http://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/what-if...ctor-60882.htm

I wrote this article for the Doctor Who TV website and responded to as many comments as possible.

Thoughts?

I would personally have preferred either Eccleston or mcgann to the creation of a whole new doctor. For me it just felt like they wanted three doctor's, couldn't get Eccleston, didn't want mcgann for whatever reason, so decided 'lets just make one up' and I think the war doctor will alway's feel like a made up afterthought, despite officially being a genuine incarnation.

That being said I thought John Hurt gave a great performance, it's not him or his acting ability I'm against, just the idea of just pulling a doctor out of thin air. Plus I think the messed up numbering of doctors will now be a source of confusion until the shows end.

I liked the article a lot.

For me it was McGann who 'broke the promise' because he was the one who chose that particular potion, not Hurt. So for McGann to be the war Doctor (with a few minor adjustments to the plot) would have made perfect sense.

"I didn't really enjoy The Day of the Doctor"
You. Are. Not. Alone.

I had various issues with the way this all panned out and to me The Day of the Doctor stood as the weakest episode of the 'Doctor Trilogy'.

Part of the problem was that the War Doctor. John Hurt did great, but the character was woefully written in as a concept - to the point that it almost felt like a 'plot of the week' element rather than a landmark revelation about the show. We've spent over 100 episodes of NuWho exploring the concept of regeneration and that underneath it all The Doctor is still the same man. It never added up why the War Doctor was this great secret - the Doctor had always been upfront about his actions in the Time War and admitted to his genocidal actions. If everyone knew the Doctor was responsible for what he did, why was the particular face that committed it such a big revelation when we've been told it is the same man through and through? It was a revelation for a viewer of a TV show - to see John Hurt revealed as a hidden Doctor - but from a character perspective it wouldn't really matter at all. Would the companion, or UNIT, or the Timelords, or the Daleks or anyone really care which Doctor it was? Such a big deal was made out of this "great secret" but it doesn't make any sense in-show.

More to the point, it did a disservice to two very powerful Doctor's. There had been speculation previously about whether it was the Eighth Doctor who had really fought in the Time War. Moffat took the option to make it neither him nor the Ninth Doctor (ignoring his one line about regenerating in Rose), and this denied us the chance to further explore one (or two!) of the Doctor's that had the least TV screen time of all. What a story it would have been for the 50th Anniversary - to ultimately connect the bridge that unites the Classic show and the current show. In the end we didn't even get to see Hurt fully regenerate into Eccleston - an effect left out for creative reasons apparently, but what a loss it was. According to Moffat, this extra regeneration was always intended for the 50th Anniversary story - all I can say is that I think I now understand why Eccleston chose not to be involved, as much a shame as that is.

What else did The War Doctor actually bring to the table? Well not much. He was a character that was supposed to be so unlike the typical Doctor but in his very first scene with Smith and Tennant he was having some light-hearted banter about assembling cabinets! He was The Doctor through and through, and the fact that he never even committed the atrocity he was accused of only serves to truly confuse and mess up the numbering of the Doctor's - by all accounts, there is little reason why he isn't the Ninth Doctor and Eccleston the Tenth Doctor. It's messy. His only other purpose was to make it so that Moffat could add things up to a 'regeneration count explanation in The Time of the Doctor'...was he that desperate to tell that story himself that he would rush it through with a surprise regeneration from the Time War and the revival of a plot from Series 4? Again with the messy. I don't much care for the regeneration count anyway - it's the sort of thing we know that will be resolved all fine and dandy, so I dpn't want to spend ages or a worthy story on it. It is another reason why the War Doctor didn't go down well with me. A one-episode wonder, acted superbly, but as a character so flawed and frustrating that I now can't even watch RTD-era Doctor Who the same way as I used to enjoy, because the emotional core has been completely confounded by The Day of the Doctor.

I'm glad we got Hurt instead of Eccleston, and I'm glad we got Hurt instead of McGann as well.

Love both actors, but with a known Doctor, TDOTD would've just been filling in the blanks. Instead, it took the opportunity to properly expand the mythology, and that's wonderful. Plus, John Hurt is now, technically, the best ever Doctor! How brilliant is that - and how brilliant was he? Killer performance, never had a weak episode! We got a brand new Doctor for the 50th, that's way better than just revisiting a few old favourites, and between The Day, The Night, The Fiveish and Adventure in Space and Time, every surviving Doctor still got their chance to stand right in the spotlight. Only the Third Doctor missing, but his son got a go. Great anniversary.

