#grant has a thing for jack and rose simultaneously

[wheres-the-pool-ladder]

The Sycorax Killed and Saved the Time Lords, and Also Killed Clara

The title is mostly a joke, but hear me out.

Warning: Major Spoilers for a number of series finales.

Literally every New Who Master episode wouldn’t have happened if Ten hadn’t lost his hand in the sword fight against the Sycorax. Hell, a lot of New Who would be changed. There are several points in the timeline where the Doctor might have just straight up died.

Because Jack found the Doctor’s severed hand, and used it to track him. Jack finally catching up to the Doctor caused the Tardis to fly all the way to the end of the universe just to shake him off. This wouldn’t have happened had there been no hand to find. Which means they never would have come across Professor Yana, who wouldn’t have opened the chameleon arch and become the Master and then steal the Doctor’s Tardis. So the entirety of the three-part series 3 finally wouldn’t have happened, since the Master’s still stuck as a human at the end of the universe. (As an aside, The Lazarus Experiment wouldn’t have happened either, since Tish only got the job working for Lazarus because of Saxon. So she wouldn’t have ended up on the news, thus never prompting Francine to call Martha about it.)

Martha likely continued traveling with the Doctor, since she had left to be there with her family after the trauma they endured during the Year That Never Was. They may or may not run into Donna, since without the metacrisis, Dalek Caan doesn’t need to manipulate events surrounding her. Let’s say they do. Turn Left doesn’t happen since events aren’t converging on Donna. But all of reality’s at stake, so Rose would have to find another way of warning the Doctor.

Now, the show could’ve likely ended at series 4, since the metacrisis wouldn’t have happened without the hand, so the whole of reality could’ve ended up destroyed. But let’s assume they find a way to save reality since A) Dalek Caan had set the whole thing up to betray the Daleks anyway, and B) without the hand Ten would’ve regenerated into Eleven, who had managed to save the Earth from the Atraxi in 20 minutes without his sonic or Tardis while dealing with post-regenerative trauma, so he’d probably figure out how to stop Davros. Since there’s no TenToo, the Doctor probably wouldn’t leave Rose at Bad Wolf Bay, so she may end up traveling with him again. This may prompt Martha to leave since she might feel like the third wheel now that the man she fancies has reunited with the woman he loves. Donna would likely stay, since she doesn’t need to have her memory erased.

So we move onto The End of Time, which wouldn’t have happened. Plain and simple. The Master’s still stuck at the end of the universe, so the whole reviving him wouldn’t have happened. The Doctor doesn’t need to stall for time after The Waters of Mars (which probably wouldn’t have ended the way it did, as he’s likely still traveling with Donna and Rose), so he never marries Elizabeth I, so the very end of the Shakespeare Code doesn’t happen either. Liz One still remains the Virgin Queen, and the Doctor doesn’t regenerate, but they’re already Eleven, so...

Since the Tardis doesn’t get completely obliterated by the Doctor regenerating, he doesn’t crash into Amelia Pond’s garden and then end up returning 12 years later due to the Tardis repairing. Maybe different circumstances cause Amy and Rory to become companions, maybe not. If not, then River wouldn’t exist, so Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead never occurs.

Gonna skip series 6 for a minute and move onto Clara. Since the Master’s still stuck at the end of the universe, Missy isn’t able to give Clara the Doctor’s number. So Clara never travels with the Doctor and jumps into his time stream, becoming Oswin and Victorian Clara, so the Doctor never tries to find her in the first place. She also never ends up dying in the Trap Street. So the Sycorax started the chain of events that led to Clara’s death. The Doctor may have ended up dying in the Dalek Asylum if he hadn’t met Oswin. If he survives, the lack of Amy and Rory means he doesn’t end up in the Victorian period to mourn them, so he doesn’t meet the Great Intelligence. This would also end up changing Classic Who a tiny bit, since Eleven accidentally gave the GI the idea that the London Underground is a “key strategic weakness”, which they use in The Web of Fear. So The Bells of Saint John doesn’t happen either. Neither the GI nor the Doctor have any reason to be there. The Name of the Doctor doesn’t happen either, since the GI doesn’t try to enter the Doctor’s time stream, which means Clara would have no reason to enter it. Paradoxes are confusing.

Even if the Doctor had met the GI in Victorian London, this might mean the GI succeeds at rewriting the Doctor’s timeline. Let’s say he and whoever his companion is manages to find a way and move on.

