HOME | DD

Description
Hey Sir...
Well, looks like it finally happened.
You couldn't outrun it forever.
Not even your characters couldn't.
The only Doctor to regenerate of old age.
Trust me, that's impressive.
One of my regeneration happened 'cause I cut myself shaving.
Heh heh...yeah, I never lived that down back home.
But...I guess you couldn't cheat death the same way.
Not everyone can live as long as the Time Lords.
There are some deaths you can't prevent, even as a Time Traveller.
Everyone has their time.
I mean...I don't really know who you are that much, but from what the others have said about you, you're pretty special.
Certainly to the guy who..made ME, I guess.
A lot of people are going to miss you, Sir...
...
Is the Time War over yet?

2016 was the year that many we idolised passed away. We all thought we could move on from that in 2017. We were wrong.

I guess you could say that John Hurt was really before my time. Born in 1940, this guy has had a lot of powerful, famous roles that I simply have not been around to experience. The Elephant Man, Alien, V for Vendetta, even the first Harry Potter where he played the wandmaker Mr Ollivander you could argue was before my time. And even if they weren't, I was too busy playing Sonic the Fighters back in the past anyway. But there is one role I know him for, one that has helped me a lot more than you would ever think. One of his most famous, which is saying something;

The War Doctor. The Doctor's greatest secret. He who ended the Time War...or so he thinks.

The War Doctor has only had one real appearance, but he's had almost the biggest impact out of all of them. It was with him that The Doctor abandoned his biggest aspect of himself, the very reason he named himself so; the man who makes people better had to pick up a gun and kill. Primarily Daleks, granted, but it still went against everything he ever knew. He had to drop everything he stood for in order to survive, and I feel like that is a tad more relatable than a lot of people give credit for. Plus, John Hurt's performance as the War Doctor was nothing short of spectacular. There's never really been a "bad" Doctor, hell Colin Baker only gets that accolade thanks to getting brutally screwed over by those tits at the BBC, but up there with David Tennant, Tom Baker, Sylvester McCoy and arguably Christopher Eccleston, Hurt is right at the top. Now I hear that Eccleston was invited back onto the show to reprise the 9th Doctor for The Day of the Doctor, but he turned it down, so the War Doctor was written in his place. No offence to the man, I like the 9th Doctor fine, he was the first I saw on TV, but I don't think he would have been able to pull it off quite as well as Hurt did. His scruffy face and hair and beard, those clothes and the bandoleer, the feeling of having lost everything you are with only violence and hate remaining, he was the perfect interpretation of the Doctor during the Time War and how beat down he would be.

...And he was also the inspiration for the original War Master.

Yep, it was that lack of identity, that hollow shell of hatred and rage, even the bandoleer, it all came from him. At the time Master was little more than a shallow disguise for...well, me. A self-insert, the sort of thing mocked and shunned across multiple communities. And were it not for Hurt, were it not for the War Doctor giving me the inspiration to change Master for the better, I very much doubt a good deal of the characters I have designed would even be here. Certainly not Traveller, or War Lilac, or their rebooted counterparts. And yes, War Master evolved into Traveller and then began to steal the spotlight, get more miserable, began to fall back into the trappings I thought he had escaped. But he and I, much like the Doctor, came back from it. We moved on, from misery and angst (9th) to hiding it with jokes and trappings (10th and 11th) to finally working WITH those past failures and experiences for a better, more stable and more serious man overall (12th). Those memories of embarrassment and disgust will probably never leave, but with 2017 giving me the chance to both reboot Traveller and War Lilac into better things, and remove the scourge of War Master entirely, I can move on and do better things with little to hold me down. How fitting that the influenced died with the original.

In all honesty, this could have an unintentional double meaning. I mean, The Surgeon based himself off the Doctor in every way he could. Including, and especially, losing those closest to him. There's so many people his 8th Incarnation killed via sheer impulsiveness, much like the many losses that the 10th and 11th Doctors had to suffer through when they let their guard down. Makes sense why the 12th was colder...and even he couldn't keep that looming threat of permadeath away. Neither could The Surgeon. And even now, in his 9th Form, he remembers those he lost more than anyone. But he knows, purely by who he devoted himself to, he won't be able to stop. And if that wasn't enough, the War Doctor influenced The Surgeon too; it was the War Doctor who scared his previous self into his greatest regret; running away from the Time War, leaving countless to die, because his idol started killing.

But this isn't about The Surgeon. It's about the loss of an acting icon, and classic of our time, unchallenged by roles and beloved by those who worked with him. And, yeah, the closest thing I have to an idol outside of David Tennant.

Rest in Peace, Sir John Hurt. 1940-2017

You will be missed, Sir.

