WMG / Doctor Who 50th AS "The Day of the Doctor"

Lead up speculation that has all been Jossed or Confirmed

Confirmed

The girl in the scarf isn't a Clara clone

...but we're meant to think she is, because Moffat is such a troll.

• One's as likely as the other. Likely as not, Moffat doesn't have a care or a clue, and just wants fans debating it.

Why Moffat really created the War Doctor

It's because Eccleston didn't want to return to the show so they had to create a Doctor that lived the Time War. So he nudged in an unknown regeneration that happened right before Nine. Alternatively, he exists because they weren't sure they could get Eight to appear in an episode back then. So the War Doctor was born out of casting necessity. That and it allowed some Stunt Casting by having John Hurt play the Doctor.

• Eccleston could not logically have played a significant part in the Time War because at the start of Rose, he was seeing his new face for the first time: it was clear enough he'd only just regenerated.
  • An Alternate (albeit much less plausible) Character Interpretation is that during the fighting in the Time War, the Doctor didn't really have a lot of time to check himself out in a mirror.
  • Moffat said in an interview somewhere that he just couldn't imagine the 8th Doctor fighting in the war. Given his character, it would take a very dramatic change for him to do so. 9 appeared at the start of Series 1 to be not long after his regeneration (and that seems to have been the interpretation Moffat went with, given his comments about 8), so he went with an incarnation placed between the two.

The Zygons will be revealed to have infiltrated UNIT

• It has been revealed Kate Stewart will appear in the special and there is filming at the Tower of London. It seems likely therefore that UNIT will be involved. The Zygons are shapeshifters and the 50th anniversary should involve a big threat. Therefore it seems likely that the Zygons will have infiltrated UNIT and will thus be able to quickly defeat them.
• Confirmed.

The Ninth Doctor will appear after all.

• But since Christopher Eccleston elected not to reprise his role, John Hurt will play an aged version of Nine from an alternate timeline or parallel universe or something (Hurt is wearing Nine's leather jacket in a handful of photographs of him on location for filming).
  • Semi-confirmed to some extent. "The Name Of The Doctor" states John Hurt plays the Doctor, only what seems to be an anagram form of him.
• Semi-Jossed. The War Doctor starts regenerating, but Nine doesn't appear on screen.
  • Semi-confirmed, as Nine shows up at the climax in recycled footage, and again in the line-up at the end. Then again, they all do.

The anniversary will involve the Daleks.

• Why not have them in?
  • Same troper. A teacher says he knows a girl whose father works on Doctor Who and he is seeing the new Dalek Emperor.
  • Seemingly Confirmed. http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/348206
  • Truly Confirmed. They were seen in the trailer.

The episode will begin around the Time War

• Perhaps the birth of JHD will be seen. Time Lords will force the regeneration of 8 into someone more willing to fight.
  • Jossed - we saw that regeneration happen in a prequel minisode instead. And it wasn't forced by the Time Lords, he was killed in a spaceship crash.
• Confirmed for the episode proper.

Paul McGann's Doctor will show up and regenerate.

• Because of this.
  • As much as this troper would like that it has seemingly been Jossed by McGann. http://doctorwhotv.co.uk/mcgann-on-50th-return-rumours-52161.htm
    • Rule 1: The Doctor lies. McGann may well have said that, but until the 50th airs, the possibility is not closed.
    • It could be a quick cameo. Or they could do something like the Name of the Doctor, showing a Fake Shemp regenerating.
• More evidence?
• Happens in the prequel episode The Night of the Doctor

The Twelth Doctor will appear at the very end of the Anniversary Special

• Everything will appear to be fine. Clara will have been saved, the Hurt!Doctor will have been defeated in some way, and Ten and Eleven will, despite whatever differences between them, part on good terms. All seems well for Eleven UNTIL, just as he's about to leave, he sees one face that he REALLY didn't want to see, the one he can INSTANTLY tell will be his next incarnation. Eleven will know from the way Twelve looks at him that his time is nearly up. And that will lead us neatly into the Christmas special...
  • If this is true, and if the WMGs are right about John Hurt's Doctor being an alternate future version of the Doctor, then the 50th Anniversary special will feature Doctors who represent what is, what was, what will be, and what might have been. Considering the nature of the show, that would be a very fitting theme.
• Confirmed of sorts.

A previous character will make a surprise appearance

• Perhaps a previous companion. They could do something like the surprise appearance of 3 in Zagreus using audio from Devious.
  • Peter Davison apparently has a copy of the script. Maybe he will just give some audio.
  • Tom Baker (or at least a lookalike) was seen next to the 11th Doctor's TARDIS in full costume and a film crew. The 4th Doctor might make an appearance after all.
    • Jossed. Turns out it's part of a sketch for "Have I Got News For You"
    • If http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-sagers/exclusive-tom-baker-to-ap_b_4295773.html is accurate, Tom Baker will appear, after all
• There have been rumors of Catherine Tate, aka Donna Noble filming something Who-related with David Tennant.
  • Apparently all the Doctors will give audio. Maybe Big Finish audio will be used. Or new audio.
• Confirmed with all the other previous doctors, but can it be really be a surprise?
• Confirmed with the Fourth Doctor being the museum Curator.

The Title Sequence will have more than one Doctor

• I think we can bet on an entirely different title sequence really.
  • Have an internet, my good sir.
  • From the person who made this, thank you.

The Ninth Doctor will appear at the very end

• Maybe John Hurt's Doctor regenerates during the events of the episode, thus resulting in the 9th appearing after all.
  • I was thinking the same thing. Hurt's Doctor could redeem himself with a heroic sacrifice which would cause him to regenerate.
• If stock footage counts then yes, he reappears courtesy of stock footage near the end of the special.
• Sort of confirmed. The War Doctor regenerates, but off screen.

Paintings of the Previous Doctors will appear

• Hence Matt's teaser.
• Holy fuck confirmed, if you count Tennant as a previous Doctor.

Both Paul McGann and Christopher Eccleston will appear.

Eight regenerates into Hurt in a flashback, and then Hurt regenerates into Nine.