I did answer this in the comments, but the "How brilliant is that" thing bugs me a lot. It shouldn't need to be stunt casting. Nothing against John Hurt at all, but his casting isn't that special when we've had the likes of Sir Derek Jacobi, Steven Berkoff, Sir Ian McKellen etc. in regular episodes. I just find the whole idea of going "Wow, we got John Hurt as the Doctor, that's amazing!" thoroughly flawed. The character should be strong enough not to need a high-profile name. If the show is that good, it shouldn't rely on it; people would still have watched TDOTD anyway, I'm sure.

As has been said, the character wasn't that terrible anyway. Just a bit grouchy, which either Eight or Nine could've been anyway. It was an okay performance, but not killer by any means. The timey-wimey jab at himself was alright, but you sort of knew it was coming really. It's a get-out clause to say "Hey, my writing is a bit quirky, but I'm self-aware, so I can get away with it!". I didn't want a brand new Doctor anyway; what's the point when Capaldi is right around the corner?

And is there anything so wrong with filling in the blanks? That would seem far more special than the War Doctor concept. Yes, I know it's a bit of service to fans and an obvious idea, and a retread (partially) of The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors with a multi-Doctor story, but think about how successfully The Night of the Doctor was received. Unexpected and barnstorming, and all within 7 minutes. It just seems like a huge disservice to McGann, and to a lesser extent Eccleston.

Sorry, too much, I know!

I'm not congratulating them for bagging John Hurt, I'm congratulating John Hurt for being a brilliant brand new Doctor. Didn't have any particular attachment to Hurt pre-Doctor Who, thought he was perfectly capable as a CGI dragon in Merlin, but I'd be sat here celebrating Ross Kemp in the same way if he'd turned in Hurt's spellbinding performance. Or Lara Pulver, or Alexander Armstrong, or Samuel L. Jackson.

It's expanding the mythology - lighting new flames, rather than revisiting flames we've already lit. Even on its fiftieth birthday, I think it's more important to keep the show moving forwards. With the Day of the Doctor, they didn't just celebrate the past, but they gave us something new to be nostalgic about, and I don't think they'd have achieved that in the same way if they'd given that lead role to McGann or Eccleston. The Day of the Doctor wasn't just about uniting the recent past with the slightly more distant past, it was something that happened to be fifty years old and yet completely brand new - seismic in a way the show'd never done before, and in a way that might have been a tougher sell on any other day. I think that's far more in keeping with the Doctor Who spirit than another traditional nostalgia fest.

That's just the thing though, he isn't really a brand new doctor in the same sense all the others were. Obviously he stands as another official incarnation of the doctor, but he is unlikely to ever appear again, will never have an episode where he is the one and only doctor and in the only episode he was properly in was not even the main focus any more than the two other doctors. He was new and old, here and gone in one and a bit episodes, which is what made his role feel more like a gimmick than anything else. Had it been a scenario where they added a new doctor we could expect to see in future that would have been different, but as it stands, it just feels like they wanted a bit of publicity that both John Hurt and the concept of an unknown doctor would bring as a compromise to themselves and viewers for not being able to get Eccleston on board.

No, they wanted a Doctor that would be capable of the act of killing billions of Gallifreyans - without upsetting fans of the existing incarnations.

But that's the thing - for a lot of Eccleston (and McGann) fans who joined the show in 2005, "their" Doctor was already one capable of that murderous act. We didn't need a 'sort-of-but-not' Doctor in John Hurt to establish that concept and make it work (especially one who was no less likeable than the rest). All it ended up doing was reducing the chance of seeing those particular incarnations again and undermining the emotional resonance of Series 1-7.

I believe the anniversary should be about moving forward as well as celebrating the past, but it ended up all wrong. The story revolved around a time in the Doctor's life spent in his Eighth and Ninth incarnations. But we got a story that focused primarily on the Tenth and Eleventh Doctor...it was all just a bit of a gimmick to get old names back.

I also still don't get why the Doctor decided to keep a whole incarnation a secret. He's never shied away from what he did in the Time War, talking about it regularly and never trying to deny it was him that did it. Why it mattered what face he did it in is questionable enough, but why that face was "the biggest secret" makes even less sense - it simply compliments the idea that all of this was a gimmick.

