Large Ham / Doctor Who

Davros: The Daleks shall be lords of Time! We shall become all—
The Doctor: —Powerful! Crush the lesser races! Conquer the galaxy! Unimaginable power! UNLIMITED RICE PUDDING! ET CETERA! ET CETERA!

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.

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The Doctor

In general, the Doctors can ham it up to glorious extents. Of course, depending on the situation, this can either be good or bad for those who cross them.

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• It begins right with William Hartnell. His first encounter with the Daleks is particularly memorable. He was possibly one of the only people in history who could ham it up with only consonants.
  "MmmmmM"?
  • See also "The War Machines", where he steps forward and glares at the titular robot, daring it to come at him, every inch of his body giving off a magnificent sense of "Come at me if you dare." That's right — Hartnell could pull off the ham without saying a word.
    • He could pull off ham using only his eyes. One-time Hartnell companion actor Peter Purves said that Hartnell thought "TV was very small" – by which he meant that the small, low-resolution, black-and-white televisions of the 1960s just wouldn't pick up naturalistic gestures or subtle expressions, and so Hartnell tailored his acting style to match. He regularly keeps his hands high so they could be captured in the same close-up shots as his face – this is the origin of his trademark "lapel-grab" gesture – and he developed very mobile, very expressive eyes, so that viewers at home could see the Doctor's dynamic thoughts and feelings. You can see examples of this here and here. He could boggle like a Baker and had attack eyebrows 50 years before Capaldi was cast. The downside to a modern audience is that this looks very stylised and hammy, but fortunately it still suits the Doctor's larger-than-life character.
• Patrick Troughton could do tense, cold, and tender scenes with the best of them, but most of the time behaved like an animated character come to life.
  • Notably, "The Enemy of the World" starts off with the Doctor cavorting on the beach like a little kid on vacation.
  • Special credit must go to "The Invasion," where he runs away from the Cybermen dancing, jumping, waving his arms, and bellowing at the top of his lungs while making a variety of silly faces.
• Although Jon Pertwee generally delivered his lines with a reasonable level of restraint, his facial expressions◊ more than made up for it. His dramatic gurning has a well-deserved reputation.
• 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. Robert Holmes once theorised that Tom Baker's extreme hamminess was part of the reason his tenure was recognised as being a show high point in terms of writing — it forced the writers to create strongly defined, rounded and memorable supporting characters, because if they didn't, "Tom would dominate completely".
  • It's worth observing that, while the overall performance is extremely hammy, the character is shown to have an even hammier acting style. We see him begin to act a little Macbeth in "Revenge of the Cybermen", and it's pretty extreme. In "The Invasion of Time" he's forced to pretend to be insane as part of a plan, which he uses as an excuse to lay it on thick with the Evil Laugh and Suddenly Shouting.
  • And then there's the part where there's "only my will because I possess the Key to Time!"
  • A particular habit of Four's was to enter the room in a new and over-the-top way every time, particularly in "Horror of Fang Rock" where Tom Baker attempted to make up for the filming limitations of the lighthouse with sheer manic energy.
• Peter Davison's Doctor was mostly one of the more subdued, least hammy Doctors in all of Doctor Who, but at the end of the day, a Doctor is still a Doctor. Just take this gem from "Earthshock":
  "I want to announce my PRESENCE!!!"
• 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.
