Ok it's an argument that rages on but surely in 'The Day of the Doctor' this is the moment that John Hurt plays the 9th Doctor.

The Time War is over and Gallifrey has been saved. The 'War Doctor' has no war to fight and says to Smith and Tennant "But for now for this moment I AM THE DOCTOR AGAIN."

What else is he if not the 9th Doctor? He regenerated from McGann's Doctor and regenerates into Eccleston's Doctor. No one actually calls him 'The War Doctor' apart from the titles eager not to muck up all the merchandise titles.

The Time Lords called him the Doctor so did The Daleks. He is the 9th Doctor

Christopher eccleston is the 9th doctor. The war doctor was an anomaly.

Yes! and others called him the Doctor, and so he was. And I call him the Doctor.

The Doctor is simply a name, a promise you make to yourself. As such, John Hurt broke that promise and didn't call himself by that name. He was the ninth incarnation of the man, but he was had no actual name as it were.

You're left to decide for yourself how pretentious and convoluted the whole idea is. Maybe if the War Doctor had been a decent idea for the 50th Anniversary I'd think otherwise, but for me it was nothing more than a pretentious gimmick - played by an exceptionally good actor who was enjoyable all the same.

This pretty much sums it up for me too.

I love a huge number of Moff's stories, and was chuffed to bits when he became showrunner, but he seems to me to run roughshod over established Who concepts somewhat, for the sake of spectacle or event. I'm happy with changes that bring the programme into the 21st century, but he seems to be changing too many core concepts imo. Maybe it's just me, I'm getting old.

Yes the Doctor made a promise and those are mentioned in 'The Day of The Doctor'. While Hurt is fighting the Time War his Doctor doesn't believe he deserves that title. Once the Time War is over and he didn't destroy all the Time Lords and Daleks he says in that speech for this moment I can be the Doctor again. So he's the 9th Doctor as his behaviour from that point on would be that of the Doctor and being again faithful to the promise.

We only knew Eccleston as the 9th Doctor, Tennant 10th etc because we had no other reason but to believe that was the case. Moffat hadn't come along and mucked about with the history of the character at that stage.

The War Doctor didn't originally exist, so he wasn't given a number for conveniences sake, so it doesn't have a knock on effect on all future numbers, and people don't have to go through their reference books with red markers.

Numbers are supposed to help us, not make things confusing, so in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn't matter how you number the Doctors.

If Chris had returned for the 50th, there would be no need for the War Doctor.

You could also look at it as The War Doctor wasn't a natural regeneration, Eight died and was resurrected and then chose his new regeneration, where as the rest were close to death kick in regenerations, even as The War Doctor accepted that he's The Doctor again, he started to Regenerate soon after. Also...


This, IF Chris returned, the whole War Doctor thing would have been very different.

Yes, he is the 9th incarnation of the Doctor. Was anyone doubting this?

Replace Chris with Paul (as in McGann) and I agree. But have Chris there alongside David and Matt.

The numbering system means nothing to the Doctor. The one we call the 'Ninth' had disowned his predecessor, however the current incarnations accept him again.

All this means precisely nothing. The numbering is a convenient naming scheme for us, the Doctor and his companions have no use for it.

We didn't all start insisting that the next Doctor was going to be number Twelve as soon as Tennant did his diverted-regeneration trick. Matt became the Eleventh, despite the anomaly.

Wasn't The Moment Billie Piper?

True, but essentially that's the same as saying that somebody didn't die a natural death because they were resucitated in hospital and then chose to be euthanased. The bottom line remains that "death is death" and there's no two ways about it, and it's understandably now very divisive if "regeneration is regeneration" so to speak.

Frankly for all his triumphs and failings, the whole War Doctor element is one apsect that Moffat has made a real mess of. In the long term it doesn't matter, but for fans who care about the history of the characters it's made something of a convoluted mess.

I don't think it's an age thing. All of my friends used to watch the show when it came back in 2005 - it was a new thing for us, as we're too young to have seen Classic Who. Now only myself and one of my friends still watches, and even then that friend skipped some of Series 7 and never bothered to catch up.

There's still a great number of people who love the show, and Moffat too. I myself loved Series 8 for the most part, more than any series since the fourth or fifth. But Moffat's episodes weren't the highlight for me, and a couple of them (for me the first and the last) definitely weren't anything to write home about.

It's admirable that he still has new ideas and concepts for the show after so many years, but even a mans new ideas can grow stale when you become accustomed to his execution of them.

That's because back then, the diverted-regeneration trick never counted as a proper regeneration, and RTD even stated that he didn't believe the Doctor had used up a regeneration. It was only when Moffat shoehorned it in that it counted.

I think the numbering is sometimes convenient for the Doctor if he meets himself. In The Five Doctors, the First asks the Fifth which incarnation he is. Imagine him doing that with War and it'd be a bit complicated.

For people who care about the history of the character it's not really a problem. For those who care about numbering systems, it will be.