I still think McGann's Doctor would've been more than capable of doing it, and that would've been more fascinating to explore: how his seemingly optimistic Doctor from the 1996 TV movie has been turned into a very dark and disturbed figure.

I believe that Steven Moffat wanted to allow to have the majority of the Big Finish Productions audios as canon when McGann was in TNOTD. Once this happened, McGann's Doctor could not work as the War Doctor.

I agree. Had we not known all along that The Doctor, in whatever incarnation, was somehow responsible for the supposed destruction of Gallifrey and the Time Lords then the whole "forgotten Doctor" thing might have made some sense. But we did and as you rightly point out it made no sense. Not only had The Doctor admitted to his role in ending the Time War umpteen times, but he had practically boasted about it on some occasions. Remember this little exchange between House and Eleven in The Doctor's Wife?

House: Fear me! I've killed hundreds of Time Lords!
The Doctor: Fear me. I've killed all of them.

That doesn't sound like the words of someone who was so ashamed of their genocidal actions, that they blocked out the entire segment of their life in which they did the deed.

It's like admitting to being a mass murderer but not admitting to what age you were when you committed your crimes. It makes no logical sense.

Exactly the point. All three NuWho Doctor's had been upfront about their crimes. As examples, the Ninth Doctor confronting the Dalek in Dalek. Then the Tenth Doctor confessing he fought on the front line in Doomsday. And then the Eleventh Doctor's exchange that you mentioned from The Doctor's Wife.

What makes all of this even more frustrating is that The Day of the Doctor introduced this "secret" Doctor only to have him never commit the crimes he was hushed up for in the first place. And on top of that we still won't count him as the ninth Doctor because he was going to commit the crime, but then so too were Ten and Eleven in order to help him before Clara intervened. His only lasting legacy is to be the one-off-novelty Doctor who broke the numbering order - it's now a bit of a mess (made even worse in the following episode when the events of The Stolen Earth were confirmed to convolute things further).

People know he ended the Time War - he doesn't go crowing that he spent an entire incarnation participating. Long enough to age, visibly, which takes a lot of living. He remembers the fighting, but not the redemption. Doctor no more.

The Doctor admits to the crime - he's just never wanted to admit being a warrior. That's been a common theme through the modern run. The War Doctor wasn't just put into a position where he had to make a quick, on-the-spot decision, he actually went out of his way to find the ultimate method of bringing the war to an end.

The later Doctors may have had to come to terms with having had to make that decision, but they're still ashamed of having ever been that person.

The Doctor's Daughter, for all of its faults, showed The Doctor's response to the concept of killing and being a soldier. He was against it all, yes, but not to the point of being ashamed of it - he always openly admitted to fighting the good cause.

The War Doctor never committed the crimes he was accused of in the end anyway, and yet he still won't be a numbered incarnation... he gets dismissed outside of that one story he appeared in. And then there's the issue that Ten and Eleven were going to assist him at one point in The Day of the Doctor, before Clara intervened. What if they had helped him? Would they still be Ten and Eleven, or extensions of the War era for the Doctor? It is all horribly convoluted and for the sake of a single episode - when there were two capable Doctor's (McGann or Eccleston) who could have filled the role, and had had the least TV screen time of all eleven in the role up to that point.

It does of course all boil down to opinion, but with Eccleston as my favourite and McGann also being up there it was such a tremendous shame to not see them utilised, and a "Timelord"-of-the-week approach used instead.

As i've said in previous posts, he is always the same man, despite his outer surface personality changing his morals and what he is capable remain the same. When it comes to the important things, either every doctor can do what needs to be done or none of them can. The episode itself proved this, the doctor in any of his incarnations, including the war doctor would have thought it needed to be done, but even the war doctor, despite having his regeneration affected in such a way that he was more fit for war, was still himself, so still couldn't actually do it when the time came.

Besides did fans get 'upset' when matt was willing to kill the star whale because he thought it was what needed to be done? did fans get 'upset' with the way he dealt with solomon? did fans get 'upset' when towards the end of waters of mars when good old happy go lucky tennant turned dark and pompous?. The doctor has never been a complete boy scout in any incarnation, and always has that dark side lurking within, and will alway's go to extremes when pushed, which I think makes him more interesting than if he was just an all round good guy all the time

He had done more than just exist for the Moment, he had been fighting the war a long time. The purpose of McGann appearing was to clearly show the sharp contrast between the Doctor who doesn't deliberately get involved in other people's problems, and the War Doctor who is there to kick ass.