  • The exchanges between the Doctor and King Yrcanos (played by BRIAN BLESSED himself) in "Mindwarp" are great. It's like the Doctor can't decide whether to be annoyed at how loud and over the top Yrcanos is or about him being more over the top than the Doctor himself.
    King Yrcanos: I am Yrcanos and you are scum!
    Sixth Doctor: No, actually I'm known as the Doctor.
    • It helps that in the script, the Doctor was supposed to have had part of Yrcanos' personality unintentionally melded with his own just prior to their earlier encounters.
• Sylvester McCoy surely deserves a mention here, he of the Trrrilling Rrrs.
  • "Battlefield" has one of his most glorious moments of ham:
    Seventh Doctor: STOOOOOOOP! I COMMAND IT! THERE. WILL. BE. NO. BATTLE. HERE!!!
  • He really goes to town in the Big Finish audio "Unregenerate!" until he gets his sanity back...
    Seventh Doctor: HOME IS WHEREVER YOU LAY YOUR HAT! THIS IS MY HAT! THERE! I'VE LAID IT!
  • Here he is performing Eleven's speech to the assembled space ships from "The Pandorica Opens". It's a million times more hammy than Matt Smith's performance. Which says something, considering Smith is quite the ham himself.
  • And could anyone forget this extremely hammy line in "Remembrance of the Daleks", when the Doctor cuts Davros off, who has just started saying "We shall become all-"
    "Powerful! Crush the lesser races! Conquer the galaxy! UNIMAGINABLE POWER! UNLIMITED RICE PUDDING! ET CETERA! ET CETERA!"
  • Then, of course, there's this immortal line from "Survival:"
    "IF WE FIGHT LIKE ANIMALS, WE'LL DIIIIIIEE LIKE ANIMALS!"
    • And that was just what got in the finished episode. Sylvester was serving up even more ham in the outtakes...
    "NO, ACE! STAY STILL! WILL YA FUCKING STAY STILL?! YOU IDIOTS! I DON'T KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I'VE GOTTA TELL YOU NOT TO MOVE! YOU MOVED! YOU MOVED!!!"
  • He even managed to weaponize his ham to save a life on set. During the filming of one episode, he saw that the water tank that Sophie Aldred had been placed in was on the absolute brink of bursting, and realized that if it failed, she and all the water in the tank would spill onto the set floor, potentially killing her if the water hit exposed electric cables. He had to say something, but as the scene was the Doctor already pleading for Ace to be released, anything he said could be taken as an in-character ad-lib. So he yelled at the top of his lungs "Shit! Get her out of there!". The crew realized that there was no way he'd actually have the Doctor curse on camera and took it as a distress signal. They got Sophie out in the nick of time.
• 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!"
  • He gets very hammy at times in the Big Finish Doctor Who audio plays, especially when engaging in Ham-to-Ham Combat with his enemies, or when he's pretending to be eeeevil. The trope should be renamed Face Ham Turn in his honor.
  • His brief stint merged with Eldritch Abomination Zagreus was three full hours of ham:
    "I... am become... ZAGREUS!!!"
  • Though his non-hammy evil turn in "The Natural History of Fear" is such concentrated terror that ham would almost be preferable. Hammy evil Eight is entertaining as hell, but his subdued evil manages to be utterly terrifying. 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:
    Ninth Doctor: Why don't you finish the job, and make the Daleks extinct? Rid the universe of your filth! Why don't you just DIE?!
  • In "The Doctor Dances": "GO TO YOUR ROOM!". Then he remarks about how bad those Last Words would have been. From the same episode:
    Ninth Doctor: Screwdriver!
    • As well as:
      Ninth Doctor: GO! NOW! Don't drop the banana!
      Jack: Why not?!
      Ninth Doctor: Good source of potassium!
    • And:
      Ninth Doctor: EVERYBODY LIVES, ROSE!!! JUST THIS ONCE, EVERYBODY LIVES!!
• David Tennant has blood made of espresso.
  • Pretty much any line from 2005 Children in Need special. Later, his first full appearance continues the ham.
    Sycorax Leader: I DEMAND TO KNOW WHO YOU ARE!
    Tenth Doctor: [bellowing outrageously in imitation] IIIII DOOOON'T KNOOOOOW!!!!!!!!!