If TNotD doesn’t happen, or they stop the GI, The Day of the Doctor might still happen. If it doesn’t, then the Time Lords are dead, so we can thank the Sycorax for the Time Lords being alive for a while. It would happen without Ten though, since in canon Ten is somewhere between The Water’s of Mars and The End of Time, so Journey’s End has already happened, and he’s regenerated in this universe. So we have 33% less bickering. Current Companion may still inspire the Doctor to try to save Gallifrey. If that does happen, then the Time Lords would still try to come through the cracks in time, prompting the Silence to try to kill the Doctor, and trying to blow up the Tardis would cause those very cracks in time. Paradoxes are still confusing. They probably wouldn’t be able to kill him at Lake Silencio, since River might not exist if the Doctor hasn’t met Amy. If he has, then that likely goes the same way as canon. If he hasn’t, maybe they would have succeeded in blowing up the Tardis, since the Doctor only noticed the cracks because he met Amy. So the Silence cause the universe to never exist, while simultaneous causing another paradox by preventing the very events that led to them blowing up the Tardis.

If they don’t succeed in erasing the universe, the Doctor would likely stay on Trenzalore longer than he had in canon, since he doesn’t need (or rather, doesn’t think he needs) more regenerations yet. He still thinks he’s got one left. He may end up regenerating into Twelve while on Trenzalore, which may end up triggering the whole gifting-the-Doctor-more-regenerations thing at some point down the line. So then we end up with Thirteen.

Post-Trenzalore, the Doctor doesn’t meet Missy. The Master’s still stuck at the end of the universe, and even if they weren’t, the Doctor doesn’t know Clara, so Danny’s death (if it even happens) doesn’t cause them to search for the afterlife.

Assuming DotD happens, since the Master’s still stuck at the end of the universe, Simm!Master wouldn’t have been able to leave Gallifrey, and never got stuck on the Monasian ship where he encountered the Doctor and Missy. So he never regenerates into Missy, and the Doctor never goes to the Mondasian ship to test Missy’s ability to be good. The Doctor Falls never happens, and Bill never gets turned into a Cyberman. This also means she never gets turned into a Pilot by Heather, so she never gets to go on adventures with her space girlfriend. The Doctor might have never even met Bill, since they’re not guarding the vault at St. Luke’s University. The Doctor doesn’t regenerate, but she’s already Thirteen, so...

Since they don’t regenerate, the Doctor doesn’t fall out of the Tardis and meet the Fam. Series 11 doesn’t happen.

Since the Master was never on the Mondasian ship, they never regenerate into the Dhawan!Master. So they never go back to Gallifrey and hack into the Matrix, learning about the Timeless Child. The Master doesn’t kill the Time Lords. So the Sycorax started the chain of events that led to the Time Lord’s death. The Doctor may or may not find out later, depending on whether the Time Lords keep “granting” them more regenerations just to keep the secret.

TL;DR: The Sycorax are responsible for every bad thing that’s happened to the Doctor from series 3 onward, paradoxes are super confusing, and the Doctor needs to up their sword fighting skills.

To quote Mabel Pines: “Time travel, man! Why you gotta be so complicated?”

[existentialspiral]