There's nothing convoluted about it - the Doctor was traumatised by what his incarnation had decided to do, and so he repressed the memory as much as possible.

But how does that make any difference at all? Whether or not 10.5 counts in the regeneration total makes no difference to how we label the incarnations. (Besides, what RTD privately thinks doesn't really affect what's on screen.)


Of course. When you're young, it's simple to tell people who you are. "I'm 21, and I'm single." As you get older and experience more of life, it gets complicated. "I'm 42, married twice, divorced once, three kids, one of whom lives with their father."

Or indeed

The War Doctor thing was only created as a backup in case Chris didn't return.

John hurt plays the 9th incarnation of the Time Lord who is most commonly known as "The Doctor",

However, in this incarnation, he was known at times as "The Warrior" (The Night Of The Doctor) and "The Renegade" (The Day Of The Doctor) and didn't take the name "The Doctor" again until shortly before his ninth regeneration...

... But of course he didn't remember these events (The Day Of The Doctor) because he was in the company of later incarnations of himself at the time, so the memory of him experiencing it then doesn't return until he experiences it from the point of view of a later incarnation, who will then forget it again themselves unless they are the latest incarnation present, so nobody except the Eleventh Doctor will have remembered it. (... and even he won't have remembered his conversation with The Curator if he is indeed a later incarnation of the same Time Lord.)

So after his 9th regeneration, he is aware that he is now in his 10th incarnation, but he has no memory of ever going by the name "The Doctor" at any point during his 9th incarnation, or of saving Gallifrey, so as far as he is concerned, he IS "The Ninth Doctor" and his 9th incarnation was not "The Doctor" and didn't deserve the name.

He remains under this impression until he experiences the events of The Day Of The Doctor from the point of view of his later incarnations, and then by the time he retains the memory permanently, he's also used another regeneration without changing his face, so two incarnations (the 11th and 12th) both went by the same name (The Tenth Doctor).

The only question for me is...

Why weren't there 2 David Tennants in the "all thirteen of him" scene in The Day Of The Doctor ?

Not really. The Doctor had always been relatively open about what he did in the Time War. He explained it to Rose in The End of the World, he talked about it in Dalek, confirmed he was there to Rose and Jack in The Parting of the Ways, revealed he fought on the frontline in Arcadia during Doomsday, explained he had tried to save Davros at some point in the war during The Stolen Earth. Far from repressing it, he remembers it, which Moffat even makes a point of in The Day of the Doctor itself when the Tenth Doctor berates the Eleventh Doctor for forgetting the casualty count.

There are many more countless examples of when he talks openly about it, specifically his involvement and actions...not expressed with pride obviously, but expressed in a way that suggests he's making himself remember what he did rather than trying to forget it. The first time he suggests he's trying to move on from it was the rather nice bit from the Eleventh Doctor in that very same exchange with the Tenth Doctor...hinting that River was what helped him get over it...

Eleventh Doctor: I moved on!

Tenth Doctor: Where? Where can you be now that you could forget something like that?

Eleventh Doctor: Spoilers.

The prospect of him fighting in the Time War and being responsible for the death of his people was never a source of repression for The Doctor. He lived with it and carried it around with him, and rather openly at that. The secret regeneration was only a secret for the viewers benefit - a stunt - from the companions point of view they know all those faces are the same man, they don't know or care which one it was that ended the war (with the previously presumed Doctor's being Eight or Nine).

To put it another way, it's like me robbing a bank, getting away with it and telling everyone I know about it for years afterwards. Then it's revealed my big secret is that I wore a specific jumper the day I did it... I've never shown anyone this jumper before and I've not worn it since and I kept it secret from everyone. I mean everyone still knows it was me who commited the robbery, but now they know that that was the jumper I wore when I did it.

If we're meant to buy that all the regenerations are the same man, then it really doesn't make sense that a particular guise that man had was such a big reveal...it doesn't make sense as a secret in-universe, only from a viewers perspective. And that's why it's convoluted.

Your example (a jumper) isn't convoluted, it's incredibly simple. And it's not really comparable - the Doctor's regeneration isn't just a face, in this particular case it's an identity. I'm not saying the Doctor repressed the memory in the sense of forgetting that it ever happened - more like projection, or denial.

Survivor guilt can lead to self-loathing - in the Doctor's case, he has the opportunity to actually reject that version of himself...

I can't argue that the War Doctor is something that had to exist for the Doctor's attitude to the war to make sense - I agree that there was no 'missing piece' that had to be filled in. But it's not like it doesn't make some kind of sense for the character.

I'm waiting for the "Peace Master", or is that "Missy Peaceful"?

oh hang on, that of course already happened 5 Master incarnations ago, at a time before The Doctor first appeared on our screens

-Moffatt has effectively turned the back story into a load of cobblers and I'm sure if you asked someone like Terrance Dicks he would agree (off the record)