Description
Hey Sir...
Well, looks like it finally happened.
You couldn't outrun it forever.
Not even your characters couldn't.
The only Doctor to regenerate of old age.
Trust me, that's impressive.
One of my regeneration happened 'cause I cut myself shaving.
Heh heh...yeah, I never lived that down back home.
But...I guess you couldn't cheat death the same way.
Not everyone can live as long as the Time Lords.
There are some deaths you can't prevent, even as a Time Traveller.
Everyone has their time.
I mean...I don't really know who you are that much, but from what the others have said about you, you're pretty special.
Certainly to the guy who..made ME, I guess.
A lot of people are going to miss you, Sir...
...
Is the Time War over yet?

2016 was the year that many we idolised passed away. We all thought we could move on from that in 2017. We were wrong.

I guess you could say that John Hurt was really before my time. Born in 1940, this guy has had a lot of powerful, famous roles that I simply have not been around to experience. The Elephant Man, Alien, V for Vendetta, even the first Harry Potter where he played the wandmaker Mr Ollivander you could argue was before my time. And even if they weren't, I was too busy playing Sonic the Fighters back in the past anyway. But there is one role I know him for, one that has helped me a lot more than you would ever think. One of his most famous, which is saying something;

The War Doctor. The Doctor's greatest secret. He who ended the Time War...or so he thinks.

The War Doctor has only had one real appearance, but he's had almost the biggest impact out of all of them. It was with him that The Doctor abandoned his biggest aspect of himself, the very reason he named himself so; the man who makes people better had to pick up a gun and kill. Primarily Daleks, granted, but it still went against everything he ever knew. He had to drop everything he stood for in order to survive, and I feel like that is a tad more relatable than a lot of people give credit for. Plus, John Hurt's performance as the War Doctor was nothing short of spectacular. There's never really been a "bad" Doctor, hell Colin Baker only gets that accolade thanks to getting brutally screwed over by those tits at the BBC, but up there with David Tennant, Tom Baker, Sylvester McCoy and arguably Christopher Eccleston, Hurt is right at the top. Now I hear that Eccleston was invited back onto the show to reprise the 9th Doctor for The Day of the Doctor, but he turned it down, so the War Doctor was written in his place. No offence to the man, I like the 9th Doctor fine, he was the first I saw on TV, but I don't think he would have been able to pull it off quite as well as Hurt did. His scruffy face and hair and beard, those clothes and the bandoleer, the feeling of having lost everything you are with only violence and hate remaining, he was the perfect interpretation of the Doctor during the Time War and how beat down he would be.

...And he was also the inspiration for the original War Master.

Yep, it was that lack of identity, that hollow shell of hatred and rage, even the bandoleer, it all came from him. At the time Master was little more than a shallow disguise for...well, me. A self-insert, the sort of thing mocked and shunned across multiple communities. And were it not for Hurt, were it not for the War Doctor giving me the inspiration to change Master for the better, I very much doubt a good deal of the characters I have designed would even be here. Certainly not Traveller, or War Lilac, or their rebooted counterparts. And yes, War Master evolved into Traveller and then began to steal the spotlight, get more miserable, began to fall back into the trappings I thought he had escaped. But he and I, much like the Doctor, came back from it. We moved on, from misery and angst (9th) to hiding it with jokes and trappings (10th and 11th) to finally working WITH those past failures and experiences for a better, more stable and more serious man overall (12th). Those memories of embarrassment and disgust will probably never leave, but with 2017 giving me the chance to both reboot Traveller and War Lilac into better things, and remove the scourge of War Master entirely, I can move on and do better things with little to hold me down. How fitting that the influenced died with the original.

In all honesty, this could have an unintentional double meaning. I mean, The Surgeon based himself off the Doctor in every way he could. Including, and especially, losing those closest to him. There's so many people his 8th Incarnation killed via sheer impulsiveness, much like the many losses that the 10th and 11th Doctors had to suffer through when they let their guard down. Makes sense why the 12th was colder...and even he couldn't keep that looming threat of permadeath away. Neither could The Surgeon. And even now, in his 9th Form, he remembers those he lost more than anyone. But he knows, purely by who he devoted himself to, he won't be able to stop. And if that wasn't enough, the War Doctor influenced The Surgeon too; it was the War Doctor who scared his previous self into his greatest regret; running away from the Time War, leaving countless to die, because his idol started killing.

But this isn't about The Surgeon. It's about the loss of an acting icon, and classic of our time, unchallenged by roles and beloved by those who worked with him. And, yeah, the closest thing I have to an idol outside of David Tennant.

Rest in Peace, Sir John Hurt. 1940-2017

You will be missed, Sir.