    [after regrowing the hand that was lopped off in the swordfight]
    Tenth Doctor: This hand? It's a fightin' hand!
  • And in "The Doctor's Daughter", what could be the most impassioned proclamation of pacifism ever:
    Tenth Doctor: 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 (point a gun at a living being)!
  • 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 the Doctor is finally driven over the edge by despair and anguish and utterly loses it is so completely over the top it threatens to implode in a singularity of ham. And it's terrifyingly riveting to behold.
    Tenth Doctor: The Laws of Time are MINE! And THEY WILL OBEY ME!!!
    Tenth Doctor: We're not just fighting the Flood! We're fighting time itself! AND I'M GONNA WIN!
  • Tennant manages to compress a metric ton of Ham into one word in "The End of Time": SHIIIIMMER!
    Tenth 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?
    Tenth Doctor: ALLONNNNS-Y!! [slams the throttle forward full-blast, while doing a Death Glare straight into the camera]
  • There's one last dramatic monologue from The Doctor before he lets himself get radiation poisoning to save Wilf:
    Look at you! Not remotely important! But ME? I COULD DO SO MUCH MORE! SO! MUCH! MORE! But this is what I get! ...My reward. AND IT'S NOT FAIR!!!!!!
  • Tennant's most hammy habit was adding explosive "-ah!" sounds to the end of words as he got excited and started-a to over-enunciate-a. See "AND I'M NOT LISTENING-AH!" from series two's "The Idiot's Lantern" and "BAREFOOT ON THE MOON-AH!" from series three's "Smith and Jones" for particularly jarring examples.
• Matt Smith is a very talented ham. In keeping with his incarnation's rather self-aware nature, a lot of his hammy moments are also intentional ploys to psych up himself, psych out his enemies, encourage his companions, or all three. In fact, one could say that he takes it up to eleven.
  • He's quite a ham just after his regeneration:
    Eleventh Doctor: Legs! I've still got legs. Good. Arms! Hands! Oooh fingers, lots of fingers! ... Hair? I'm a GIRL?!? No, no I'm not a girl. And I'm still not ginger! Something else, something important. I'm-I'm-I'm...[TARDIS lurches] CRASHING! HA-HA! GERONIMOOOOOO!
  • From "The Beast Below":
    Eleventh Doctor: NO ONE HUMAN HAS ANYTHING TO SAY TO ME TODAY!
  • In the first Dalek-centered episode of his tenure, "Victory of the Daleks" (please note that the first part of the speech takes place while pounding on a Dalek with a wrench):
    Eleventh Doctor: YOU! ARE! MY! ENEMY! AND I AM YOOOOURRRRS!! (...) I am The Doctor, and YOU are the DAAAAAAAAHHHHHH-LEKS!!!
    • Not long after that: "TARDIS bang-bang, Daleks BOOM!" and, "It's a Jammy Dodger, but I was promised TEA!"
  • "GERONIMO!"
  • He does a hell of a lot of shouting in "Flesh and Stone":
    River Song: It's never going to work.
    Eleventh Doctor: WHAT ELSE HAVE YOU GOT?! River, TELL ME!
    River Song: Like what, for instance?
    Eleventh Doctor: LIKE! ME! FOR! INSTANCE!!!!!!!!!!
  • Then there was "I WAS NOT EXPECTING THIS!" And of course, the classic - "I! Am! TAAAAAAAALKING!" In fact, that whole speech is one of the hammiest of his entire era (which is saying something), given the fact that it involves arm-waving, boasting, and the Doctor literally shouting at the heavens, daring the assembled alien forces to come have a go at him.
  • In "Day of the Moon", the Eleventh Doctor declares, "AND ONE WHACKING BIG KICK UP THE BACKSIDE FOR THE SILENCE!!!"
  • In "The Power of Three":
    Eleventh Doctor: WELCOME BACK, LEFTY!!!
  • "The Rings of Akhaten" has the hammiest Eleven speech yet, complete with Manly Tears, Jon Pertwee-level gurning, dramatic gesturing, and aggressive fixing of his bow tie:
    Eleventh Doctor: I walked away from the Last Great Time War. I marked the passing of the Time Lords. I saw the birth of the universe and I watched as time ran out, moment by moment, until nothing remained. No time. No space. Just me! I've walked in universes where the laws of physics were devised by the mind of a MAD... MAN. I've watched universes freeze and creations burn. I have seen things you wouldn’t believe. I have lost things you'll never understand! And I know things. Secrets that must never be told. Knowledge that must never be spoken. Knowledge that will make parasite gods BLAZE! SO COME OOOOON THEN! TAKE IT! TAKE IT ALL, BABY! HAVE IT! YOU HAVE IT ALL!
  • "Nightmare in Silver" has him at about thrice the usual ham level when he's possessed by the Cyber-Planner and becomes "Mr. Clever". He isn't just Chewing the Scenery, he's eating it in great massive gulps.
  • Suffice it to say the Eleventh Doctor goes out at his absolute hammiest in his last episode, "The Time of the Doctor". Upon receiving his new regeneration cycle from the Time Lords, he delivers quite possibly his single most spectacular speech in his entire three-year run, complete with shamelessly theatrical cane-waving:
    Eleventh Doctor: Sorry, what did you say? Did you mention the rules? Now, listen, bit of advice: tell me the truth, if you think you know it — lay down the law if you're feeling brave! But, Daleks, never, ever TELL ME THE RULES!
    Dalek Commander: Emergency. Emergency! The Doctor is regenerating! The Doctor is regenerating!
    Eleventh Doctor: Oh, look at this! Regeneration number thirteen! We're breaking some serious science here, boys! I tell you what — it's gonna be a WHOPPER!
    Dalek Commander: Exterminate! Exterminate the Doctor!
    Eleventh Doctor: HA! You think you can stop me now, Daleks!? IF YOU WANT MY LIFE, COME... AND... GET IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTT!!!
    • And then he immediately proceeds to regenerate in by far the hammiest such scene in the entire series. Basically, the Daleks are haminated!
• Between bellowing about "attack eyebrows" and flirting with a Tyrannosaur in "Deep Breath" while in the throes of post-regeneration delirium, Peter Capaldi made his debut in suitably hammy fashion. Given just who Capaldi is, this is not a surprise in the slightest.
  Twelfth Doctor: [to dinosaur] HEYYY! BIG SEXY WOMAN!!!
  • "Into the Dalek" has him impersonate the titular creature at one point. Naturally he's as hammy as the Daleks.
  • In "Time Heist", the Twelfth Doctor's "Eureka!" Moment is so hammy that he bangs a gong to accentuate it!
  • He continues a long chain of hammy dramatic entrances in "The Magician's Apprentice" by playing the Doctor Who theme on an electric guitar, while riding a tank into a medieval arena, surrounded by cheering fans. Then there's this hammy boast:
  "Yes, and a daffodil is not a broadsword...BUT I STILL WON THE LAST ROUND!"
  • And then there's his Bigger on the Inside rant from "The Husbands of River Song"! River doesn't recognize this Doctor as her sweetie, so he decides to have a little fun when she steals his TARDIS and delivers a truly incredibly over-the-top tirade regarding the TARDIS's interior and exterior not quite matching up. If you look carefully, you can see teeth marks during that scene, but as he says afterward: "Sorry. I've always wanted to see that done properly."
  • I LOVE BUTTONS AND SWITCHES!!
  • And when he goes out, he does so... in style. "Never be cruel. Never be cowardly. And never ever eat pears!"
• While Jodie Whittaker doesn't have many hammy speeches as the Thirteenth Doctor, her face can get very hammy. Her trademark face that Thirteen does when she's confused has been nicknamed "THE SCRONCH.◊"
• In sharp contrast to the exuberant Ten, Tennant delivers a noticeably more subdued performance as the Fourteenth Doctor. However, as seen when he dons a judge's wig and holds an impromptu trial for the Meep, he can easily bring the ham back when necessary.
• Ncuti Gatwa explodes onto the screen as the Fifteenth Doctor with an exuberance and a flirtation that hasn't been seen since Matt Smith's tenure! In his first full adventure, he busts some serious moves at a club, calls out Ruby for jumping onto a ladder in the sky in an equal parts hammy and sassy manner, and distracts the goblins by joining their Villain Song with an impromptu musical number.