• There are rumours McGann will regenerate in a Minisode.
  • Confirmed. This happens in The Night of the Doctor

A Time Lord will escape the Time War

• We already had two Time Lords escape ( The Doctor and The Master), so that's a given?
  • Another Time Lord may escape through the Doctor entering. Perhaps the Master from "The End of Time", having regenerated.
• Confirmed. Namely, all of them.

JHD, 10, and 11 will end the Time War together

• A photo shows them all with their hands on the button.
• Confirmed. But they Take a Third Option.

A Mythology Gag will happen referencing Big Finish Doctor Who

• "Dark Eyes"?
  Charley, C’rizz, Lucie, Tamsin, Molly.. friends, companions I've known, I salute you.

Gallifrey survives

• Somehow due to the intervention of 10, 11 or one of the companions, the insanity of the Time War is still stopped and contained but Gallifrey and the majority of the Time Lords survive.
• Confirmed, except it's "and", not "or".

The Moment did exactly what it was meant to do

• We never see the Moment used. Perhaps the Moment is just the user interface, and all it does is convince people to find another way out. The truly worthy/skillful/etc. will find a way to end it without genocide and destruction, and everybody else will just give up.

Rose will imprint herself on the War Doctor's psyche, causing later regenerations to be so fixated on her

If the Rose we're seeing is indeed some kind of Bad Wolf version of the character, it could be her influence on the War Doctor's actions during the Time War will cause him to subconsciously remember her once he regenerates into the Ninth Doctor. That's part of why Nine chose her, after spending however much time on his own.

• That would explain why they were so willing to overlook her flaws.

• Maybe confirmed, but Nine's altered memory does not help this theory.

The First Doctor will appear

As David Bradley, with his classic TARDIS.

• Seconded. They even filmed a few reconstructions of classic scenes, seemingly for the hell of it. Steven Moffat even said "If you were to have any Doctor back, it'd have to be the 1st Doctor."
  • Forgot to mention, they now have a replica of the classic TARDIS interior/exterior. Why not use it one more time?
  • That's what I was thinking, it would be a waste to not use it once. At the least they'll save that for later.
• Confirmed, and so do the others. Slightly Jossed, in that he appears through archive footage of William Hartnell not a new performance by David Bradley..

In addition to the above guess

The 4th and 5th, (at this point I wonder if maybe all of them in some form) will also appear.

• Well, according to an interview, Tom Baker claimed he was in it.
• Confirmed, and so do the others.

10 is from between "The Waters of Mars" and "The End of Time"

• Hence why he sees Elizabeth. She is seen in a forest and the Doctor later said she was waiting in a glade to elope with him. Thus adds credence to the theory Rose might not be exactly Rose. Also 10's placing might lead to 11 seeing that his end is soon.
• Confirmed, I think.

Jossed

The girl with the Scarf (Osgood) got it from No. 4

considering that the 4th now works as curator of the gallery, it would only make sense that he would give his old scarf to his biggest fan...

• Pre-Jossed, to anyone who watches the original show and knows the scarf's actual fate.
  • Unjossed: The scarf from Castrovalva is a different scarf. .
  • People who have a "trademark" outfit or accessory usually own multiples of it. Clothes get dirty, after all.

The Other will appear in the 50th anniversary episode.

Founders of the Time Lord society were Rassilon, Omega and the Other. So far, Omega appeared in The Three Doctors (10th anniversary) and Rassilon appeared in The Five Doctors (20th anniversary).

• The Premise of "The Other" was that the mystery would be revealed that the Doctor would turn out to be the Other's reincarnation. So the Other's been in every episode.
  • Except Mission to the Unknown.
  • Most of what has been said about the Other is Expanded Universe material, which Moffat probably didn't feel bound by.
• Jossed.

The 11th and the 10th Doctors will not get on so well.

The 10th was still hurt over the events of the Time War, and the 11th at one point uses his genocide of the Time Lords as a Badass Boast. Also, the two have slightly differing senses of humor. I mean, how do you think a conversation regarding the bowtie is going to go?

• 11 was just as hurt over the Time War as 10 was, and the so-called "Badass Boast" was said extremely bitterly and in a pained fashion to the individual that robbed him of any hope for forgiveness. And Ten wore bowties before. And the Doctor as a whole was big on the bowtie look as Two and/or Three. Ten himself is a throwback to Five.
• There is also the speech Ten gave to Wilfred about how regeneration was like dying, saying the thing that makes him Ten dies and some new man goes "sauntering" off. There are really only two ways this can play out when Ten and Eleven meet. Either Ten had not met Eleven till whatever happens in the 50th anniversary happens, or Ten has met Eleven and finds him disagreeable.
• The Doctors will possibly comment on each other's clothes and give criticism.
• More than likely Jossed as this interview with Matt and David shows.
  Matt Smith: ...Our Doctors seem to get on quite well.
  David Tennant: Well they bicker for a bit, but I.. I think... I think they quite enjoy each other's very presence.

The Great Intelligence will be a villain

In The Bells of St John it claimed to have grown stronger from feeding on human minds and escapes. Could this be building up to a later appearance?

• Richard E. Grant will be appearing in The Name of the Doctor so it seems that the appearance will actually be there.

• Jossed.

The 50th anniversary will feature an alliance of enemies

Perhaps the Great Intelligence will build an army against the Doctor, like the Alliance but exploring their potential more. Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Ice Warriors... Maybe the Master will be forced into recruitment but act as the The Starscream.

• To add weight to this theory it has been confirmed the Zygons will return. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/doctorwho/articles/The-Zygons-Return-for-the-50th-Anniversary-Special
• Alternately the Silence will be the masterminds of this alliance, They done it before with the Pandorica and we all know they don't want the Doctor reaching Trenzalore.
• Jossed. But next time...

The Doctor was split up into echoes in the Name of the Doctor

• And as a result, people identical to his various incarnations were split up across his timeline (Salamander, Maxil, Caecillius.) Within the Day of the Doctor, people identical to some of the other incarnations will appear. And John Hurt will be an echo of John Hurt's incarnation (because he was referenced as an actor in the show previously.)
  • That actually makes sense in a scary sort of way.
  • Jossed as far as this episode goes, but I suppose that echoes appearing later is possible...