On Mages

While doing my analysis on the Mage of Hope, I ran into the immediate issue that Homestuck only has two mages, and neither have ever been shown directly using their powers. As such, I found myself having to dive down these characters’ histories, possible class relations, and several other sources of speculation and theory. After a fair amount of work, much of which I could probably have skipped by using other blogs as resources (not that I would; I prefer to do my own analysis from the ground up, and only read others analysis of things for entertainment), I was finally able to derive an, admittedly highly theoretical, answer to the basic questions of what, exactly, a Mage is, and how would they fight. Unfortunately, in doing all this, I found that adequately explaining my conclusions made the Mage of Hope longer than it should have been, and broke both pattern and flow of the article. As such, I have included an edited version of the original Mage analysis below. The class of Mage is, quite possibly, the most difficult class to speak of in any way, with almost everything being the result of theory and conjecture. As a class with only 2, technically 3 users, with neither of them showing any display of God Tier powers or even particular amounts of exceptional direct ability, anything I could say would be nothing more than derived possibilities implied by possibly-misinterpreted information. Obviously, I still intend to do exactly this, but I felt it best to warn of it. Our Mages, Sollux Captor (Mage of Doom) and Meulin Leijon (Mage of Heart) have rather little in common outside their class. Only one seems to have any extraordinary abilities pre-game, and while both of them do gain disabilities, the exact nature of these disabilities and their presentation presents little, if anything, in the way of situational simultaneity. No, the only actual things I have been able to find in common of them, is that both of them have a great knowledge and suffering of their aspect; Meulin has her dancestor’s obsession with shipping, but actually has a great degree of success in her shipping (according to Aranea) albeit without any real success herself, her only personal romance having fallen apart over the years/ages. As for Sollux, he has a great deal of skill in the use of the programming language ~ATH, a language whose very name connects it with his aspect (both in pronunciation, and the fact that John Egbert’s book on the language is “~ATH – A Handbook for fhe Imminently Deceased), and which is implied to be less a language created by people/trolls, and more the method Paradox Space uses to define the inevitable. As well, Sollux has quite the degree of suffering his aspect, both in his hearing of the voices of those soon to die, his constant pain from his mutant brain being incompatible with his body, and even his habit of dying, repeatedly, only for it to never stick (refusing even to grant him the sweet release of death). However, things become more complicated when you also take into account Meulin’s post-Scratch counterpart, the Disciple. As the Disciple, Meulin experienced a unique form of romance unknown to trolls, falling into every quadrant simultaneously with a single person, experiencing both the full-spectrum of troll romance and the human concept of monogamous romance, as well as the cherub idea of devoted kismessitude; in summary, it could be said that Meulin’s post-scratch self was able to experience every possible type of romance at once, a sort of soul-fulfilling relationship no one else has ever been shown to even be able to comprehend, aside from (possibly) the Sufferer, her romantic partner. With this additional information, we can draw a new association: experience. In addition to suffering personal doom, Sollux was able to experience Doom in a way no other character has, having had a total of 5 possible lives, as opposed to the usual 2. Meulin herself, meanwhile, must have had quite the long list of past romances for her to be notably unlucky in love. With this new association of experience and knowledge, possibly better defined as comprehension, we can posit that Mage is the active counterpart to Seer, experiencing what the other observes, and enacting what the other foresees. This is made more likely by what Caliope said regarding the manifestation of abilities when a player is either resistant to their calling or corrupted by outside influence. Both Rose Lalonde and Sollux were extremely resistant to their callings, Rose resistant to Light as an aspect and an active enough person to have issue with the passive role of Seer, and Sollux being apathetic to his role as Mage, and outright hostile to his aspect. This notably manifests with Rose and her connection to the Outer Gods and Noble Circle of Horrorterrors and Grimdarkness, but most interesting is something mostly ignored about Sollux: he heard the voices of those soon to die. Being that foresight is a Seer ability, and death is governed by the aspect of Doom, it can be implied that Seer and Mage are a knowledge-based active-passive pair. This is then furthered by actually examining the actions of Rose during her time spent rejecting her role: rather than passively using Light to observe the world around her, she used her connection with the beings of the Farthest Ring (Void powers, possibly) to actively and physically tear her planet and session apart in search of information, before outright experiencing the Grimdarkness of the Noble Circle of Horrorterrors; in effect, Rose can definitely be stated to have acted entirely opposite to a passive Seer, instead functioning as an active learner. With this direct connection between passively observing an aspect vs. actively experiencing and learning through an aspect, it is extremely probable that Mage and Seer are an active-passive pair, with one focused on observation and the other on experience. As such, we may finally give a (possible) definition to Mage: “One who experiences and comprehends their aspect.” As for the abilities of a Mage, once again, actual information on the combat abilities of ANY Mage stands at a sum total of nil. However, there is an inlet to allow us to guess at the standard abilities of a Mage: the actions of Rose Lalonde prior to accepting her role as Seer of Light. Assuming that the above paragraph is correct and that Rose’s rejection of her class and aspect both caused her to invert entirely, this would make her abilities at this time comparable to those of a Mage of Void, allowing us to now infer the abilities of a Mage. As such, the following paragraphs will continue based upon this assumed connection. Firstly, as an active knowledge class, it may be posited that Mages function on a very simple, very old concept: skill and experience are worth more than strength and power. While they might not be the most powerful of classes, possibly being some of the weakest in raw ability, Mages are better able to understand their aspect than any other class and, thus, can apply their power in ways no other class can replicate. In this, it would be akin to the difference in between a 20-pound sledgehammer at full swing (25635 joules) vs. the force of a 12.7mm bullet with a 52 gram powder load (20195 joules); while the hammer obviously has more power, the bullet is more dangerous because of how its power is applied. As such, I would expect that, at lower levels, a Mage would have a fairly comprehensive understanding of their aspect, something which would allow them to actually accomplish things with it even where others would find it useless, such as Sollux’s use of the impossibly-difficult-to-use Turring Tarpit that is ~ATH, or Rose’s use of the Zoologically Dubious. Also, it is likely that Mages specialize in “special-damage” for combat; that is to say, it seems likely that a Mage would deal damage through magic or other esoteric powers, rather than by hitting things with shaped pieces of metal, like how Sollux used his psychic abilities instead of an actual weapon, or how Rose so heavily invested in her Thorns of Oglogoth. This, though, does come with the qualifier that we have never actually sees Meulin fight, and while it is possible that she fights with the same weapons as her Dancestor, it isn’t ever actually evidenced. After reaching God Tier, though, I expect Mages to be an interesting class, acting as a sort of, “Jack of All Trades, Master of None,” type, having the experience and comprehension of their aspect to affect any actual effect they want with it, but lacking the specialization or raw power of other classes. As such, they could be expected to actually wield their power in ways no other class could even dream of, having the fine control and understanding needed to do almost anything, but would probably lose in a straight up fight to another class unless they specifically leverage the fight against their opponent. To give an example: between a Prince and a Mage, the prince would be far better at destroying things, so an actual fight would end in the Prince’s favor; however, while the Prince has more raw power, the Mage would be able to, say, specifically protect themselves better, or manipulate their aspect more freely, while the Prince only has destruction to his name.

