Stephen Thorne

In early July, Season 10 will be released as a Blu-Ray box set in the UK. One actor who features in two of the stories in that season is Stephen Thorne, who passed away at the weekend at the age of 84.
His first brush with Doctor Who came when he played Azal in Season 8's The Daemons. He was selected for his height and, despite being a noted radio performer, he originally wasn't going to voice the character. That was going to be done by Anthony Jackson - best known for playing the recently deceased Fred Mumford in the BBC's children's cult classic Rentaghost.
Director Christopher Barry decided to drop this idea and so Thorne was heard as well as seen.

A couple of years later director Lennie Mayne cast Thorne as another iconic character of the Pertwee era - the Time Lord Omega. Again this was for his stature, as well as his voice - as the character remains hidden behind a mask throughout the story. When he does raise the helmet, his body has been eaten away and only his will - and that voice - survives.

Prior to recording The Three Doctors, the production team had already employed Thorne on Season 10, when he portrayed another masked alien - this time the lesser role of an Ogron in Frontier in Space. Although recorded first, this was broadcast after The Three Doctors.
He was considered for a number of other roles in the programme - generally masked villains - but only made one further appearance in the show.

This was as the original male version of Eldrad, in The Hand of Fear. He only appears briefly in the final episode.
If you are a radio drama fan then you will spot his voice in many productions. Two genre roles of note were Aslan, in a 1988 BBC radio production of The Magician's Nephew (whom he also voiced for a 1979 animated film version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe), and he was Treebeard in the highly regarded 1981 BBC radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.
His work was mostly confined to radio, and to readings for audio books (of which he recorded some 300) so his face wasn't that well known to TV audiences or movie-goers. ITV3 frequently repeat a 1983 Adam Dalgliesh whodunnit - Death of an Expert Witness - and he does feature prominently in that, should you want to seek it out.

Thorne taking a breather sans mask on the set of Frontier in Space.

Stephen Thorne (1935 - 2019). RIP.