"The Day of the Doctor" will start and end as the classic series did

Will start with a modern day policeman walking past the screen as the TARDIS materializes and one of the Doctors (Ten/Eleven) walk out and say to his companion.

The Doctor: "Wait in here, please, Rose/Clara. I won't be long."

Then, after the adventure is over, Eleven and Clara will walk off back to the TARDIS for more adventures in time and space, with the Doctor giving a closing monologue ending with...

Eleventh Doctor: "Come on, Clara, we've got work to do!"

• Jossed. Started with Clara getting a message to meet the Doctor, and though it ended with a speech from the Doctor, Clara wasn't in it.
  • Technically it did start with the 'policeman walks past 76 Totter's Lane' moment, then cuts to the scene you mention. Also, Clara is working at Coal Hill School, where Ian and Barbara, the first companions, worked, and I. Chesterton (presumably Ian) is Chairman of the Governors. (Edited because I typoed the name of the place. Apparently I've been watching too much of a certain YouTube channel lately, so I have Trott on the brain...

The Zygons will try to assassinate Elizabeth

• Subverted, they needed her alive. Still, the emphasis is on "try".

Billie Piper is not playing Rose. She is playing the Bad Wolf

• I wouldn't be surprised if Rose is not exactly Rose. Maybe it is A Form You Are Comfortable With, like the TARDIS as The Brigadier in "Zagreus".
• Jossed, yet almost confirmed. She calls herself the Bad Wolf, but is actually the Moment.

The Sisterhood of Karn will help construct the Moment

• Or they will help create JHD.
  • Confirmed; they give the Eighth Doctor the means to turn himself into 'The Warrior' in The Night Of The Doctor.
• Jossed. It's ancient time lord technology.

JHD is a representation of the wilderness years

John Hurt's Doctor is what the Doctor saw in the Untempered Schism.

This is how John Hurt's Doctor could be the secret the Doctor has run from all his lives, despite only showing up after the Eighth. A young First Doctor saw the Moment and knew that it would lead to the destruction of Gallifrey and that he was the one to use it. So he ran so that he would never find himself on Gallifrey when the Moment had to be used, but the Time War forced his hand.

• A variation on this could be how the Doctor managed to have been working on the calculations to seal Gallifrey away all his lives.

The Sisterhood of Karn will appear and gift the Doctor with new regenerations

The Sisterhood were responsible for regenerating the Eighth Doctor into the War Doctor. They'll balance this in the 50th Anniversary special by granting the Doctor more regenerations.

• Jossed.

---

The Sisterhood of Karn lied.

When they told the Doctor that their little dry-ice potions could affect his regeneration, they were actually lying. They knew he had it in him to end the war on his own, but he needed someone to light a fire under his ass and some way to convince himself his actions would be beyond his control. Thus, the potions, which actually do nothing. The War Doctor isn't inherently any more dangerous than any other incarnation, he just believes he is, so he lets himself be dangerous. Sort of a Magic Feather type deal. I mean, honestly, looking at Eight's actions in Big Finish Doctor Who, he's no harmless space hippie.
Also, possibly, when they told the Eighth that he was dead and they'd revived him for only four minutes, they were lying then too — he was in fact alive, although maybe not so well. They needed him to think he was already a dead man walking so he'd feel that he had nothing to lose. What was actually in the potion? Poison. Just so he'd regenerate and think he was now inherently a "warrior" rather than a doctor. And of course he bought it hook, line, and sinker.

• An interesting theory and all a possibility. Since the Doctor still has 4 regenerations left at that point, he couldn't have just died- he would've simply regenerated into the ninth doctor naturally. However, they truly have perfected the art of regeneration by being able to guide the Time Lord towards their desired type (either psychologically or through potions for real). This is compounded with the fact that a Time Lord may regenerate 12 times, meaning there can be 13 iterations of a Time Lord in total. How many time lords did the commander in Gallifrey said there was near the climax? 13. Shouldn't there now be 14 Doctors?
  • Do you mean, because the Sisterhood of Karn did something to his regeneration, he should have had a bonus regeneration, and therefore there should be 14 Doctors? Or, in other words, regenerating into John Hurt shouldn't have used up one of his regenerations? I suppose that's a possibility. But I don't think the Sisterhood of Karn said anything about that, and I didn't get the impression it was implied. Or am I misunderstanding your point? Why should there be 14 Doctors?
  • "The Doctor still has 4 regenerations left at that point, he couldn't have just died" - I thought that the Master demonstrated that a Time Lord CAN die, even with Regenerations left, by refusing to Regenerate. ...unless the Master was actually out of Regenerations (again), and the whole rigamarole he cooked up to come back in The End of Time wasn't JUST to make the Doctor suffer. I just thought that Eight was so tired of the War (and you KNOW that "who can tell the difference?!" line cut him to the core) that he just wanted to end it all.
• Confirmed: In the novelization among other reveals, like the Doctor having visited the Brig multiple times before his death but the Brig not telling Kate and the Daleks surviving because they saw hundreds of the Doctor's TARDIS appear at once so some ran away, it mentions that the 'elixir' was lemonade and dry ice. The sisterhood needed the Doctor to become the War Doctor but didn't want to burden him with the guilt of going against his promise.

The Poem of Demon's Run describes the War Doctor and the Time War.

In The Night of the Doctor, the term "Good Man" is used again, going so far as to tie in the fact that in the mind of the Doctor, the terms "Good Man" and "Doctor" are the same thing. And then this Good Man went to war..."Demons run when a good man goes to war" - Demons - during the Time War, both Time Lords and Daleks came to be seen like this."Friendship dies and true love lies" - By friendship, maybe good Time Lords like Romana? By true love lies, maybe Rose is going to lie to the War Doctor, even if she sees herself as the Doctor's love?"Night will fall and the dark will rise" - On the Time Lords and the Daleks, and the darkness in the Doctor will rise."The battle's won but the child is lost" - the child might represent the Doctor's innocence maybe?

Osgood ("Yes") is the Curator's companion

Hence where she got the Fourth Doctor's scarf, the Curator gave it to her for old times' sake, since he was revisiting that face.