The Master

Not to be outdone by his arch-nemesis, the Master is always a prime source of Ham. Really, any incarnation of the Master who doesn't rattle the heavens and leave teeth marks on the scenery through the sheer force of their acting is just flat-out doing it wrong.

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• While Roger Delgado was more of a Cold Ham than his successors, he certainly had his moments:
  "I am the Master, and you will obey me!"
  • "The Mind of Evil" has this Badass Boast:
    "You can't harm me. I'm stronger than you are. I brought you here. I gave you the minds you need to feed on! You are my servant! YOU'RE MY SERVANT!!"
  • He gets into some wonderful Ham-to-Ham Combat (yes, really) with Azal and Katy Manning in "The Dæmons", bellowing at the top of his lungs, waving his arms, and reciting nonsense poetry—er, dark magic Latin rituals—to summon the former.
  • At one point during "The Sea Devils", he breaks into a cartoonishly evil laugh, for no apparent reason whatsoever.
  • In "Frontier in Space", he tells an Ogron that a certain ship must be carrying the Doctor, because "no one else would be on a course for Earth at a time like this."
    Ogron: We are on a course for Earth.
    The Master: WELL, NATURALLY! BECAUSE WE'RE CHASING THEM!
• The Master of "The Deadly Assassin" is one of the hammiest characters in all of Doctor Who.
  The Master: Ya CRAVEN-'Earteeeed... SPINE-less... POLTROON!
• Anthony Ainley's Master:
  • On playing the Master: "I'm not a ham. You can cure a ham!"
  • Speaking of his incarnation of the Master, Peri parodies this trope with him in "Planet of Fire":
    The Master: I am the Master!
    Peri: So what? I'm Perpugilliam Brown, and I can shout just as loud as you!
  • In "The Mark of the Rani":
    The Master: Finito TARDIS! How's that for style?
• Jonathan Pryce's Master from parody special Doctor Who: The Curse of Fatal Death has to be seen to be believed, cape-swishing and all.
  The Master: Naturally, Doctor, I wanted you to know... that your certain death is now... CERTAIN!
• Derek Jacobi during the last ten minutes of his performance in "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-Enemy the Master... and at the same moment, into a really Large Ham.
  The Master: IIIIIII...am...The Maaaaah-staaaah...!
  • While dying:
  "The Master...REBORN!" (proceeds to regenerate while screaming for ten seconds solid).
• John Simm's Master is every bit as deliciously hammy as he is sinister.
  • 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 and dancing to "I Can't Decide" by the Scissor Sisters.
  • When he returns in "The End of Time", he chews both his food and the scenery with equal amounts of gusto.
    The Master: DINNERTIIIIIIIIIIIIME!!!!!
  • Of course, he makes a point of going out with just as much style as he came in.
    YOU DID THIS TO ME! ALL OF MY LIFE! YOU MADE ME! ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!
  • He returns in "World Enough and Time"/"The Doctor Falls". In the latter episode, while he, Missy, the Doctor and Bill are facing a Cyberman that's just come out of a lift, the others are silent and serious, but Saxon?
    "KILL IT! KILL IT! KILL IT!"
• Michelle Gomez's Missy is a delightful ham who comes with a side order of sassiness for good measure. Her lines in "Deep Breath" stand out, drawing out the word "Paradise" as "PARADIIIISSSSE", then subduing her performance to provide a sharp, unnervingly dark contrast as she says, "Welcome... to Heaven." Followed by a quick pivot back to ham with a guttural snarl and a click of the teeth, then a Mary Poppins-esque twirl around a stone garden fixture while swinging an umbrella around. By the time the show reaches "Death in Heaven", she actually reveals herself to have been holding back on the ham up until that point, and goes all out. Also:
  Missy: [very softly, sweetly and mechanically] My heart... is maintained... by the Doctor...
  Twelfth Doctor: Doctor who?
  Missy: [throws her head back] DOCTOR CHANG!
  • Missy is probably one of the few characters who can go both Large Ham and Deadpan Snarker at the same time! As demonstrated in "The Witch's Familiar":
    Supreme Dalek: You are an enemy of the Daleks!
    Missy: Yes, well, anyone who isn't a Dalek is an enemy of the Daleks, so that was an easy guess!
  • "The Doctor Falls" is a dual-Master story. Gomez and Simm deliver TWICE the ham! A special shout-out to the scene where they're waltzing together, cheerfully asking how the Doctor would like to be murdered!
• Throughout the first part of "Spyfall", O is a subdued fanboy of the Doctor. Then The Reveal happens and Sacha Dhawan UNLEASHES THE HAM! In the second part of the story, the Master hams up crashing an invention fair and murdering people with a Shrink Ray, headdesks onto his TARDIS console, and bursts into the climax furiously ranting about having had to take The Slow Path, without once toning things down. He's last seen in-person screaming the Doctor's name in a towering rage, just for the cherry on top.
  • He returns at the end of "Ascension of the Cybermen," pulling a Dynamic Entry seemingly just for the hell of it, and spends the rest of the next episode all but literally tap-dancing through Gallifrey.
  • When the Master talks to Ashad about his motivation for ascending the Cyber-race, he acts like a disappointed child. Cold Ham, but still a ham!
  • His hammiest moment so far in that incarnation comes from "The Power of the Doctor," where he decides to pretend to be Rasputin for seemingly no other reason than to pull off an incredibly hammy dance number to Boney M.'s "Rasputin," complete with backing vocal track, disco lights, and absolutely terrible dance moves.

