So I finally sat down and watched the latest Peter Jackson spectacular called The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and while I enjoyed entering the colorful and masterful world of Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings again I found myself troubled.
Who the hell was playing Ratagast, the brown wizard?
Such an odd character, such a good performance, and yet something ticked at my memory about him. He was a minor character in the movie, and to be honest its been so long since I last read the Hobbit I didn’t remember him in there at all. So why was I so intrigued by this one character?
Well, off to IMDB to see and there I learned why my memory had been tweaked, the actor playing Ratagast was none other than Sylvester McCoy! Sylvestor McCoy, or as I like to remember him, Doctor Who #7.
And that is memorable because I met him in the late 80’s at a Doctor Who convention in LA. Somewhere in my copiously filled boxes of memorabilia I have a signed photo of him as the Doctor. Ah, such good times. It was a complete day, driving down from 29 Palms to LA, finally locating the convention site, and mingling with hundreds of other Whovians, seeing props, and actually meeting a couple of the actors.
Anyway, it was nice to finally put that little memory tweak to rest.