The Curator is the Doctor's final regeneration

He did say he was revisiting old faces, and that he would retire, so maybe the Curator is the Doctor more-or-less at the end of his life.

The Curator is a sort of reverse Valeyard, meta-fictionally

• The Valeyard represented the future evil for the Doctor, prosecuting him, and desperate for more life. He appeared when the show was effectively on trial and the future for Doctor Who looked bad. The Curator appears during TDOTD, when Doctor Who seems more popular then ever, with the world's largest fictional simulcast. He represents who the Doctor would like to be towards the end, a retired man in a Museum, thinking back to "the old favourites". He also tells the Doctor Gallifrey was saved, further showing a good future for the Doctor.

Ten had vague memories of this happening in his past, just like Eleven

A line from "Blink":

Tenth Doctor: Look, sorry, I've got a bit of a complex life. Things don't always happen to me in quite the right order. Gets a bit confusing at times. Especially at weddings, I'm rubbish at weddings. Especially my own.

The wedding he was referring to was his (Ten's) future wedding to Elizabeth the First, which happens later on; he implies it was recent for him when addressing Ood Sigma in "The End of Time" Part 1, which puts "The Day of the Doctor" towards the end of his life. But because both the War Doctor and the Eleventh Doctor were in attendance, he has some memory of attending the wedding of one of his future incarnations, even if he doesn't remember the details due to his memory of the special being erased. Hence why he considers it "confusing".

The Curator isn't actually The Doctor

• He's actually just a member of UNIT who happens to look like Four, knows the title of the painting because he's the curator, and knows enough about the Doctor from the UNIT archives to mess with his head a bit.
• Another possibility: he's actually a projection brought on by the Doctor's imminent regeneration, like Cho-je in Planet of the Spiders, or the Watcher in Logopolis.
  • Imminent? He appeared after the War Doctor had left, 10 has about two years to go (he was close to 907 when regenerating) and 11 has most of his life to go.
• Seemingly Jossed – after all, in her correspondence, who did Elizabeth Ⅰ appoint as curator to The Under Gallery?

The Curator is actually the Fourth Doctor

He looks older due to time streams overlapping, and knows what's going on because he was just there helping seal Galifrey and won't lose the memories until the time streams disentangle. He was just messing with Eleven about being from the future.

The Curator is the Fourth Doctor - but from an alternate, wibbly-wobbly timeline

Somewhere along the way the Fourth Doctor had an adventure where he was somewhere so long he aged - just like 11 in "Time of the Doctor". That wibbly-wobbly 4 ended up mixed with these time streams for a bit.

The Curator is actually Tom Baker

In the Doctor Who-verse Tom Baker never went into acting, and eventually became a museum curator where he likes to troll visitors by pretending to be from their future, because that would be very in-character for Tom Baker.

The Bald and Grumpy Time Lord General is actually Romana

Because it has been repeatedly confirmed by word of god that Time Lords can change gender upon regeneration, and his comments on the doctor suggest a high level of familiarity.

• In "Hell Bent", the genderbending part of this WMG is confirmed: the General's "normal" gender is stated to be female.
  • Of course, "Hell Bent" also has the Doctor rudely ignoring the General when he comes to the barn, then shooting the fellow so he can escape with Clara. Rassilon also expects the General to side with him against the Doctor. Neither of these seem likely if the General is a former companion.

The Moment isn't the ultimate weapon at all. It's the ultimate Failsafe / Reset Button.

Ten and Eleven have memories of The Moment being used for destruction, which suggests that it originally was. But only because The Moment knew how to manipulate the Doctor(s) to bring about a reset later on.

Even if the Doctor does find Gallifrey, he can't do anything about it just yet

The Daleks still exist. In fact, as of right now they have rebuilt their empire and are as strong as ever. There's also the issue of Rassilon's maniacal idea; the military council in this episode make an offhand mention that the President and the High Council have their own plans they are pursuing. If the Doctor locates Gallifrey he can't simply restore it and expect a happy ending; there is no reason the Daleks wouldn't immediately reopen hostilities and Rassilon wouldn't respond by going ahead and destroying creation to "ascend". Hell, he might do that anyway if given the chance. The Master would probably come back as well.

In many ways, if he finds Gallifrey the Doctor will be in the same situation that Ten was in The End of Time; bringing it back doesn't solve anything by itself. Perhaps if he defeats the Daleks once and for all, finds a way to deal with Rassilon and the Master, and in general improves the universe enough that it and Gallifrey can peacefully coexist, then it can be done. Which adds a bit of poignancy to his quest to help as much as possible; it's the only way he can ever go home.

• Seems semi-confirmed as of The Time of the Doctor: the prospect of Gallifrey returning could does indeed threaten another Time War, with multiple races willing to do anything to prevent that from happening.

The Twelfth Doctor is on his way home when we see him in "The Day of the Doctor".

It's the easiest way for the Doctor to go home, and it explains why he isn't helping his past incarnations before the climax. The calculations were also finished with the Eleventh Doctor. So the Twelfth Doctor, hypothetically, did not 'need' to be there with his past.

What the Doctor saw in the Untempered Schism...

...were the beginnings of the calculations needed to save Gallifrey. The Doctor basically did the same trick as Rassilon and the Master, sending a message to himself back in his youth. The out-of-sync timelines left the memory as imperfect, perhaps showing him his involvement in Gallifrey's destruction, which would've certainly sent him running. However, over time he discovered that hidden in that nightmarish vision were the steps needed to avoid it. Again, the out-of-sync timelines prevent him from truly recalling it until the Eleventh Doctor's time, but the memories came and went enough that he was able to move things along at the right stages and make sure his every regeneration up to the Twelfth Doctor was present for the big event.

Gallifrey dies again.

Seriously. Think about it.

2.47 billion children is all very sweet and all, but we're forgetting something: those children were Gallifreyan children, destined to grow up on Gallifrey under the Gallifreyan system.

