The Seventh Doctor

The Doctor regenerates into a smaller, stranger figure: a Time Lord in a cream jacket and question-mark pullover who plays spoons, fumbles his own aphorisms, and grins like he's enjoying a joke no one else is in on. He seems whimsical almost to the point of foolishness — until you notice how carefully he's steering events.

McCoy plays the clowning as camouflage, and the show slowly rewards you for suspecting it. Beneath the malapropisms and music-hall fussiness sits a chess player centuries deep in his own game, manipulating companions and enemies alike toward ends he won't explain. The comedy never quite goes away, which makes the calculation underneath it unsettling rather than cold.