[anchorarcade]

Senate blocks Rand Paul's effort to repeal war authorizations

http://ryanguillory.com/senate-blocks-rand-pauls-effort-to-repeal-war-authorizations/

Senate blocks Rand Paul's effort to repeal war authorizations

The Senate on Wednesday turned back an attempt to repeal the current authority for U.S. military force in the 16-year-old Afghanistan war and the fight in Iraq.

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, an anti-war crusader, had offered an amendment to the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to repeal war authority granted in 2001 and 2002. He argued Wednesday that the current war authorizations are outdated and that Congress needed to “grab power back” from the executive branch, which he said has been using the war authorizations for “unauthorized, unconstitutional and undeclared war.”

Paul had threatened to essentially slow down the legislative process for passing the fiscal 2018 NDAA unless there was a floor debate on the war authorizations. The NDAA sets forth the Pentagon’s budget and major programs for the next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1.

But by a 61-36 vote, the Senate voted to table the Paul amendment — in effect killing — the attempt to repeal the war authorizations.

Overall, there are more than 300 amendments proposed for the Senate’s NDAA. The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) completed its markup of the NDAA in June.

Debate on other amendments to the annual national defense bill will continue this week on the Senate floor but also may run into next week. The NDAA proposes a total defense spend of nearly $700 billion.

Democrat Sen. Jack Reed, ranking member of SASC, rose to speak against the Paul amendment. He said voting for it would have had “practical and almost immediate consequences” to U.S. service members in the field, allies as well as emboldened adversaries.

Similarly, Republican Sen. John McCain, the SASC chairman, argued against the Paul amendment and said it wasn’t necessary to rush the issue to the floor.

“Haven’t we had enough of bringing things to the floor without hearings, without amendments, without debate,” McCain said. “I’m confident that an overwhelming bipartisan majority of my colleagues would agree to approve the use of military force against the vicious, brutal enemy we face in ISIS and associated forces.”

McCain also argued that repealing the 2001 and 2002 war authorizations without simultaneously passing a new one “would be premature, would be irresponsible and it would threaten U.S. national security.”

The AUMF, or Authorization for Use of Military Force, was first used in 2001 by President George W. Bush when the U.S. deployed forces to Afghanistan.

If the Paul amendment had prevailed, though, it could have forced President Donald Trump to wind down ongoing military operations against the Taliban and terrorist groups in Afghanistan, as well as the fight against ISIS in Iraq, Syria and other countries. That said, there would have been a six-month window for Congress to consider new war authorizations.

“After 16 years, it’s difficult to determine the purpose in Afghanistan,” Paul said during the debate.

The Kentucky senator went on to say the U.S. also is involved in wars in at least six other places, including Yemen but as of yet there’s been no vote in Congress to authorize it. He also cited the U.S. military involvement in wars in Somalia and Libya.

“These wars are costing trillions of dollars,” Paul said. “I think it’s time to start thinking about the problems we have here at home. It’s time to think about the $20 trillion debt we’ve got.”

Also, Paul said “a $150 billion tab” for hurricane damage in Texas is another domestic priority rather than spending money on the undeclared wars abroad.

Source link

[awesomefelicitylewis-blog]

Senate blocks Rand Paul's effort to repeal war authorizations

http://ryanguillory.com/senate-blocks-rand-pauls-effort-to-repeal-war-authorizations/

Senate blocks Rand Paul's effort to repeal war authorizations

The Senate on Wednesday turned back an attempt to repeal the current authority for U.S. military force in the 16-year-old Afghanistan war and the fight in Iraq.

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, an anti-war crusader, had offered an amendment to the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to repeal war authority granted in 2001 and 2002. He argued Wednesday that the current war authorizations are outdated and that Congress needed to “grab power back” from the executive branch, which he said has been using the war authorizations for “unauthorized, unconstitutional and undeclared war.”

Paul had threatened to essentially slow down the legislative process for passing the fiscal 2018 NDAA unless there was a floor debate on the war authorizations. The NDAA sets forth the Pentagon’s budget and major programs for the next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1.

But by a 61-36 vote, the Senate voted to table the Paul amendment — in effect killing — the attempt to repeal the war authorizations.

Overall, there are more than 300 amendments proposed for the Senate’s NDAA. The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) completed its markup of the NDAA in June.

Debate on other amendments to the annual national defense bill will continue this week on the Senate floor but also may run into next week. The NDAA proposes a total defense spend of nearly $700 billion.

