|
it fascinating, because I had always wanted to do a Doctor Who. "I was asked to play King Yrcanos in this particular series, and again this was written absolutely larger than life. Again, he had to be strangely real and obsessed, and if you remember, I put in a mixture of sounds. He was always making very weird but natural alien sounds, which made him very bizarre but strangely quaint and attractive. "What was interesting was that Nicola Bryant was the heroine of Doctor Who and all the young men fancied her, and I think the idea was that she might find a young man in the end. Bizarrely, in this series, she meets this outrageous warrior, who wants to kill everyone in sight, go- ing like a bull in a china shop, and gradu- ally through the episodes, you start to realize that she's constantly nagging him and stopping him from doing things. You | |
|
will pick it up. There's no such thing as 'television acting' or 'radio acting;' you've got to be real with what- ever you do." This seems an excellent opportunity to quiz the actor on some of the roles that are well known to fans of cult television. That includes his outrageous perform- ance as King Henry in the first Black- adder series. "That required total caricature and ham, but done positively and with style. There were a lot of strong personalities in it, so they needed somebody who could dwarf them, who actually was the British Em- pire, who could be terrifying and bi- zarrely comical, and yet in a way suggest what the perios was all about. "It was a wonderful, bizarre experience. I said, 'Let's have this king who's so in- credibly powerful that he virtually walks |
ally have gone for total quietness, very still, and never raised my voice. In actual fact, I kept it quiet for quite a while, and then jumped ahead and made him quite loud and manic. If I were to play that part again, I would make him much more in- teresting and much quieter." Upstaging the Doctor
Then there's his memorable visit toDoctor Who, arguably the only time that Colin Baker found himself up- staged during his brief stint on the se- ries. Blessed played King Yrcanos of the Krontep in Philip Martin's Mindwarp, the second chapter in the Trial of a Time Lord Season. "It was the first time that anybody had ever written a part totally for me, but he also left me that 10% to imporvise. I found |
also realize that there's a relationship starting to build up, and she quite likes him in certain silent moments. "Then of course, the big surprise right at the end of Trial of A Time Lord, was the jury said, 'Oh by the way, I suppose you'd like to know what happened to Peri and Yrcanos,' and they suddenly show a film of them together, so she actually married this big, bizarre character, rather than a good looking young man. That was very imaginative, because you could see her telling him off all the time like a house- wift - 'Stop that, don't kill him!'" Doctor Chan
Of course Blessed's name has beenlinked with that of the Doctor nearly as long as the series has been on the air. Most of these stories now turn out to be |
|
through walls. He doesn't open doors, he just walks straight through them and leaves a silhoutte.' We used balsa wood doors, but in an episode called The Arch- bishop, we come to a door which is bolted, and I said, 'My God!' and bashed it and bashed it, and finally broke through it, and Rowan Atkinson was in fits of laugh- ter - he had a handkerchief in his mouth - so I broke through this bloody door, and of course it was a real door. Let's try to sneak a few genre questions past Blessed. For example, there's his brief but literally explosive appearance in the first series of Blake's 7. "I thought I made a total mistake with the character," Blessed reflects. "I think I should actu- |
| |
 |
|
 |