Other Villains

• The Daleks are a grocer's worth of canned ham. The fact that they almost perpetually scream all their lines certainly helps.
  • The longer Nicholas Briggs plays the Daleks, the more they're becoming Daaaaaaaaaahhhhrrrr-leks. This is doubly true for every Big Finish episode he wrote himself. (Oh, and he hammily played the Doctor for four seasons in his Doctor Who Audio Visuals.) By the time of "Doomsday", they sound like this:
    Dalek Sec: [to the Cyber-leader] This is not war, this is PEST CONTROL!
  • The Daleks' penchant for yelling "What is happening!?" whenever unexpected things happen only adds to the ham levels.
• 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!"
• Professor Zaroff in the Second Doctor story "The Underwater Menace" is a GLORIOUS ham all the way through, his most magnificent bit of ham being the cliffhanger of part three:
  Professor Zaroff: NOSSING IN ZE VORLD CAN SHTOP ME NOW!
• Azal, the Last of His Kind Dæmon from "The Dæmons", continuously bellows every single word he speaks with a fierce, echoing voice. Sometimes, he even froths at the mouth. And when he goes up against Jon Pertwee, Katy Manning, and Roger Delgado, well...
• Omega, from "The Three Doctors", with the help of some truly hammy scriptwriting.
  • When he mentions "the task that lies before [the Doctors]":
    Omega: 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!!!!!!!
  • And another example:
    Third Doctor: All my life I've known of you and honoured you as our greatest hero!
    Omega: A HERO? I should have been a GOD!
• The Sontarans, being a race of Blood Knight Super-Soldier Potato Dwarf Clones who live for war, are not to be outdone in the Ham front. Especially Strax, a Sontaran nurse/butler who serves as The Comically Serious.
  "It is now time... for your mandatory medical examination!"
• Irongron in "The Time Warrior" (incidentally the serial in which the Sontarans debuted) is barely capable of getting through a sentence without both bellowing and erupting into guffaws of boisterous laughter. Combine that with Robert Holmes' Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness, a bit of Evil Is Hammy and some manly backslapping and the effects are almost Pythonesque.
• The K-1 robot in "Robot" provides some nice moments of Robo-Ham:
  K-1: AHHHHHH, I HAVE KILLED THE ONE WHO CREATED MEEEEEE!
• Omnicidal Maniac Davros fits this trope like a glove. He starts out quietly, speaking with precision as he lays out what is about to happen, but he can't contain himself forever and by the end he's shaking with passion and screaming at the top of his voice.
  That power would set me up above the gods! AND THROUGH THE DALEKS I SHALL HAVE THAT POWER!
  This! Is my ultimate victory, Doctor: THE DESTRUCTION! OF REALITY!! ITSEEELLLF!!!
• Sutekh in "Pyramids of Mars" 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 bunny rabbit.
  Sutekh: I call him Neil. Neil. NEIL BEFORE THE MIGHT OF SUTEKH!
• Morbius is extremely hammy for a Brain in a Jar.
  Morbius: Your puny mind is powerless against the might of Morbius!
• Count Frederico's final line in Episode 2 would be hammy enough as it is, but his accent turns it up to eleven:
  HIERRRRRRRONYYYMOUS! YOU TRRRRRRAITORRRRR!
• The final form of Eldrad in "The Hand of Fear", 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!!!
• "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" features Magnus Greel, an enormously hammy 51st-century time traveller kidnapping girls in Victorian London and draining their life-energy.
  Magnus Greel: Let the Talons of Weng-Chiang SHRED your FLEEEEEESSH! HAHAHAHAHAHA!
• 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 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.
  • Other notable quotes of his include:
    By the LEFT Frontal LOBE of the SKY DEEEMOOON!
    MOOOOOOOOOOONS OF MADNESS!
    DESTROY... EVERYTHING!
  • And when he faces off against the Doctor... well. It's Tom Baker. Put your fingers in your ears.
  • If there's any remaining doubts as to how hammy he is, Doctor Who Magazine has repeatedly described the Pirate Captain as "the sort of role BRIAN BLESSED was born to play".
• In "The Horns of Nimon":
  • The fantastic antics of Graham Crowden, particularly his death scene, complete with manic cackling, staring eyes, "Lord Nimon? Lord Niiiiimon? It is I, Soldeed!" and "You fools, fools! You will die for your interference!!!"
    "My dreeeams of CONQUEST!!!"
  • Graham Crowden was originally cast as the Fourth Doctor, but turned the part down. Let that sink in for a minute.
  • Malcolm Terris as the co-pilot was visibly having the most fun of his life. At one point, he overacts so hard that his trousers split. And he gets to face off against Soldeed! His catchphrase, "WEAKLING SCUM!!!" was not only improvised on the spot, it was so grand that it got included in the first Big Finish episode featuring the Nimons.
