Michael Wisher

Last updated 09 January 2020

Michael Wisher (1935-1995)
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Anthony Michael Wisher

Born: Sunday 19th May 1935
Died: July 1995 (age: 60)

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Michael Wisher was a British actor.

His best remembered creation was Davros who he played in the 1975 story Genesis of the Daleks. He had many other roles in the series during the early 70's appearing on 35 episodes.

Wisher's contributions to Doctor Who began with uncredited voice work in the Second Doctor serial The Seeds of Death (1969).

The director of that story, Michael Ferguson, later asked Wisher to play a reporter in the Third Doctor serial "The Ambassadors of Death" (1970). The following season, he appeared in the Robert Holmes classic "Terror of the Autons" (1971), playing Rex Farrell. During the later years of the Pertwee era, Wisher provided Dalek voices in stories including "Frontier in Space" (1973), "Planet of the Daleks" (1973) and "Death to the Daleks" (1974) and acted as the villainous Commissioner Kalik in "Carnival of Monsters" (1973).

He continued to be associated with the series through the early Fourth Doctor years where he voiced unseen characters in both "Revenge of the Cybermen" (1975) and "Planet of Evil" (1975); he also acted on-screen in both serials, as Magrik in "Revenge of the Cybermen" and Morelli in "Planet of Evil".

He also appeared in programmes such as Z-Cars, Dixon of Dock Green, Moonbase 3 and Colditz. His theatre work was also extensive (and included a lengthy tour of New Zealand).

In 1987 the first video based spinoff, Wartime, was released by Reeltime Pictures, starring John Levene in his television role as Sergeant Benton. Wisher played the ghost of Benton's father.

He followed this by playing a villain with several faces in Summoned by Shadows, produced by BBV in 1991 and as a Minister in The Airzone Solution in 1993. That production included performances by four of the actors who had played the lead character in Doctor Who. Finally, he played a spaceship engineer in Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans in 1994.

One of his final acting roles was as an evil theatre commissionaire in Dalekmania, a documentary about the production of the Dalek movies of the 1960s.

A sudden heart attack resulted in his death in 1995.