Brian Blessed

Brian Blessed OBE (born 9 October 1936 ) guest starred in Doctor Who as King Yrcanos in Mindwarp.

He was also considered to play the Second Doctor and, subsequently, considered for the roles of Captain Stapley in Time-Flight (TCH 35), Commander Vorshak in Warriors of the Deep (TCH 38), Russell in Attack of the Cybermen (TCH 40) and Merdeen and Sabalom Glitz in The Mysterious Planet. (TCH 42)

A popular UK character actor known for his bombastic, larger-than-life demeanour both on film and in person, Blessed rose to stardom in the early 1960s as PC "Fancy" Smith in police procedural Z-Cars. He played Porthos in a pair of TV series based upon The Three Musketeers, but his best known TV role was probably that of Augustus in I, Claudius, also featuring John Hurt in a prominent part.

He played King Richard IV in the first season of and guest starred in series such as, Space: 1999,  and. His best-known film role was that of Prince Vultan in the 1980 version of Flash Gordon. His other big screen roles included the film version of the popular sitcom and Kenneth Branagh's film of.

He is the father of Rosalind Blessed.

In 1986, Scott Sauber won the Doctor Who Magazine's "Doctor Who Casting Competition" for the cast of a hypothetical high-budget Doctor Who movie by suggesting that Brian Blessed play a new, "deviously eccentric" incarnation of the Doctor opposite a villain played by John Hurt and with Meryl Streep as his companion. This imaginary "Brian Blessed Doctor" was eventually visualised by a professional illustrator in Winning Designs in DWM 131.