Since the late 2nd Doctor's era, the viewers have been gradually clued in, bit by bit, to the fact that Gallifrey is an awful, awful place - or rather, that it's quite a beautiful place which had the bad luck to be populated by the Time Lords, arguably the worst race in the entire galaxy. Decadent, corrupt, and rotten to the core - and that was BEFORE the war drove them so crazy that Rassilon's eventual endgame plan involved OMNICIDE. By the last day of the war - the day in which Gallifrey is currently suspended - the Time Lords were the one and only race in existence terrifying enough to make David Tennant's Doctor pick up a gun.

Those children weren't saved. Their physical death has been postponed, but one way or another, Gallifrey has to die. There's more-or-less no other way this can end. Not so long as the Time Lords remain on the planet, anyway. You seal them away from one war, and how long do you REALLY think it will be before Rassilon and his chums start another one? Seal them away from that one too, and the corrupt political, legal and educational systems will sooner or later birth another Rassilon, and another one after that, and another one after that.

The Doctor has had a self-deluded, romanticised view of Gallifrey ever since he was forced to blow it out of the sky to end the evil Final Solution campaign of the Time Lords, and the Time War with it. That's something he needs to get over. I'm not nearly as good a writer as many of the BBC staff, but the way I see it, there's only one satisfying way to bring closure to this whole story arc:

The Thirteenth Doctor will find Gallifrey, and release it from stasis, and then be forced to confront the reality of just what exactly he's done: not saved anyone, simply prolonged their suffering. You can save a species from natural disasters. You can save a species from another species. You can't save a species from itself.With no better options available to him, the Doctor will kill Gallifrey. Again. But this time, he understands. This time, he CAN'T delude himself. He KNOWS there was no alternative, not when you're dealing with a race like the Time Lords. So this time, he understands that he has nothing to atone for. He can move on. He can accept reality as it is, and he can heal.

Doctor, heal thyself.

Character development (and story arc) complete.

Boom.

• One last thing: I bet 12 (13)'s "darkness" comes from actually finding Gallifrey. something like, looking back on 11 and thinking, "You idiot. Saved the world, big happy ending, do you have any idea what you let out?" And, big leap here, maybe he wasn't there to help but there to try to stop them, to re-War Doctor everything up.
  • This is what I thought, exactly. 11's fall coupled with attempting to redeem Gallifrey, while having to kill to save it... turns 12 into that glaring man, saving the planet he knows will eventually require those actions. The Valeyard lives.
  • To offer an alternative opinion, he could just be frowning / glaring in concentration at what he's doing to help his other selves. Plus, to be honest the idea that the existence of Rassilon means that every single Time Lord, including children, needs to be wiped out is kind of like suggesting that the existence of Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin means that every single human man, woman and child should be wiped out — i.e. a bit dark and nihilistic. The whole point of the special is that hope exists, that redemption is possible, that something looking like it's inevitable is not the same as it being inevitable, that not every Time Lord child deserved to die for the sins of their elders. Turning around a few episodes later to basically go "hah hah, just kidding, they're all irredeemable scum and need to be wiped out", even by Doctor Who's standards, be a bit of a whiplash (and, to be frank, a bit of a silly one). Plus, the Time War is not the be-all and end-all of the series — after eight years, surely we can begin to move on to something a bit different than the Doctor being The Last Of The Time Lords.
    • Most Time Lords were innocent, from what I heard in TDOTD this was a plan by the High Council. And we saw what happened to those who opposed Rassilon. The General didn't seem aware of the plan, showing his confidence by saying the High Council had already failed. It's like Richard Dawkins saying Islam is absolutely evil due to the most extreme members, or Christopher Hitchens calling North Korea "a nation of racist dwarves" due to the oppressive elite.
    • I also figure that's just him being determined. After all, this is the moment he's spent lifetimes preparing for, and it's still basically an impossible task. That look is just a silent way of him turning to the Daleks and Fate itself and echoing Five's line to Stoz in "The Caves of Androzani": "I'M NOT GOING TO LET YOU STOP ME NOW!"
• Well, Thirteen doesn't seem in any particular hurry to go back to Gallifrey. She has to deal with those giant frogs in London, remember?
  • Ironically, by the end of the Thirteenth Doctor's era, this has kind of come true, with Gallifrey destroyed again. However, it's the Master that was behind it, not the Doctor, and not surprisingly, the genocide of millions of children who could have grown up to be like the Doctor is treated as a tragedy, not as some great moral victory.

Post 50th Speculation

• See that Kubrick Stare? Since Matt is the 12th, Capaldi must be the Valeyard. But it's okay, because one day the Doc is gonna set the screwdriver down one last time and retire, Doctor no more, just a Curator...unless Trenzalore calls...Speaking of Trenzalore, Ten's "I don't want to go" is now my headcanon of him split-second remembering 11 mentioning Trenzalore, so it's him saying that he doesn't want to go there. Plus, 13th regeneration is now canon, go wild on theories. Was what he said in Sarah Jane Adventures true? How did 9 show up to help win the Time War then go back and brood, is entering the time lock an auto-memory wipe?

Gallifrey Falls No More is what the Face of Boe was refering to in "Gridlock" when he told Ten "You Are Not Alone".

Remember that the idea of Jack living to become the Face of Boe is just conjecture. And it would make sense for it to be a hint at the survival of his race and homeworld to give the Doctor hope, rather than the return of his worst enemy which resulted in tragedy.

Gallifrey is hidden somewhere inside the TARDIS

At some point while all of the Doctors were saving Gallifrey, putting it in stasis on a massive scale, they lost track of it, and have no idea if their plan succeeded (until the Curator came along and told Eleven that it worked). This WMG suggests that Gallifrey's pocket universe/stasis cube painting/whatever is currently inside the TARDIS, and has been there for a very long time - it's the perfect scenario, hiding something in a shape that is able to constantly rearrange itself - Gallifrey would be protected and untouched until the moment it needed to be released.

• Maybe as an extension to this, this was the reason the TARDIS was blown up in series 5, in an effort to destroy Gallifrey permanently.
  • According to The Time of the Doctor, the Silence destroyed the TARDIS in an attempt to keep Gallifrey from using the cracks to try and get back into the universe, but just made the cracks in the first place, so you're kinda right.