Democrat Sen. Jack Reed, ranking member of SASC, rose to speak against the Paul amendment. He said voting for it would have had “practical and almost immediate consequences” to U.S. service members in the field, allies as well as emboldened adversaries.

Similarly, Republican Sen. John McCain, the SASC chairman, argued against the Paul amendment and said it wasn’t necessary to rush the issue to the floor.

“Haven’t we had enough of bringing things to the floor without hearings, without amendments, without debate,” McCain said. “I’m confident that an overwhelming bipartisan majority of my colleagues would agree to approve the use of military force against the vicious, brutal enemy we face in ISIS and associated forces.”

McCain also argued that repealing the 2001 and 2002 war authorizations without simultaneously passing a new one “would be premature, would be irresponsible and it would threaten U.S. national security.”

The AUMF, or Authorization for Use of Military Force, was first used in 2001 by President George W. Bush when the U.S. deployed forces to Afghanistan.

If the Paul amendment had prevailed, though, it could have forced President Donald Trump to wind down ongoing military operations against the Taliban and terrorist groups in Afghanistan, as well as the fight against ISIS in Iraq, Syria and other countries. That said, there would have been a six-month window for Congress to consider new war authorizations.

“After 16 years, it’s difficult to determine the purpose in Afghanistan,” Paul said during the debate.

The Kentucky senator went on to say the U.S. also is involved in wars in at least six other places, including Yemen but as of yet there’s been no vote in Congress to authorize it. He also cited the U.S. military involvement in wars in Somalia and Libya.

“These wars are costing trillions of dollars,” Paul said. “I think it’s time to start thinking about the problems we have here at home. It’s time to think about the $20 trillion debt we’ve got.”

Also, Paul said “a $150 billion tab” for hurricane damage in Texas is another domestic priority rather than spending money on the undeclared wars abroad.

Source link

[trendingnewsb]

Tim Pigott-Smith obituary

Stage and screen actor best known for his role in the TV series The Jewel in the Crown

The only unexpected thing about the wonderful actor Tim Pigott-Smith, who has died aged 70, was that he never played Iago or, indeed, Richard III. Having marked out a special line in sadistic villainy as Ronald Merrick in his career-defining, Bafta award-winning performance in The Jewel in the Crown (1984), Granada TVs adaptation for ITV of Paul Scotts Raj Quartet novels, he built a portfolio of characters both good and bad who were invariably presented with layers of technical accomplishment and emotional complexity.

Tim Pigott-Smith in the title role of Mike Bartletts King Charles III at the Almeida theatre in 2014. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

He emerged as a genuine leading actor in Shakespeare, contemporary plays by Michael Frayn in Frayns Benefactors (1984) he was a malicious, Iago-like journalist undermining a neighbouring college chums ambitions as an architect and Stephen Poliakoff, American classics by Eugene ONeill and Edward Albee, and as a go-to screen embodiment of high-ranking police officers and politicians, usually served with a twist of lemon and a side order of menace and sarcasm.

He played a highly respectable King Lear at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2011, but that performance was eclipsed, three years later, by his subtle, affecting and principled turn in the title role of Mike Bartletts King Charles III (soon to be seen in a television version) at the Almeida, in the West End and on Broadway, for which he received nominations in both the Olivier and Tony awards. The play, written in Shakespearean iambics, was set in a futuristic limbo, before the coronation, when Charles refuses to grant his royal assent to a Labour prime ministers press regulation bill.

The interregnum cliffhanger quality to the show was ideal for Pigott-Smiths ability to simultaneously project the spine and the jelly of a character, and he brilliantly suggested an accurate portrait of the future king without cheapening his portrayal of him. Although not primarily a physical actor, like Laurence Olivier, he was aware of his attributes, once saying that the camera does something to my eyes, particularly on my left side in profile, something to do with the eye being quite low and being able to see some white underneath the pupil. It was this physical accident, not necessarily any skill, he modestly maintained, which gave him a menacing look on film and television, as if I am thinking more than one thing.

Born in Rugby, Tim was the only child of Harry Pigott-Smith, a journalist, and his wife Margaret (nee Goodman), a keen amateur actor, and was educated at Wyggeston boys school in Leicester and when his father was appointed to the editorship of the Herald in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1962 King Edward VI grammar school, where Shakespeare was a pupil. Attending the Royal Shakespeare theatre, he was transfixed by John Barton and Peter Halls Wars of the Roses production, and the actors: Peggy Ashcroft, with whom he would one day appear in The Jewel in the Crown, Ian Holm and David Warner. He took a parttime job in the RSCs paint shop.

