No Longer in a World O'Hurt

Or

Hurt's Empire of Dirt

John Hurt, who was so good an actor it was worth screwing up the careful numbering system of Doctor Who, has died at the age of 77. Best remembered for getting face raped and giving birth to an angry jumbo shrimp in Alien and having the sense of humor to do it again for Spaceballs, Hurt was generally regarded as one of the finest actors of his generation. He was the far less entertaining (aka non-Bob Guccioned) Caligula in BBC’s I, Claudius. He earned Oscar nominations as a smack-addicted inmate in a Turkish prison in Midnight Express and allegedly as the guy under all the makeup in The Elephant Man. He was also the rat-averse Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Hellboy’s handler, the only thing worth watching in Contact as a brilliant and reclusive terminally ill billionaire, and Indy’s alien-addled friend Harold Oxley in the shark-jumping, fridge-nuking, franchise-killing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Hurt’s cancer diagnosis was one of many catastrophes to befall Terry Gilliam’s legendary development disaster The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, as he had been slated to star in the 8th attempt to make the movie. He was revealed as the man who ended the Time War between the Time Lords and the Daleks as the War Doctor in The Time of the Doctor, though all 13 of The Doctor’s incarnations were later able to hide Gallifrey in a moment in time (even if the War Doctor tragically would not retain the memory when he returned to his own time stream and still thought he had killed billions in order to end the war. Yes, I am that big a geek.) Upsetting such a critical element of the long-running show’s mythology required an actor of Hurt’s stature to quell the show’s vocal lunatic fans, while seeing Hurt’s world-weary doctor rolling his eyes at the youthful overexuberance of Matt Smith and David Tennant was just great fun. His last performance will be in later this year in Darkest Hour, as Nazi-appeasing British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

The Kwouk and the Dead

Or

Cato Killin’

Herbert Tsangtse "Burt" Kwouk, best remembered as Inspector Clouseau’s long-suffering manservant Cato, has died of cancer at the age of 85. The running gag through 6 of the Pink Panther movies was that Cato was supposed to attack the Inspector when he least expected it in order to keep Clouseau alert. The ensuing brawl would trash the apartment, only to be interrupted by a ringing phone, which Cato would calmly answer "Inspector Clouseau's residence," before handing the phone to Clouseau and then getting whacked. The two referenced this relationship in The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu with Sellers saying to Kwouk, "Your face is familiar," in the film’s opening scene. He also played the leader of a group of robot Chinese Mandarins developed by the alien Monarch to study human behavior in the Doctor Who serial Four to Doomsday. In keeping with the movie industry’s malleable understanding of Asia, he played a Chinese nuclear expert in Goldfinger, a Japanese operative of SPECTRE in You Only Live Twice, and a Vietnamese general in Air America. 

Is There a Doctor in the House?

Or
Goodbye, Mistress
Elisabeth Sladen, who spent 4 years shrieking and giving the Doctor a reason for extensive exposition, has died of cancer at the age of 63. As Sarah Jane Smith on Doctor Who, Sladen endured Jon Pertwee’s old man smell and Tom Baker’s unhealthy obsession with his own scarf while bouncing around time and space for three and a half years in the TARDIS. The most popular traveling companion for the Doctor in viewer polls, Smith’s departure made front page news in England, but most importantly, she took K-9, TV’s most annoying robot this side of Twiki, with her. Despite leaving, Sladen kept reprising the role – in a spin-off pilot K-9, several specials, BBC radio plays, a few cameos on the mother ship and then, 30 years after leaving the series, getting her own show, The Sarah Jane Adventures, which ran 4 seasons on BBC, which is like 15 ½ episodes. In the series, Smith leads a bunch of kids to defeat monsters and aliens, suggesting the whole nigh-immortal Time Lord deal is pretty overrated.

Five Rounds, Somewhat Less Rapid!

In need of Doctoring, William Nicholas Stone Courtney, who led the stalwart United Nations Intelligence Taskforce to defend the earth from Daleks, Cybermen, the Master and Flipper People as Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart on Doctor Who, has died of cancer at the age of 81. Bearing a name that helps explain how the British lost the Falklands, Lethbridge-Stewart brought the exiled Doctor into UNIT as a scientific advisor. Although he rarely agreed with the Doctor or understood the extraterrestrial threats before him, the Brigadier met every challenge with a stiff upper lip and a hail of bullets and rocket fire. Brought out of retirement to battle interdimensional knights, Lethbridge-Stewart saved the planet by besting the Destroyer of Worlds with only his service revolver, the most expensive prop the BBC could muster.

Tale from the Crypt

Legendary schlock horror director and producer Max Rosenberg, best known for such films as Tales From the Crypt and Dr. Terror's House of Horrors as well as the early rock 'n' roll movies Jamboree and Rock, Rock, Rock! has died at the age of 89. Rosenberg played a big role in bringing the Hammer films from England to the U.S., as their collaboration on the $500,000 film The Curse of Frankenstein netted a $7 million payoff and kicked off a revival of gothic horror films. Other hits included The Deadly Bees, They Came From Beyond Space, Dr Who and the Daleks, Daleks Invasion Earth: 2150 A D, Scream and Scream Again and The House That Dripped Blood.