • Sylvester McCoy surely deserves a mention here, he of the rrrrolling rrrr's. He really goes to town in the Big Finish audio "Unregenerate!" until he gets his sanity back...

"HOME IS WHEREVER YOU LAY YOUR HAT! THIS IS MY HAT! THERE! I'VE LAID IT!"

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  • Paul McGann, while fairly subdued as Doctors go, has his moments...
    • In the single movie he played as the Doctor, he sliced enough Ham to cover the much longer tenures other Doctors had.

"WHOOOOO AAAAM IIIII?!?!?!"
"The Master wants to take all my remaining lives! SO THAT HE WILL LIVE AND I WILL DIE!"

"I... am become... ZAGREUS!!!"

    • Though his non-hammy evil turn in The Natural History of Fear is such concentrated Nightmare Fuel that ham is almost preferable. Hammy evil!Eight is entertaining as hell, but his subdued evil manages to be utterly terrifying Fetish Fuel. Listening to him whisper while he's lobotomizing a woman who's awake, aware, and terrified...good grief.

"You may think the worst thing I can do to you is hurt you..."

  • Though overall more subtle than Four, Six, and Ten, Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor made ham sandwiches in some episodes.
    • There was his scene alone with the Dalek in "Dalek", in which Eccleston was literally foaming at the mouth by the end of his scary, awesome speech:

"Why don't you finish the job, and make the Daleks extinct? Rid the universe of your filth! Why don't you just DIE?!"

    • And a certain moment from "The Doctor Dances":

"EVERYBODY LIVES, ROSE!!! JUST THIS ONCE, Everybody Lives!!"

    • In the Previous episode "The Empty Child":

"GO TO YOUR ROOM!" Then remarks about how bad those Last Words would have been.

  • David Tennant has blood made of espresso.
    • Pretty much any line from the episode "The Christmas Invasion".

"This hand? It's a fightin' hand!"

    • And in The Doctor's Daughter, what could be the hammiest proclamation of pacifism, ever:

"WHEN YOU START THIS NEW WORLD! THIS WORLD OF HUMAN AND HATH! REMEMBER THAT! MAKE THE FOUNDATION OF THIS SOCIETY A MAN WHO NEVER WOULD!"

    • Since "The Waters of Mars" was one of his last performances as the Doctor, Tennant apparently decided to go out with a bang. The scenery-chewing when he decides to actually take action is so completely over the top it threatens to implode in a singularity of ham.

The Doctor: "The Laws of Time are MINE! And THEY WILL OBEY ME!"

    • Tennant manages to compress a metric ton of Ham into one word in The End of Time: SHIIIIMMER!

The Doctor: "There's an old Earth saying, Captain. A phrase of great power and wisdom, and consolation to the soul in times of need."
Vinvocci: "And what's that then?"
The Doctor: "ALLONNNNS-Y!!" *slams the throttle forward full-blast*

    • Tennant's most hammy habit was adding explosive "-a!" sounds to the end of words as he got excited and started-a to over-enunciate-a. See "AND I'M NOT LISTENING-A!" from series two's "The Idiot's Lantern" and "BAREFOOT ON THE MOON-A!" from series three's "Smith and Jones" for particularly jarring examples.
  • Matt Smith is sounding like a very promising ham so far.
    • He's quite a ham just after his regeneration:

"Legs! I've still got legs. Good. Arms! Hands! Oooh fingers, lots of fingers! ...Hair? I'm a GIRL?!?"

    • In the first Dalek centered episode of his reign:

"I! Am! the Doctor! and YOU are the DAAAAAAAAHHHHHH-LEKS!!"

    • From 'The Beast Below':

"NO ONE HUMAN HAS ANYTHING TO SAY TO ME TODAY!"

    • GERONIMO!
    • He does a hell of a lot of shouting in "Flesh and Stone":

River: It's never going to work.
The Doctor: WHAT ELSE HAVE YOU GOT?! River, TELL ME!
River: "Like what, for instance?"
The Doctor: "LIKE! ME! FOR! INSTANCE!!!!!!!!!!"

