The Warrior (Brian Blessed)

"I don't suppose there's any need for a Doctor anymore. Make me a Warrior now."
The 8th Doctor.


I'm not particularly a fan of the War Doctor, I don’t hate him. I just don’t think it was handled very well plus I never thought it was a good idea to retroactively put in secrete incarnations we never knew about. It was a bad idea in The Brain of Morbius and it was a bad idea in Day of the Doctor. I just felt it hurt the episode trying to shoehorn in a new old incarnation especially when there was no reason not to use the 8^th Doctor. That’s what fans wanted to see, 8 fighting the Time War. However, if the secret Doctor had to be done this is what I would have preferred him to be. This is my take on The War Doctor / The Warrior.

The War Doctors costume is a cross between the 8^th Doctors and the 9^th Doctors. By making him look like 8.5 you rob him of his own visual identity. It would be like putting the 4^th Doctor in 3’s cape coat and 5’s cricket jumper. It’s just a bad idea.  

The costume The Warrior has is based on The General’s Time Lord Armour and visually gives us information the episode didn’t have time to tell us. He’s a high ranking valuable member of the war effort, (because seriously he would be, who knows more about fighting Daleks than the Doctor?) but unlike other high ranking officers who lead from the back in their ivory tower, The Warrior leads from the front.  With his beaten, scratched and tattered armour showing the strains of war. But never mind the damage done to the armour if you want to see the strains of war look no further than the mechanical hand and the eye patch. Two universally understood signifiers that this character has been through some shit.  But even though he’s been through hell he carries no weapons. The only things he carries are his trusty screwdriver, things to help others and a bag of jelly babies, showing that maybe the old Doctor is still in there somewhere under that war torn exterior.

And finally I love John Hurt but if you’re going to get a British icon, a Shakespearean trained national treasure, with an unmistakable voice to play the secret incarnation of The Doctor who fought The Time War. You get Brain Blessed or you just don’t do it.

The man is a real life adventurer who is friends with the Queen of England, has climbed Mount Everest, gone running with wolves, travelled to the North Pole, boxed the Dalai Lama, met Picasso, trekked through the Venezuelan jungle and punched a polar bear in the face. If the Doctor was real he would be Brian Blessed and that’s why I made him The Warrior.

I hope you like.

Another Alt War Doctor
The Warrior (Christopher Lee)