The Moment was constructed from Validium

• Animate Inanimate Object? Created in the Old Days of Gallifrey? Very destructive? And living? And, as Lady Peinforte was apparently a Wolf of Fenric, perhaps Validium likes taking the form of a Wolf.

The Curator went through a Time Window to the 16th Century and becomes Captain Redbeard Rum

Once he finds his way back to Gallifrey, the Doctor will free and redeem his people by turning them human and scattering them throughout the universe and time.

The question of why humans look like Time Lords has never been resolved, nor has the question of why Human Aliens are so common in the Whoniverse. If the Doctor is to release his people from their stasis once and for all, yet not allow the likes of Rassilon or the Master to regain power and threaten the rest of the universe, the ideal way for him to do so would be to adapt the DNA-altering mechanisms that the "watches" from "Utopia" and "The Family of Blood" rely upon, and apply it en masse to every man, woman, and child on Gallifrey. We know that the Master became a decent person when he forgot his real identity and became Professor Yana, so turning the other Time Lords into humans (or Trakenese, Alzarians, Kaleds, Thals, whatever) and then dispersing them to Earth and the many, many worlds where Human Aliens are found could likewise give them all a fresh start.

The Face of Boe wasn't talking about the Master when he said "You are not alone", he was talking about every human the Doctor's ever met. We, and all the Human Aliens who've likewise been his companions, are the descendants of Gallifreyans whose DNA was re-written to adapt us to life on other worlds. The Doctor was never cut off from his own people, only from his own culture.

• Human Aliens has been resolved in "Zagreus", where Rassilon scatters self-replicating, biogenic molecules through time so life in Time Lord form develops on many worlds.

The Moment is Clara, saving the doctor one more time

She doesn't remember that particular instance because she was an AI that time, not a human.

• It appears Clara doesn't remember all her lives, she just has memory of the Doctor's lives.

Osgood is "Glasses" girlfriend

Come on, it makes sense!

The Curator is a Zygon.

A Zygon from the future time traveled to the year in which "Terror of the Zygons" took place because it knew where The Doctor had encountered its people. It captured the Fourth Doctor long enough to imitate him and troll the Eleventh Doctor into believing that Gallifrey is still out there. For all we know, it thought that Gallifrey was really gone forever and wanted to send The Doctor on a futile quest.

The Twelfth Doctor has a facial disfigurement.

Which is why we do not see all of his face. This will be revealed over the course of Capaldi's tenure.

• Jossed; if anything, the eyes-only view is an internal Shout-Out to how the latest version of the opening credits only show the Doctor's eyes, not his face or silhouette like the classic-series credits usually did.
  • Slow down there, buckaroo! As of two seasons in, there's still no proof that the Doctor doesn't get a disfigurement and 12 past that time could be the one who helps out with Gallifrey. I admit it's unlikely, but not necessarily "Jossed".
• Jossed, as of the end of Twelve's run, he never receives any sort of facial disfigurement.

All Doctor actors really did come back for the 50th anniversary.

Steven Moffat used a time machine to bring back every actor who has played the Doctor when they were each at their prime. However, nearly all of "The Day of the Doctor" had been filmed by the time he did this, so he was only able to shoot them all standing together in the final scene.

The reason for Steven Moffat creating the War Doctor.

The Steven Moffat of the future went back in time and told himself about the War Doctor. This event is a Stable Time Loop.

The War Doctor technically regenerated/outright died multiple times.

8 was outright resurrected, and "The End of Time" had a line about combatants "dying only to be brought back." Who's to say this didn't happen to War? Also War was a regeneration who's personality was determined on purpose, so he could've managed to repeat the process in order to deal with the whole War Is Hell thing. While "Time of the Doctor" would seem to contradict the whole "War had a number of regenerations", that doesn't mean it couldn't have happened: somewhere else there's a Wild Mass Guessing that the Sisterhood of Karn resurrected him rebooted his regeneration cycle, which may very well be the case. War only changed to 9 because Gallifrey stands/the whole "being really old" ended up being a limitation, and thus underwent a natural regeneration. If this is the case, the War Doctor regenerated seven times while retaining the same form. Also it's highly unlikely that the Doctor in general would last long enough to become an old man: the only incarnations that managed to do this are 1(who spent most of his life on Gallifrey) and 11. Hell, 8 was the only one to be noticeably older, and not by much.

Whilst there were at least 13 incarnations of the Doctor, there were multiple versions of the same Doctor.

My reasoning from this is taken from Stargate SG-1, where in it was states that for a planet wide coverage of Tollan Ion Cannons requires at least 38 of the things. Now with Gallifrey being slightly larger than Earth, there would be more than 38 points to cover the planet inside the stasis field. This is my explanation for why we saw 7 in at least two different outfits, and is also the basis for my head-canon reason as to why Meta-Crisis and Doctor Donna were also there, albeit along with everyone else involved during the Journey's End episode, but meh

• The Time Lords said all "13" Doctors were here, not all 13, the Deus ex Machina and the Mary Sue's Doctor.

In the preview of the theatrical version, the 11th Doctor claims to have just seen the 100th anniversary special with all 57 Doctors...

...so this means:

• a) The Doctor has gotten four more new sets of 13 regenerations.
• b) The Doctor has run through nearly four times as many regenerations in the 2nd fifty years as he did in the first 50 years.

Which makes you wonder what kind of enemies the Doctor has made in his (or her) second fifty years that it took 44 more versions of himself (or herself) to defeat?

• Well, not spending sixteen years off the air, for one thing.
  • Or the Doctor has to work with alternate versions, Shalka, COFD Doctors, and other Unbound versions. If one assumes the EDA, DCTT, and the Infinity Doctors takes place in other continuities like Zagreus said that would make sense.
  • Per COFD the Doctor has been known to blow through a bunch of regenerations because he forgets to unplug a machine before he sticks his hand in it.
• Well, in "Hell Bent" Rassilon admits they don't actually know how many regenerations they gave him.

For the 100th anniversary one story will be a multiversal teaming of Doctors

• From non-canon stories (see above). They could team up against the personification of all their evil, Grandfather Zagreus the Valeyard, who has merged the timelines of various Doctors to enable his existence, and is left insane with the contradictions. The Doctors trap him in a bizzare nightmare Land of Fiction where he has to experience "Dimensions in Time".
  • And every single monster and villain will appear in a Cameo or not, with the Daleks to the Cybermen to the Ice Warriors to Sutekh to the Great Intelligence to the Master.