At Bristol University he gained a degree in English, French and drama (1967), and at the Bristol Old Vic theatre school he graduated from the training course (1969) alongside Jeremy Irons and Christopher Biggins as acting stage managers in the Bristol Old Vic company. He joined the Prospect touring company as Balthazar in Much Ado with John Neville and Sylvia Syms and then as the Player King and, later, Laertes to Ian McKellens febrile Hamlet. Back with the RSC he played Posthumus in Bartons fine 1974 production of Cymbeline and Dr Watson in William Gillettes Sherlock Holmes, opposite John Woods definitive detective, at the Aldwych and on Broadway. He further established himself in repertory at Birmingham, Cambridge and Nottingham.

Tim Pigott-Smith as the avuncular businessman Ken Lay in Lucy Prebbles Enron at the Minerva theatre, Chichester, in 2009. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

He was busy in television from 1970, appearing in two Doctor Who sagas, The Claws of Axos (1971) and The Masque of Mandragora (1976), as well as in the first of the BBCs adaptations of Elizabeth Gaskells North and South (1975, as Frederick Hale; in the second, in 2004, he played Hales father, Richard). His first films were Jack Golds Aces High (1976), adapted by Howard Barker from RC Sherriffs Journeys End, and Tony Richardsons Joseph Andrews (1977). His first Shakespeare leads were in the BBCs Shakespeare series Angelo in Measure for Measure and Hotspur in Henry IV Part One (both 1979).

A long association with Hall began at the National Theatre in 1987, when he played a coruscating half-hour interrogation scene with Maggie Smith in Halls production of Coming in to Land by Poliakoff; he was a Dostoeyvskyan immigration officer, Smith a desperate, and despairing, Polish immigrant. In Halls farewell season of Shakespeares late romances in 1988, he led the company alongside Michael Bryant and Eileen Atkins, playing a clenched and possessed Leontes in The Winters Tale; an Italianate, jesting Iachimo in Cymbeline; and a gloriously drunken Trinculo in The Tempest (he played Prospero for Adrian Noble at the Theatre Royal, Bath, in 2012).

The Falstaff on television when he played Hotspur was Anthony Quayle, and he succeeded this great actor, whom he much admired as director of the touring Compass Theatre in 1989, playing Brutus in Julius Caesar and Salieri in Peter Shaffers Amadeus. When the Arts Council cut funding to Compass, he extended his rogues gallery with a sulphurous Rochester in Fay Weldons adaptation of Jane Eyre, on tour and at the Playhouse, in a phantasmagorical production by Helena Kaut-Howson, with Alexandra Mathie as Jane (1993); and, back at the NT, as a magnificent, treacherous Leicester in Howard Davies remarkable revival of Schillers Mary Stuart (1996) with Isabelle Huppert as a sensual Mary and Anna Massey a bitterly prim Elizabeth.

In that same National season, he teamed with Simon Callow (as Face) and Josie Lawrence (as Doll Common) in a co-production by Bill Alexander for the Birmingham Rep of Ben Jonsons trickstering, two-faced masterpiece The Alchemist; he was a comically pious Subtle in sackcloth and sandals. He pulled himself together as a wryly observant Larry Slade in one of the landmark productions of the past 20 years: ONeills The Iceman Cometh at the Almeida in 1998, transferring to the Old Vic, and to Broadway, with Kevin Spacey as the salesman Hickey revisiting the last chance saloon where Pigott-Smith propped up the bar with Rupert Graves, Mark Strong and Clarke Peters in Davies great production.

He and Davies combined again, with Helen Mirren and Eve Best, in a monumental NT revival (designed by Bob Crowley) of ONeills epic Mourning Becomes Electra in 2003. Pigott-Smith recycled his ersatz Agamemnon role of the returning civil war hero, Ezra Mannon, as the real Agamemnon, fiercely sarcastic while measuring a dollop of decency against weasel expediency, in Euripides Hecuba at the Donmar Warehouse in 2004. In complete contrast, his controlled but hilarious Bishop of Lax in Douglas Hodges 2006 revival of Philip Kings See How They Run at the Duchess suggested he had done far too little outright comedy in his career.

Tim Pigott-Smith as King Lear at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2011. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Television roles after The Jewel in the Crown included the titular chief constable, John Stafford, in The Chief (1990-93) and the much sleazier chief inspector Frank Vickers in The Vice (2001-03). On film, he showed up in The Remains of the Day (1993); Paul Greengrasss Bloody Sunday (2002), a harrowing documentary reconstruction of the protest and massacre in Derry in 1972; as Pegasus, head of MI7, in Rowan Atkinsons Johnny English (2003) and the foreign secretary in the Bond movie Quantum of Solace (2008).

In the last decade of his life he achieved an amazing roster of stage performances, including a superb Henry Higgins, directed by Hall, in Pygmalion (2008); the avuncular, golf-loving entrepreneur Ken Lay in Lucy Prebbles extraordinary Enron (2009), a play that proved there was no business like big business; the placatory Tobias, opposite Penelope Wilton, in Albees A Delicate Balance at the Almeida in 2011; and the humiliated George, opposite his Hecuba, Clare Higgins, in Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf, at Bath.