• 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 POWER!"
  "My army awaits, DOCTOR!"
• 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.
  Shockeye: YOU CANNOT ESCAPE SHOCKEYE O' THE QUANCING GRIG!
• Michael Jayston in his role as the Valeyard also fits here wonderfully (which makes sense, given that he's the Doctor's Evil Counterpart). 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 appearance was 14 episodes long.
  "THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP THE CATHARSIS OF SPURIOUS MORALITY!"
  • His Ham-to-Ham Combat with Colin Baker has to be seen to be believed.
• Lady Cassandra. MOISTURIZE ME! (Keeps the Ham nice and juicy.) Also bleeds over into Billie Piper ("It's like living inside a bouncy castle!!") and David Tennant ("a little bit fox-ay!") when the Doctor and Rose end up hosting Cassandra's personality in "New Earth".
• Hamminess seems to scale with rank with the Daleks, because the hammiest of all Daleks truly has to be the Dalek Emperor from "The Parting of the Ways", who has the most bombastic disposition of any Dalek, and a god complex to match. Fittingly, it has the deepest and loudest voice of any Dalek ever seen.
  Dalek Emperor: I reached into the dirt and made new life. I AM THE GOD OF ALL DALEKS!
  • Hamminess Leads To Leadership, perhaps?
• John Lumic, creator of the Cybermen from a parallel universe in "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel". "And how will you do that from beyond the grave?!"
• The Wire, from "The Idiot's Lantern", really rates a mention here.
  "FEEEEEEEEED MEEEEEEEEEEE!!!"
• Meanwhile, the Beast from "The Satan Pit" has a hell of a time with the ham:
  "I have been imprisoned for eternity. But no more. The Pit is open, and I... am... free!" (Cue Evil Laugh)
  "I shall never die! The thought of me is forever! In the bleeding hearts of men, in their vanity and obsession and lust! Nothing shall ever destroy me! Nothing!"
• The Empress of the Racnoss, villain of the 2006 Christmas special "The Runaway Bride", was an enormous piece of Spider-Ham. "KIIIIILL THIS CHATTERING LITTLE DOCTOR-MAN!"
• The Carrionites in "The Shakespeare Code". Around 1:19.
• 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.
  "JUST SHUT UP STOP TALKING CEASE AND DESIST THERE'S A GOOD GIRL!"
• Lucius Petrus Dextrus from "The Fires of Pompeii" is the chief augur of Pompeii, so his job is to be a Large Ham. He pulls it off magnificently:
  "Water can boil! And EVERYTHING WILL BURN, DOCTOR!"
• "Planet of the Ood": Sadistic overseer Mr. Kess laughs maniacally and rocks in his chair delivering some very expressive faces so we can see that he's having fun while chasing the Doctor around a warehouse with a giant claw arm.
• Though he's from the spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures, the Trickster deserves a mention:
  The Trickster: YOU... HAVE... GIVEN... THIS WOOOOORLD... TO... THE TRIIIIIIICKSTAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!
  • Additionally, Miss Myers, from the same show:
  "THE END IS NIGH!!!!"
  • And we mustn't forget the Mona Lisa (It Makes Sense in Context):
  "I AM...the Mona Lisa!"
  • Not to mention Erasmus Darkening, who takes the "ghost of a hammy evil magician" shtick up to eleven:
  ETERNITY! I HAVE LOST ETERNITYYYYYYYY!"
• 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?!'''"
• Rosanna Calvieri of "The Vampires of Venice" manages to alternate between hamminess and seriousness with ease.
• The Ice Warrior Skaldak in "Cold War":
  Skaldak: My planet is dead, but a new Red Planet will rise... REEEEEED WITH THE BLOOOOD OF HUMANITYYYYYY!!
• British comedian Chris Addison as Seb, Missy's assistant in the Nethersphere.
  "Permission to squeeeeeeeeeee!"
• British comedian Greg Davies as King Hydroflax, the villain of the 2015 Christmas special "The Husbands of River Song".
  "DESTROY THEM!"
• The final three episodes of Series 12 present Ashad, the Lone Cyberman, who hams it up in the best tradition of Doctor Who villains. The stomping and Voice of the Legion don't hurt, either.
  "I was not discarded. I was chosen. To revive the glory of the Cyber race!"
• Jack Robertson. He's basically a Take That! of Donald Trump-like politicians, and Chris Noth plays him to the hammy hilt.
  "A giant spider crashed through a bathtub and took my bodyguard, Kevin!"
• The second incarnation of the Toymaker, played by Neil Patrick Harris in "The Giggle." He gets to bust into UNIT dressed as a bandleader, dancing to the Spice Girls. He uses about five different accents, each with its own distinct flavor of ham. Plus, he's a Reality Warper, so he can actually give his ham physical form.

