As the days narrow inevitably towards The Day of the Doctor there is an issue that fans have been discussing since pictures leaked during the production of the Anniversary story back in April and May. Despite a title card declaring, unambiguously, that John Hurt is the Doctor at the end of The Name of the Doctor, is John Hurt really the Doctor, and if so, where does he fit into the overall continuity and timeline of the show?. This is a point of particular interest to the Tour, as we’ll explain below. If you’re a complete spoilerphobe move along at this point.
There’s plenty of evidence pictorially that the Hurt Doctor is either the ninth Doctor or a proto-version of the ninth. Fair enough as Time War is a virtually unexplored area of Doctor Who mythology, but if Hurt really is the true ninth (and we suspect he isn’t–just the Moff playing around with fan expectation yet again) that would mean Eccleston is the tenth, Tennant the eleventh, and Smith the twelfth. Spinning this forward that would mean that Capaldi would be 13th and then there would be Valeyard implications. Yeah.
Let’s say though that Hurt is the actual ninth. The Tour by necessity uses a rather strict (though fraying a bit at the edges) nomenclature to manage all the images within. Would we have to undertake renaming all of the relevant sections to be consistent with this change in the mythos? We don’t know. It would certainly be an endeavor though, but one whose bridge we’ll cross at the appropriate time.
In the meantime, the Tour is pushing out a very small point update just on the John Hurt images that were originally put forward in May because we just don’t know how relevant they’ll be on November 24th.