No one remembers the Twelfth Doctor's appearance at Gallifrey.

In "The Time of the Doctor", the Eleventh Doctor explains to Clara that a Time Lord has twelve regenerations available to them. He goes on to explain that, despite being the Eleventh "Doctor", he's the twelfth regeneration because of the War and Metacrisis Doctors. Yet, in The Day of the Doctor, the Twelfth Doctor/thirteenth regeneration makes his presence known during the mission to Gallifrey. This might seem innocent enough to us the viewers (to which this hadn't been revealed yet) and to the First through Ninth Doctors (who wouldn't know about Metacrisis), but the Tenth and Eleventh should've known better and possibly taken from this that they had more ahead of them, but Eleven speaks as if he's fully aware that he is the single last incarnation.

As stated at the end of The Day of the Doctor, neither the Tenth nor War Doctors will clearly remember the events of that story because of how out of sync the timelines became. The only one among them who remembers clearly is the Eleventh, the most current Doctor present. But that's the thing: Eleven wasn't the most current Doctor. He has the clearest memory of them all because he was the most recent Doctor central to what happened, but he was affected by it, same as the others and never realized it.

• Those Time Lord military guys who'd detected Twelve's presence would remember for sure, as would Clara if she tagged along with Eleven for the thirteen-police-boxes-over-Gallifrey scene rather than stayed behind in the barn.

Osgood's first name is Jessica...

• ...meaning that her nickname might actually be "Jess".
  • Jossed (well, disproven) as of the Series 9 episode "The Zygon Inversion".

The Seventh Doctor hit the wrong button at one point.

• The Seventh Doctor is seen in both the classic series TARDIS interior and the interior from the TV movie. The reason? Seven hit the wrong button on the controls and accidentally changed the desktop theme.
  • Or all the TARDISes got a bit confused and kept changing their looks every time a different Doctor's voice sounded out on the communicator. Seven's is just the only one for which we happened to see the result on-screen.

Christopher Eccleston (Nine) will appear in the 80th anniversary episode in 2043.

• Much like Tom Baker declined to participate in "The Five Doctors" (20th anniversary) but then came back for the 50th.

Nobody at UNIT (except possibly Osgood) knows that the Curator is a future incarnation of the Doctor

• Because if they did, they wouldn't have bothered kidnapping Eleven. He's already there and can take care of the emergency himself.

The Curator didn't merely "acquire" the Gallifrey Falls No More painting: he painted it.

• The Doctor's the only person(s) who witnessed Arcadia's fall first-hand, who isn't trapped in stasis on Gallifrey. Who else could have successfully captured that event's image, if not him? The only other beings to see it were Daleks, which wouldn't be capable of creating art even if some of them escaped destruction or imprisonment.

The Curator deliberately left his own identity as the Doctor uncertain.

• Whenever a younger Doctor knowingly meets an older version of himself, he's automatically induced to forget about their encounter to avert the danger of paradoxes and the creation of fixed points in time. By refraining from stating outright that he's a future Doctor, the Curator leaves just enough room for alternative explanations (was he lying? crazy? a Zygon messing with Eleven's head?) so that Eleven can safely remember their conversation.

12 has just got through the events of "Deep Breath"

• Perhaps that was what he was doing between leaving in the TARDIS and returning for Clara with new clothes. Just making sure to get closing the Stable Time Loop out of the way.
• This would certainly explain why the TARDIS lighting is blue in his brief appearance, as opposed to the orange it usually is in his console room.

The Curator is the Fourth Doctor (From the past)

During his regeneration, right when he merged with the Watcher, time particles became all screwed up. In which the Fourth Doctor was rapidly aged and was flung into 2013. Since he was stranded, he got a job as a curator, and assuming his time as The Doctor was over, gave his scarf to Osgood. When he saw Eleven, he sensed he was a Time Lord, or rather an incarnation and gave the hints. Though the "Revisiting old favourites" line, wasn't about becoming an older incarnation again. He was simply talking about the fact that Eleven had met up with him. And gave subtle hints that he was him, but was afraid to outright say it, in fear of paradoxes. Though, after Eleven left, he realized time was fixing itself. He took back his scarf, and soon enough he was brought back to where/when he merged. No time had passed, and he had lost all memories of what had happened.

• Except...he wasn't wearing that scarf when he regenerated...

The Curator is Donna

Ten was wrong and she had gained the ability to regenerate as result of the metacrisis and when something finally triggered it she either got her memory back or worked out the details from the hole she now realised was there. Revisiting old faces is a way of dealing with the memories without his brain exploding. Perhaps he also warned Clara about the Doctor's memory wiping habit as well.

Each Doctor retains at least a subconscious recollection of having met the others, even if they can't consciously recall the encounter or what was happening.

This is why, back in "The Five Doctors", Three was able to perfectly intuit Four's description ("Teeth and curls?") from Sarah Jane's quite vague gestures: his subconscious still remembered seeing the other Doctors' faces on his TARDIS viewscreen when they were contacting one another to coordinate their efforts. It's also why Ten became suspicious of Jackson Lake's identity almost immediately in "The Next Doctor", as he knew he only had one more regeneration left, and still retained ten previous selves' fragmentary recollections of what Eleven really looked like.

The time-locked Gallifreyans are the ancestors of the Tharils

We know from "Warriors' Gate" that both Tharils and Time Lords are time-sensitives. When Rorvik hooks Romana into the navigation system, she's able to visualize — not as clearly as Biroc, but that could be lack of experience with that particular setup (or lower pain tolerance). Dwarf star alloy is used in "Warriors' Gate" to bind the Tharils, and in "Day of the Moon" to bind the Doctor.

We also know from this episode that being part of a Time Lord painting doesn't keep you from moving around and doing things. The Doctors were active, as was the Dalek they smash through the painting's glass, as were the Zygon infiltrators. And the time-lock/pocket universe the Doctors put Gallifrey in works on the same principles.

