Warner's entire career is worth gushing about (he's still the Ra's al Ghul to me) but there's something deeply special to me about him acting against Shatner and Stewart in two opposite roles and pulling off both effortlessly. His film stuff is worth checking out first and I have second the talk about checking out his Big Finish audio work.
Warner was on David Morrissey's podcast, Who Am I This Time?, one of those podcasts with an actor talking about their craft, last year. (Morrissey is very good at eliciting conversation in this, and I think it's one of the better examples in the genre.) While the interview is mainly about The Omen, Warner also talks about some of his other work, including A Christmas Carol. He was originally cast as Jacob Marley, but Warner didn't want to do another sinister character at that time and he had his agent push for Bob Cratchet. During the shoot, Warner mainly hung out with George C. Scott in his trailer, and they played Trivial Pursuit. Scott insisted the answers to questions about Patton were incorrect! I was listening to some of his BBC audio work this evening -- specifically, BBC Radio 4's 2014 The Once and Future King, in which he plays Merlyn -- but I think 2011's The History of Titus Groan, adapting Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast novels, may boast one of Warner's finest performances. He plays a character called The Artist, a painter nearing the end of his own life who lives on an island, and Titus Groan tells him the story of his childhood, his escape from his family and Gormenghast, and the world he finds beyond Gormenghast's walls. It offered me the key to Gormenghast that had always eluded me, and Warner's character helped me to understand some things I went through in my own life.
RIP. I'll always remember his unforgettable performances as Gorkon, and as Aldous Gajic on Babylon 5. It was a memorable guest appearance.
What's so wonderful about that film is that I imagine you could have swapped roles with Warner playing HG Wells and McDowell as Jack the Ripper and I bet it would have still worked. Anyway a great actor, wonderful in anything he starred in. RIP, Mr Warner.
Yes, you totally could! In fact, they were rather cast against type. Their "energy" in real life was probably opposite of how they were cast.
Mcdowell paid a nice tribute to Warner on twitter https://twitter.com/mcdowellmalc/status/1551600668581892097?s=21&t=wacL_7LUZpb_Zaa8zj8Cwg
Whether it was his role in Tron, Time After Time or Titanic, he often played a bad guy. But he did it so well. His interaction with Stewart in "Chain of Command" was tremendous. In honor of his memorable, convincing performance as Gul Madred, I say "There are five lights!" RIP.
I always thought it inexplicable that they cast him in TFF in a fairly thankless role, rather than as Sybok, so it was great to see him in 2 subsequent iconic (within trek, anyway) roles, Gorkon and Madred.
Warner talks about St. John Talbot in the David Morrissey podcast I mention above as an example of how American scriptwriters will give English characters ridiculous names. His character in The Omen had a ridiculous name in the original script (when it was called "Birthmark"), and he also cites Miles Richardson's character in A Princess for Christmas, who's named "Paisley Winterbottom."
they followed up with putting his Doctor into the Bernice Summerfield New Adventures (series 3 onwards with S7 coming out in September)
In the original "Birthmark" script, his character was named "Hayden Payne." He said he or his agent suggested renaming the character.
Well it's kinda amusing that David Warner in Tron not only played crooked Encom programmer Dillinger but within the inner cyberspace he also played Sark warlord and voiced the evil AI. And to hammer home how old Tron really is now you see how relatively youthful Mr. Warner and Jeff Bridges looked...
I think he voiced something for Tron Legacy too, like an extra scene. I'm sure he talks to his son at one point or something.
Amusing? Not really. All programs in the ENCOM system look like their Users. So naturally Sark (and the MCP) would share Dillinger's features, since he created them both. Same goes for Flynn/Clu, Alan/Tron, Gibbs/Dumont, Lora/Yori, Peter/Sark's Lieutenant....etc. That's just the way it works in the system. If you are a programmer, any programs you create will exist in the computer world as...copies of you. (Fun fact: The ENCOM programmer - in the original Tron - who asks Alan if he could have some of his popcorn...is Ram's User. And had a fairly big part in that "Flynn Lives" arc.)