At the start of this year he was appointed OBE. His last television appearance came as Mr Sniggs, the junior dean of Scone College, in Evelyn Waughs Decline and Fall, starring Jack Whitehall. He had been due to open as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman in Northampton prior to a long tour.

Pigott-Smith was a keen sportsman, loved the countryside and wrote four short books, three of them for children.

In 1972 he married the actor Pamela Miles. She survives him, along with their son, Tom, a violinist, and two grandchildren, Imogen and Gabriel.

Timothy Peter Pigott-Smith, actor, born 13 May 1946; died 7 April 2017

This article was amended on 10 April 2017. Tim Pigott-Smiths early performance as Balthazar in Much Ado About Nothing was with the Prospect touring company rather than with the Bristol Old Vic.

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Tim Pigott-Smith obituary

Stage and screen actor best known for his role in the TV series The Jewel in the Crown

The only unexpected thing about the wonderful actor Tim Pigott-Smith, who has died aged 70, was that he never played Iago or, indeed, Richard III. Having marked out a special line in sadistic villainy as Ronald Merrick in his career-defining, Bafta award-winning performance in The Jewel in the Crown (1984), Granada TVs adaptation for ITV of Paul Scotts Raj Quartet novels, he built a portfolio of characters both good and bad who were invariably presented with layers of technical accomplishment and emotional complexity.

Tim Pigott-Smith in the title role of Mike Bartletts King Charles III at the Almeida theatre in 2014. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

He emerged as a genuine leading actor in Shakespeare, contemporary plays by Michael Frayn in Frayns Benefactors (1984) he was a malicious, Iago-like journalist undermining a neighbouring college chums ambitions as an architect and Stephen Poliakoff, American classics by Eugene ONeill and Edward Albee, and as a go-to screen embodiment of high-ranking police officers and politicians, usually served with a twist of lemon and a side order of menace and sarcasm.

He played a highly respectable King Lear at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2011, but that performance was eclipsed, three years later, by his subtle, affecting and principled turn in the title role of Mike Bartletts King Charles III (soon to be seen in a television version) at the Almeida, in the West End and on Broadway, for which he received nominations in both the Olivier and Tony awards. The play, written in Shakespearean iambics, was set in a futuristic limbo, before the coronation, when Charles refuses to grant his royal assent to a Labour prime ministers press regulation bill.

The interregnum cliffhanger quality to the show was ideal for Pigott-Smiths ability to simultaneously project the spine and the jelly of a character, and he brilliantly suggested an accurate portrait of the future king without cheapening his portrayal of him. Although not primarily a physical actor, like Laurence Olivier, he was aware of his attributes, once saying that the camera does something to my eyes, particularly on my left side in profile, something to do with the eye being quite low and being able to see some white underneath the pupil. It was this physical accident, not necessarily any skill, he modestly maintained, which gave him a menacing look on film and television, as if I am thinking more than one thing.

Born in Rugby, Tim was the only child of Harry Pigott-Smith, a journalist, and his wife Margaret (nee Goodman), a keen amateur actor, and was educated at Wyggeston boys school in Leicester and when his father was appointed to the editorship of the Herald in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1962 King Edward VI grammar school, where Shakespeare was a pupil. Attending the Royal Shakespeare theatre, he was transfixed by John Barton and Peter Halls Wars of the Roses production, and the actors: Peggy Ashcroft, with whom he would one day appear in The Jewel in the Crown, Ian Holm and David Warner. He took a parttime job in the RSCs paint shop.

At Bristol University he gained a degree in English, French and drama (1967), and at the Bristol Old Vic theatre school he graduated from the training course (1969) alongside Jeremy Irons and Christopher Biggins as acting stage managers in the Bristol Old Vic company. He joined the Prospect touring company as Balthazar in Much Ado with John Neville and Sylvia Syms and then as the Player King and, later, Laertes to Ian McKellens febrile Hamlet. Back with the RSC he played Posthumus in Bartons fine 1974 production of Cymbeline and Dr Watson in William Gillettes Sherlock Holmes, opposite John Woods definitive detective, at the Aldwych and on Broadway. He further established himself in repertory at Birmingham, Cambridge and Nottingham.

Tim Pigott-Smith as the avuncular businessman Ken Lay in Lucy Prebbles Enron at the Minerva theatre, Chichester, in 2009. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

He was busy in television from 1970, appearing in two Doctor Who sagas, The Claws of Axos (1971) and The Masque of Mandragora (1976), as well as in the first of the BBCs adaptations of Elizabeth Gaskells North and South (1975, as Frederick Hale; in the second, in 2004, he played Hales father, Richard). His first films were Jack Golds Aces High (1976), adapted by Howard Barker from RC Sherriffs Journeys End, and Tony Richardsons Joseph Andrews (1977). His first Shakespeare leads were in the BBCs Shakespeare series Angelo in Measure for Measure and Hotspur in Henry IV Part One (both 1979).