      • Then there was "I WAS NOT EXPECTING THIS!"
      • And of course "I! Am! TAAAAAAAALKING!"
      • One of Matt Smith's great moments: "TARDIS bang bang, Daleks BOOM!"
      • In "Day of the Moon", Matt declares, "ONE BIG KICK UP THE BACKSIDE FOR THE SILENCE!!!" IT. IS. AWESOME!
  • Not to be outdone by his arch-nemesis, The Master is always a prime source of Ham.

"Naturally, Doctor, I wanted you to know.... that your certain death is now.... CERTAIN!"

    • Really, any incarnation of the Master who doesn't rattle the heavens and leave tooth marks on the scenery through the sheer force of his acting is just flat-out doing it wrong.

The Master: "Finito TARDIS! How's that for style?"
"DINNERTIIIIIIIIIIIIME!!!!!"

    • Derek Jacobi during the last ten minutes of his performance in the Doctor Who New Series episode "Utopia". Having given a subtle, moving performance as the kindly Professor Yana for most of the episode, he then is transformed into the Doctor's uber-evil arch-foe the Master... and at the same moment, into a really Large Ham. Consequently, John Simm is a very very Large Ham, albeit an evil one.
    • John Simm's Master may be the hammiest yet. Four words. "Here! Come! The Drums!"
  • cue 'Voodoo Child' by Rogue Traders*
      • Not to mention that the first minutes of Last of the Time Lords (the episode that follows that whole Here Come The Drums thing) is the Master singing 'I Can't Decide' by Scissor Sisters.
  • Davros fits this trope like a glove.

"This! Is my ultimate victory, Doctor: THE DESTRUCTION! OF REALITY!! ITSEEELLLF!!!"

Dalek (To the Cyber-leader): IT! IS! NOT! WAR! IT! IS! PEST-CONTROL!

"Ze Universe can VAIT! I AM A VOMAN!!!"

"REMOVE all the contents of his MIND? Why not? Muah-ha-ha! Muah-HA-HA! AH-HAH-HA-HA-HAAAA!"

Adric: "THAT'S NOT ENOUGH! I need you to LOVE me, Nyssa!"

  • The Empress of Racnoss, villain of the 2006 Christmas special The Runaway Bride, was an enormous piece of Spider-Ham. "KIIIIILL THIS LITTLE CHATTERING DOCTOR-MAN!"
  • To go a little more old school, Professor Zaroff in the Second Doctor story "The Underwater Menace" is a GLORIOUS bit of ham all the way through, his most magnificent bit of ham being the cliffhanger of part three: "NOSSING IN ZE VORLD CAN SHTOP ME NOW!"
  • Not to mention the antics of Graham Crowden as Soldeed in The Horns of Nimon, particularly his death scene, complete with manic cackling, staring eyes, "Lord Nimon? Lord Nimon? It is I, Soldeed!" and "You Fools! Fools!! You will die for your interference!!!"

"My dreeeams of CONQUEST!!!"

  • In The Daleks' Master Plan, Kevin Stoney is both nuanced and over-the-top at the same time, playing the traitorous "I, MAVIC Chen, GUARdian of the Solar System!"
  • The Captain of The Pirate Planet was the biggest ham imaginable (and clearly intentional, with Douglas Adams writing the script), often loudly exclaiming such things as "BY THE BURSTING SUNS OF BANTAR!" and "NO, BY THE WINGS OF THE SKY DEMON - I SAY NOOO!", but it turned out to be a case of Obfuscating Stupidity -- he was actually an engineering genius and trying to hide it.
    • And when he faces off against the Doctor... well. It's Tom Baker. Put your fingers in your ears.
  • The K-1 in "Robot" provides some nice moments of Robo-Ham: "AHHHHHH, I HAVE KILLED THE ONE WHO CREATED MEEEEEE!"
  • Of course, Captain Jack Harkness most certainly deserves a mention here.
  • "YOU...HAVE...GIVEN...THIS WOOOOORLD...TO...THE TRIIIIIIICKSTAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!"
  • Michael Jayston in his role as the Brickyard Valeyard also fits here wonderfully. He spits out lines like "You cannot speak as though reality is a one-dimensional concept." with such delight in his role. To top it off, his first appearance was 14 episodes long.
  • The Carrionites in "The Shakespeare Code". Around 1:19.
  • Brian Blessed as Yrcanos in Mindwarp.

