The only confirmed Hartnell DVD release is The Tenth Planet but The Crusade may have its missing episodes animated too…
No upcoming Troughton releases confirmed but it`s almost certain that The Underwater Menace is going to have it`s missing episodes animated, along with The Moonbase…
Pertwee won`t change unless there are more Special Editions, like The Green Death…

And don`t forget you can check out every release for every story with our Format Guide

we have to re-think things a little.

First off, I reckon a Retcon on this scale is unprecedented and kudos to The Moff if he can really pull it off in November. So our list of Doctors, as we always knew it up until yesterday had Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor. So far, so canonical.

However, if John Hurt is really the Ninth Doctor, the Forgotten Doctor, then that makes Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor the Tenth incarnation, which means in turn that David Tennant`s Tenth Doctor is really the Eleventh.

Which means that Matt Smith is now the Twelfth Doctor.

Or does it?

Let’s think about this for a minute…

David`s Doctor had a regeneration, in “The Stolen Earth”, which admittedly wasn’t completed, “Ten” storing the rest of the energy in his handy spare hand. But he still regenerated, which means, to my mind at least, that if he didn’t have his handy spare hand to hand, he would have changed [ presumably into Matt] at the end of that ep instead of End of Time Part 2.

So that means, the way I see it, that there are two incarnations of the Doctor that look exactly the same, that is, they both look like David Tennant.

So David Tennant is really the Eleventh AND Twelfth Doctors. A regeneration is a regeneration, it was still used up, only “Ten” didn`t change at the end of it, he just saved up the energy he din’t need  after his body healed itself and didn’t change. But a regeneration was still triggered and one of the Doctor’s regenerations was used up, even though it didn’t result in a change in the Doctor`s appearance.

Which makes Matt Smith the Thirteenth Doctor, and, if you want to get all Classic Who Canon about it, The Last Doctor!

Think about it – when Clara was in the Doctor`s Timeline, just before Doctor Hurt turned up, she said she only saw Eleven Doctors and that Hurt was the only one she hadn’t seen.

That means that the Doctor who dies at Trenzalore is Doctor Matt, since Clara stepped into his entire timeline and didn’t see one future Doctor…

When the Doctor/Teselecta got shot on the beach in The Impossible Astronaut, he/it started to regenerate. Now that could have been just for effect, to convince River, Amy & Rory that he was dead since he got shot mid-regeneration… or it could mean that he does have other regenerations after all, if the Teselecta made an exact copy…

So when Matt does finally leave the show, I wonder what the explanation, if any, will be for the Fourteenth Doctor, because that`s who Matt`s succesor, whoever it is, will be…

Okay, so it looks like John Hurt is the “real” Ninth Doctor and fans all over the planet will have to amend their lists…

“The Doctor”

William Hartnell
Patrick Troughton
Jon Pertwee
Tom Baker
Peter Davison
Colin Baker
Sylvester McCoy
Paul McGann
John Hurt
Christopher Eccleston
David Tennant
Matt Smith

Quite aside from being quite possibly the biggest retcon in fiction ever, I think having a “forgotten” Doctor, one who betrayed his principles, for whatever reason, a “dark” Doctor if you like, is a brilliant idea, one that ranks only second to the concept of the Time War.

Of course, there will be some fanboys who will go into meltdown over this, which will no doubt please Moffat no end. As a hook to get the General Public watching in November it`s a bloody good one. And if ever there was a quality actor who could pull off that kind of character, it`s John Hurt . I think Eccles is off his head not coming back for the Special, which I predict will be called “The Forgotten Doctor”.

[don't they make a lovely couple? Can't wait to see them together!]

I can hear the fan speculation for November starting already… and it`s in my head too!

Wondering just how much, if any, we’ll see of the Time War.
Davros v Doctor Hurt – how cool would that be!
Oh and I know The Master legged it to the End of the universe but Derek Jacobi facing off against John Hurt – squeee!
Will we get a regeneration? Either from McGann to Hurt or from Hurt to Eccles?

It could be total flashback overload come November but I doubt it will be, still fascinating to wonder how much we’ll see of it in the ep.

And how the hell does Totters Lane etc fit into all this?

And will David Bradley`s Tardis set make an appearance? God I hope so, how cool would that be, to see the original in colour in the show itself!

And speaking of colour, we’ve got to see Totters Lane, haven`t we?
I mean, if they’ve built the sets for the docudrama anyway… that just seems like too good an opportunity to pass up. And we know, from the location filming photos, that they filmed the entrance to the lane so…?

And only SIX MONTHS to go!

Hell yeah!

Looking back at my thoughts prior to transmission, some things I got right, some I got wrong, but I got the important one right, and that’s what matters!

Okay, first up, let’s deal with those flashbacks at the start. So glad I was wrong about the Gallifrey flashback, how many times have fans imagined that escape scene. Shame they didn’t get Babelcolour to do it, it would have been so much better than it was. As for the rest of the clips that Clara was inserted into, there were some pretty bizarre choices in there I must say – I mean, Dragonfire? WTF?

I thought there’d be some out of focus, in the background doubles and I got that right, though some of them didn’t look much like the Doctors they were meant to be, but I suppose you can explain that away as “the memory cheats”…

As for the story itself, well I got it right that we wouldn’t actually find out his name and there were a couple of moments where I guessed the dialogue correctly, which always gives me a warm glow. And did anybody else spot the line that was very similar to one from “Castrovalva”? Yeah, `course you did.

As for the “secret” itself, well, if you`ve been anywhere near the Internet, even in the run up to the “leak” of the episode, and showed any interest at all in the Anniversary special, then you had a good idea of exactly Who it was that  John Hurt was playing.  But if you didn’t, it must have been the biggest surprise ever. The moment he spoke, and you heard that distinctive voice of his, you would have been thinking “bloody hell, they’ve got John Hurt to play The Valeyard!”  But no…

And I got it right that Clara was Temporal Fission-ed across the Doctor’s timeline though having The Great Intelligence as the villain didn’t really have that much of an impact as it could have been pretty much anyone, the whole point of the story was simply to open the Doctor’s grave and find what was inside.

Guessed that Trenzalore was where he was buried and loved the idea of the now-dead  Tardis being his tomb. And I do think it’s a good idea to establish that, at some point in the future, the Doctor does die, he’s not immortal. Of course, how many Doctors there are before Trenzalore is another question…

And speaking of questions, there are plenty of those left hanging in the air between now and November 23rd.  I love the idea of a “forgotten” Doctor but I do think they could have made him a bit less of a scruffy bugger, don’t you?

And that was “The Name of the Doctor”, the obvious winner of the DWM Season Survey, the result of that will never be in doubt.

And what are the chances that the next issue of DWM will have a “John Hurt IS The Doctor” cover?

Can’t wait to Fan Edit this one!

SATISFACTION LEVEL FOR THIS EPISODE? – 96%

FRUSTRATION LEVEL FOR THIS EPISODE? – 2%

ANTICIPATION LEVEL FOR NEXT EPISODE? – 80%

SEASON SEVEN [According to Whopix]

#1 – The Name of the Doctor
#2 – The Crimson Horror
#3 – Nightmare In Silver
#4 – Journey to the Centre of the Tardis
#5 – The Bells of Saint John
#6 – Hide
#7 – Cold War
#8 – The Rings of Akhaten

CYBERMAN

IRON MAN