Despite it being the same man, the different incarnations of the Doctor have had very different approaches to problem-solving. We are all different people in different parts of our lives. Eleventh's regeneration underlined that.


No, but all those instances were framed as being shocking and extreme. Still doesn't compare to triggering the genocide of his entire race.

To be fair, he believes he did, or was going to, commit the crimes. Remember, it was the Eighth that voluntarily decided to give up the name of The Doctor.


That's up to how the Doctor defines himself. Even if he has forgiven his past self, he's probably not likely to start referring to himself by number.

But mcgann was the one who made the decision to fight, he had held off for as long as he in good consciousness could, but knew that now he had to help. Asking to be turned 'warrior' in his next regeneration was just to help himself along with what was to come, but however he had turned out, he'd already as mcgann been convinced of the need to fight.


Yes, that is why I said 'when it comes to the important things'. On a daily basis, in different incarnations he may have different fashion taste's or more/less of a sunny disposition or a different idea of exactly how to get the same result from small situations but when it comes to something as big as genocide that is the more serious sort of thing that would be decided by the fundemental morals and value's he always has.

Put it this way, you yourself may have different likes/dislikes now to what you would have ten years from now or ten years ago, because we are all slightly different people as years progress, but when it comes to something that is a big thing, like mass genocide, if your not physically capable of such an action now, you never would be, because that is something decided by your core morals and values



enacting the moment itself was framed as shocking and extreme, thats why a doctor who had forced himself to fight even had his doubts and ultimately couldn't do it. The other examples I gave did not have such consequences as enacting the moment would have, but I presented them to show how every doctor has that little bit of dark side and is willing to go to extremes, it's a part of him built in as much as his desire to be the hero. It's harder to imagine say mcgann or tennant enacting the moment but I quote the waters of mars example again to show how we only really know how far a usually fairly placid doctor will go when he's really pushed. It's something in all of them and I thoroughly believe that any doctor could have been pushed to act as the war doctor did. Given that it was a situation which, we know without the war doctor it would either had to have been mcgann or eccleston, I think it would have worked better with eccleston, but would still have been believable with mcgann. I throughly believe that when Moffat was coming up with the rough idea in his head he was imagining eccleston in the war doctors place, and only had to alter the idea when he was writing the actual script, because at that point he knew he could not have eccleston.

Agreed, but then that also raises more issues. He believed he was going to commit the crimes, but then so too did the Tenth and Eleventh Doctor's when they were going to help him - in their mind at that point, they were actually going to be doing it for a second time!
You also have the slight issue of how The Doctor said that it was the War Doctor who broke the promise, whereas it was actually the Eighth Doctor who did. The War Doctor and his persona was merely a product of some very clever potions.

All in all, the War Doctor is a very convoluted concept. I don't know if it could ever have been written to work more effectively, but the whole secret regeneration hinging on the actions of the Time War doesn't work when the Doctor has always been explicitly honest about his involvement. It just doesn't add up for me.


There's been the odd instance where the Doctor has referred to himself by number, or accepted the number that someone else has given him. He confirmed he was the Eleventh Doctor to Craig in The Lodger, and then Clara identified his Eleventh incarnation in The Name of the Doctor. This is of course only a minor thing, and for all intents and purposes I'm happy to see Capaldi identify himself as the Twelfth Doctor as he most likely would if the situation arose. But then it just makes the War Doctor feel like even more of a gimmick - Moffat had the confidence to introduce a secret incarnation, but lacked the confidence to properly implement it into the shows continuity, I feel.

Yes, he was convinced of the need. But unable to do it.

Sorry for this but it just occurred to me somewhat:-

8 is about to die so the sisters of Ka'an (or however it's spelt) give him a potion that forces a regeneration into a specific type of 'Doctor'.

Is it OK that after The War Doctors tenure that he then goes onto having a 'normal' regeneration infinitum without there being any consequences?

He had made the decision and was it the state of mind that he was going to do it. Now realising it's what he needed to do, he would have done it regardless of wether he'd had to change or not, being the war doctor just made it an easier task. To the fighting the war stuff, I give the same answer I gave for using the moment, that being that the outer surface personality changes but the inground base personality that makes him who he and defines not only his morals and want of saving people, but also what he is capable of as a person, remains the same