"Today, prudence shall be our watchword. Tomorrow, I shall soak the land in blood!"

  • From The End of Time, Timothy Dalton's Rassilon delivers some spectacularly spittle-flecked lines.

"FOR GALLIFREY! FOR VICTORY! FOR THE END... OF TIME... ITSELF!!!"
"I. Will. NOT DIE!!! DO! YOU! HEAR! ME?!"

  • Jackson Lake was probably a lot more... florid than usual when he thought he was the Doctor. Those Cyberman infostamps must have come with some kind of Ham template.
  • The Talons of Weng-Chiang features Magnus Greel, an enormously hammy 51st-century time traveler kidnapping girls in Victorian London and draining their life-energy.

Magnus Greel: "Let the Talons of Weng-Chiang SHRED your FLEEEEEESSH! HAHAHAHAHAHA!"

  • Rosanna Calvieri of "The Vampires of Venice". Manages to alternate between hamminess and seriousness with ease.
  • Lady Cassandra. MOISTURIZE ME! (Keeps the Ham nice and juicy.) Also bleeds over into Billie Piper ("It's like a bouncy castle!!") and David Tennant ("a little bit fox-ay!") when the Doctor and Rose end up hosting Cassandra's personality.
  • Aris from Kinda, when he gets taken over by the Mara and is granted the gift of Ham speech.

Aris: I still control them! I am Aris! I. HAVE. VOICE!
Fifth Doctor: YES, SO I HEAR!

  • The final form of Eldrad, despite only being in one episode, easily produces enough ham to feed a family for months.

Eldrad: I CREATED THIS WOOOOOORRRRRRLLLLLLD!!!!!! IT IS MIIIINE!!! MINE BY RIIIGGGHHHT!!!

  • Also Omega, from The Three Doctors, with the help of some truly hammy scriptwriting.

I created this world through the power of my WILL. I created the organisms which BROUGHT you here. THIS! is the source of the light-stream you travelled along. AND I CREATED IT. I ALONE!!!!! OMEGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

Raggedy man, I remember you, and YOU ARE LATE FOR MY WEDDING!

  • Let's not forget River Song. While Alex Kingston tends to be a little more kosher than most Who actors, she appears to be having a little more fun with the character.

"It's like I told you on the dance floor...You might want to find something to hang onto."

    • "Let's Kill Hitler" features River at her hammiest, because Evil Is Hammy!
  • Donna Noble, fastest HAM in Chiswick.
    • Her time as the DoctorDonna transformed Donna into one of the best examples of a female Large Ham, resulting in a bit of Ham-to-Ham Combat between her and David Tennant and a truly amazing David Tennant impersonation. It would have been truly awesome if not for how it ended.
  • Son Of Mine, from "Human Nature" / "The Family of Blood". Considering his other modes of speaking are Creepy Monotone and Goddamn Unsettling Sing-Song, this is one of the few times where straight up hamming comes as a relief.
  • The Wire, from the New Series episode "The Idiot's Lantern", really rates a mention here.

"FEEEEEEEEED MEEEEEEEEEEE!!!"

  • Between his wardrobe, mannerisms and obsession with fine dining, one-off villain Shockeye from The Two Doctors is one of the hammiest characters ever to appear.

"YOU CANNOT ESCAPE SHOCKEYE O' THE QUANCING GRIG!"

  • In the 1980s, the Cyber Leader, despite being supposedly emotionless, delivers some of the hammiest lines in the history of the show.

"DESTROY THEM! DESTROY THEM AT ONCE!"
"Eeeexcellent!"
"MOOORE POWERR!"
"My army awaits, DOCTOR!"

  • Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars and the Faction Paradox audio series manages to be a Large Ham while speaking in barely more than a whisper. This was lampooned in the DVD extra "Oh Mummy!", in which Sutekh (still voiced by Gabriel Woolfe) attempts to find work after Pyramids of Mars, featuring a truly unforgettable gag in which Sutekh shows the "documentary" crew his cute little bunnyrabbit. "I call him Neil. Neil. NEIL BEFORE THE MIGHT OF SUTEKH!"
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