Other Characters

• Though best known for playing the Creepy Monotone Nyder, Peter Miles delivers an astounding amount of ham as Dr Lawrence in "Doctor Who and the Silurians". In his final scene, he goes from zero to screeching in a matter of seconds.
• "Kinda":
  • Aris, when he gets taken over by the Mara and is granted the gift of speech (and Ham).
    Aris: I still control them! I am Aris! I. HAVE. VOICE!
    Fifth Doctor: YES, SO I HEAR!
  • Hindle loses his mind, but gains an awful lot of ham:
    Hindle: YOU CAN'T MEND PEOPLE, CAN YOU?!
• BRIAN BLESSED as Yrcanos in "Mindwarp".
  "Today, prudence shall be our watchword. Tomorrow, I shall soak the land in blood!"
  "VAROOOOOOOOONIIIIIIIIIK!"
• Captain Jack Harkness has his hammy moments, mostly on Torchwood, but it's generally scarier when he's delivering a cold Breaking Speech to his mutinying team. He even gets an Incoming Ham moment when crossing over into his parent show, Badass Longcoat flowing behind him in a Dramatic Wind as he bellows at the top of his lungs:
  DOOOOOOOCTOOOOORRRRRRR!
• Donna Noble, biggest 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.
• Jackson Lake in "The Next Doctor" 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.
• Amy Pond isn't averse to busting out the ham on occasion, for example this scene. However, Tropes Are Not Bad, as she manages to be simultaneously hammy, awesome and heartwarming.
  "Raggedy Man, I remember you, and YOU ARE LATE FOR MY WEDDING-A!"
• Ian McNeice as Winston Churchill in "Victory of the Daleks" fills up every room he's in with his presence.
• 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!
  • In "The Husbands of River Song", Alex Kingston is clearly having a lot of fun with the episode's campy and romp-ish tone.
• She gets it from both of her parents:
  Rory: I have a message and a question. A message from the Doctor, and a question from me. WHERE. IS. MY. WIFE! [Cape Swish]
• Robin Hood. Boisterous and hammy. Especially the over the top laughter, which he performs about 10 times before the episode is over.
  • And he's alongside the Twelfth Doctor. It's a miracle there was any intact scenery by episode's end.
• "The Witchfinders" presents Alan Cumming as a delightfully camp King James I. Especially when he's expressing interest in Ryan and showing off his witchfinding equipment.
  James: Careful. That's my pricker.

Expanded Universe

• The Big Finish Doctor Who audio play "Omega" has an in-universe Large Ham in the form of Daland. A Classically-Trained Extra on a Show Within a Show, he declares, upon hearing that he might be replaced by a robot: "no mere machine could do my job!!" To which Sentia replies: "I dunno, a fridge could do your job. You can fit a lot of ham in a fridge."
• From Big Finish's Deep Space Nine/Eurovision Song Contest parody "Bang-Bang-A-Boom!", Patricia Quinn of The Rocky Horror Picture Show fame as the outrageous Queen Angvia, the Green Skinned Space... Valkyrie. Her Ham-to-Ham Combat with Sylvester McCoy is marvellous.
  "Ze Universe can VAIT! I AM A VOMAN!!!"
• Big Finish's remake of "Shada" features an incredibly Hammy turn from Andrew Sachs of Fawlty Towers fame as the hysterically camp Big Bad Skagra.
  "REMOVE all the contents of his MIND? Why not? Muah-ha-ha! Muah-HA-HA! AH-HAH-HA-HA-HAAAA!"
  • Hell, Sachs even gives Adric a pretty hamtastic upgrade while voicing his crazy-old-man/scorpion-king/God-Mode self (yes, you read that right) in "The Boy That Time Forgot".
    Adric: THAT'S NOT ENOUGH! I need you to LOVE me, Nyssa!
  • Special mention for Sachs as Crassostrea in the Big Finish story "Orbis", who vividly describes how he has to gorge on food and develop female organs so he can SPAAAAWWWN. He then proceeds to invade a nation of jellyfish and give birth, in a glorious explosion of ham.
• In the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Tomorrow Windows by Jonathan Morris, one character is a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of BRIAN BLESSED.
  "Big part, is it?"
  "Biggest."
  "Meaty?"
  "Bratwurst."
  "Does it involve –"
  "Shouting?" said his agent. "Lots of it. Nothing but. It’s shouting, shouting, shouting. Shouting till the Dryrths come home."
  Prubert swung his chair round. "Tell me more."
• Iris Wildthyme, the Doctor's Distaff Counterpart with her own series, spends around 99% of her episodes absolutely blind drunk. The ham is magnificent. Especially in "The Wormery", where she teams up with the Sixth Doctor to fight tequila-powered space worms in song.
• And then there's Irving Braxiatel, the Doctor's Aloof Older Brother, played by Miles Richardson in the audios. He's made of ham.
  • Props to him for pulling off the line "AT LAST, MY DASTARDLY PLOTTING AND PLANNING SHALL BEAR FRUIT- MUHAHAHAHAHAA!" and completely owning it.
• Big Finish's Doctor Who and the Pirates has Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor versus Bill Oddie's Long John Silver expy Red Jasper in full-on Talk Like a Pirate mode, resulting in four episodes of glorious Ham-to-Ham Combat.

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