A long association with Hall began at the National Theatre in 1987, when he played a coruscating half-hour interrogation scene with Maggie Smith in Halls production of Coming in to Land by Poliakoff; he was a Dostoeyvskyan immigration officer, Smith a desperate, and despairing, Polish immigrant. In Halls farewell season of Shakespeares late romances in 1988, he led the company alongside Michael Bryant and Eileen Atkins, playing a clenched and possessed Leontes in The Winters Tale; an Italianate, jesting Iachimo in Cymbeline; and a gloriously drunken Trinculo in The Tempest (he played Prospero for Adrian Noble at the Theatre Royal, Bath, in 2012).

The Falstaff on television when he played Hotspur was Anthony Quayle, and he succeeded this great actor, whom he much admired as director of the touring Compass Theatre in 1989, playing Brutus in Julius Caesar and Salieri in Peter Shaffers Amadeus. When the Arts Council cut funding to Compass, he extended his rogues gallery with a sulphurous Rochester in Fay Weldons adaptation of Jane Eyre, on tour and at the Playhouse, in a phantasmagorical production by Helena Kaut-Howson, with Alexandra Mathie as Jane (1993); and, back at the NT, as a magnificent, treacherous Leicester in Howard Davies remarkable revival of Schillers Mary Stuart (1996) with Isabelle Huppert as a sensual Mary and Anna Massey a bitterly prim Elizabeth.

In that same National season, he teamed with Simon Callow (as Face) and Josie Lawrence (as Doll Common) in a co-production by Bill Alexander for the Birmingham Rep of Ben Jonsons trickstering, two-faced masterpiece The Alchemist; he was a comically pious Subtle in sackcloth and sandals. He pulled himself together as a wryly observant Larry Slade in one of the landmark productions of the past 20 years: ONeills The Iceman Cometh at the Almeida in 1998, transferring to the Old Vic, and to Broadway, with Kevin Spacey as the salesman Hickey revisiting the last chance saloon where Pigott-Smith propped up the bar with Rupert Graves, Mark Strong and Clarke Peters in Davies great production.

He and Davies combined again, with Helen Mirren and Eve Best, in a monumental NT revival (designed by Bob Crowley) of ONeills epic Mourning Becomes Electra in 2003. Pigott-Smith recycled his ersatz Agamemnon role of the returning civil war hero, Ezra Mannon, as the real Agamemnon, fiercely sarcastic while measuring a dollop of decency against weasel expediency, in Euripides Hecuba at the Donmar Warehouse in 2004. In complete contrast, his controlled but hilarious Bishop of Lax in Douglas Hodges 2006 revival of Philip Kings See How They Run at the Duchess suggested he had done far too little outright comedy in his career.

Tim Pigott-Smith as King Lear at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2011. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian

Television roles after The Jewel in the Crown included the titular chief constable, John Stafford, in The Chief (1990-93) and the much sleazier chief inspector Frank Vickers in The Vice (2001-03). On film, he showed up in The Remains of the Day (1993); Paul Greengrasss Bloody Sunday (2002), a harrowing documentary reconstruction of the protest and massacre in Derry in 1972; as Pegasus, head of MI7, in Rowan Atkinsons Johnny English (2003) and the foreign secretary in the Bond movie Quantum of Solace (2008).

In the last decade of his life he achieved an amazing roster of stage performances, including a superb Henry Higgins, directed by Hall, in Pygmalion (2008); the avuncular, golf-loving entrepreneur Ken Lay in Lucy Prebbles extraordinary Enron (2009), a play that proved there was no business like big business; the placatory Tobias, opposite Penelope Wilton, in Albees A Delicate Balance at the Almeida in 2011; and the humiliated George, opposite his Hecuba, Clare Higgins, in Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf, at Bath.

At the start of this year he was appointed OBE. His last television appearance came as Mr Sniggs, the junior dean of Scone College, in Evelyn Waughs Decline and Fall, starring Jack Whitehall. He had been due to open as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman in Northampton prior to a long tour.

Pigott-Smith was a keen sportsman, loved the countryside and wrote four short books, three of them for children.

In 1972 he married the actor Pamela Miles. She survives him, along with their son, Tom, a violinist, and two grandchildren, Imogen and Gabriel.

Timothy Peter Pigott-Smith, actor, born 13 May 1946; died 7 April 2017

This article was amended on 10 April 2017. Tim Pigott-Smiths early performance as Balthazar in Much Ado About Nothing was with the Prospect touring company rather than with the Bristol Old Vic.

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