Prince Charles Passes on Doctor Who, For Now

Royalty makes news even for what they don't do: in this case, it's Prince Charles's decision not to appear on Doctor Who.

"Prince Charles Snubs Dr. Who," screamed headlines like the one in The Sun. Even The New York Times joined the fray, noting the "royal brush-off" in its Arts, Briefly section.

What perhaps raised more eyebrows than the prince's declining of the offer, which he apparently never personally saw, was executive producer Russell T. Davies's reaction: Davies, mentioning the prince's pass at a literary festival, went on to add: "He turned us down, the miserable swine," according to the CBBC web site.

Not wanting to offend the millions of fans of one of Britain's best-watched and most-loved shows, the prince's office announced not long after Davies's remarks that a lowly underling had rejected the request along with hundreds of others, but that Charles would consider an appearance should a request be resubmitted.

It's not so farfetched: the prince has appeared as himself on television in the past, most notably in a prerecorded cameo on the ITV soap opera Coronation Street. And Queen Elizabeth is known to have been a fan of classic Who, and is now said to watch the new series as well.

Nonetheless perhaps Davies should have known better, given the show's poor track record in trying to bring the royals on board.

For the 25th anniversary serial in 1988, "Silver Nemesis" (25x03), there was talk of trying to get the queen herself to make an appearance, in a scene where the Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) and Ace (Sophie Aldred) just miss running into the monarch and her corgis. Rumor has it that then-producer John Nathan-Turner attempted to make this happen but could not land an agreement with the Palace. Ultimately the scene was done with an impersonator, Mary Reynolds.

Another impersonator, Jessica Martin, played the queen (in voiceover and shot from the back, waving up at the space cruise ship the Doctor just narrowly managed to prevent from creaming Buckingham Palace) in last year's Christmas special, "Voyage of the Damned" (4x00). Martin, coincidentally, also appeared in a story from classic Doctor Who's season 25: she was the werewolf, Mags, in "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy."

Even royal supernumeraries are a tough catch: Koo Stark, the actress best known for her dalliance with young Prince Andrew, was supposed to play one of the cold-loving Cryon women in "Attack of the Cybermen" (22x01), but as Colin Baker put it in The Colin Baker Years, "She decided to do something else" and the role was recast.

The real queen did appear once on Doctor Who, in a way: Archival footage of the Queen's coronation was shown in "The Idiot's Lantern" (2x07).