So, the thirteen TARDISes have left, and Gallifrey stands in a single instant of time. There had to be at least some Gallifreyans who weren't willing to sit around and wait for the Doctor to let them out. My hypothesis: one team was able to genetically engineer a group of Gallifreyans to amplify their natural time sensitivity. Those engineereed Gallifreyans were able to pass through the time lock, and learned that the pocket dimension Gallifrey occupied was on the "border" between two different universes. With no Daleks around, it was safe enough for them to settle in and begin exploring their new home.

The leonine appearance is clearly a side effect of the genetic engineering; the project head either really liked cats or knew how good they are at getting places they're not supposed to be. As for the established fact that the Tharils built their empire on slavery ... well, we've got plenty of evidence for arrogance being a Gallifreyan trait.

The Moment intentionally skipped the Ninth Doctor

The Moment knew that the pain and remorse of destroying Gallifrey would be so fresh and intense that Nine would not be able to handle being around the War Doctor for any period of time. So when it brought the War Doctor together with his future incarnations it intentionally skipped ahead to Ten and Eleven.

The War Doctor took the computer out of the Moment and put it in his TARDIS, then forgot about it because of regeneration

What if he did it to preserve his memory of Rose Tyler, also maybe that's why the TARDIS caused Rose to become Bad Wolf, because of the Moment's computer being integrated with the TARDIS?

• he probably just stuffed the Moment in another pocket universe (not the one he put Gallifrey in) and let it explode.
• Given how deeply the Doctor(s) are in debt to the Moment for helping to avert War's genocide of Gallifrey, it's possible they returned the favor by bringing the device wherever it wanted to go. Probably somewhere it would never be used, given that it does have a conscience.

The Moment hasn't developed a conscience because it's the most powerful weapon in the universe, it's the most powerful weapon in the universe because it has a conscience.

The only thing we see The Moment do that's really any more powerful than a normal TARDIS is breaking an alleged time-lock (and the Doctor has been wrong about time-locks on other occasions).

However, because it never wants to be fired, it manages to finish the war in mere hours. A weapon that ends the Time War without being used? Now that's the most powerful weapon in the universe.

The rabbit was a regeneration of the Doctor

John Hurt was the War Doctor. John Hurt played Hazel in Watership Down. It's a multi-Doctor episode.

The Tenth Doctor went back and saw Elizabeth I again. By accident.

So, Ten accidentally gets married to Queen Elizabeth I, and takes off immediately afterwards with the others clearly never intending to return. HOWEVER:

• There have been several mentions, in "The End of Time", "The Beast Below" and "Amy's Choice", to the Doctor having *ahem* made Elizabeth's nickname of "Virgin Queen" inaccurate. Furthermore, the mention in "The Beast Below" is from an external source, Liz 10, who has never met the Doctor before the events of the episode.
• There's that giant portrait of Ten and Elizabeth I serving as the door to the Undergallery. It's clear that the Doctor must have posed for it enough that the artist was able to paint him very accurately.
• Therefore, it's probable that, sometime after the events of this episode, but (obviously) before "The End of Time", Ten accidentally wound up back in 1562, probably from Elizabeth's perspective only a few days after he'd left. He ends up being forced to spend at least several days there, long enough for the *ahem* private business (how he got roped into that is best left to the imagination) and initial posing for the portrait, before he manages to take off again, this time never to come back.
  • He must've spent a fair amount of time with her before the episode if she's comfortable enough to accept a proposal from him.

The Daleks invading Arcadia were missing on purpose.

They seemed to have terrible aim, even by Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy standards. This is not normal for them. But they were invading a city whose defenders could have run circles around them, so by bringing down buildings and cratering the ground, the Daleks were turning the city into a lethal maze. You can't run if there's a wall of rubble behind you and a sinkhole in front. This would have allowed the Daleks to pick off their foes at leisure, which also explains why some of Arcadia's inhabitants were still alive by morning. There was no need to hurry.

The events of "The Day of the Doctor" explain the cracks in time scenario.

While we know why the TARDIS blew up in Season 5, it's never explained why this caused everything to be erased from history outside the eye of the storm, especially since the Silence were revealed to be trying to stop the cataclysm if the Time Lords returned. It's strongly implied(especially since the Time War is supposed to be Time Locked) that "The Day of the Doctor" is what really happened all along in a case of Tricked Out Time. If the TARDIS blows up in Season 5, whether or not the Doctor is in it that mucks up the events even if the Silence can ignore the Temporal Paradox it creates for them. An altered event might throw the episode out of wack enough that either the War Doctor runs out of time to stop the Ultimate Sanction plan, or the 10th Doctor is altered enough that he fails to stop their return and pulling the Time War into reality. It'd also mean they're one TARDIS missing to save Gallifrey, which'd botch things up royally. The Ultimate Sanction destroys time itself so Rassilon and the Time Lords can Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. The cracks erase events and ultimately lead to almost all the universe (maybe multiverse, according to the Cybermen and how you see time) ret-goned. The Temporal Paradox of preventing the TARDIS from reaching "The Day of the Doctor" is what leads to the Reality-Breaking Paradox of the Total Event Collapse. In other words, the exact thing the Silence feared what'd happen if the Time Lords returned.

The Curator is capable of shapeshifting.

When he means the Doctor might revisit some of his old faces, he didn't just mean regenerating into old actors. The Curator is the final Doctor, having experienced so many new regeneration cycles that in his last life he's gained the ability to shapeshift. Being so old and far into the future he's nostalgic and takes on the appearances of past incarnations, though can't just change his age so they remain elderly in appearance.

The Curator is a pre-One incarnation

......and Four is revisiting his face in a younger form. Hey, he had some buried memories of the Morbius incarnations, why not some others as well?

• Oh boy, do I have some information for you…

The Brigadier was the one who told the Doctor about the Black Archive

While the Doctor could've just found out about the Black Archive because he's just awesome like that, there's another possibility: That the Brig suspected that a day might come when the Black Archive were to be compromised, and so he told the Doctor so that he could keep an eye on it. He also deliberately placed the space-time telegraph there for that very purpose. The TARDIS-proofing may well have been added after his time. Furthermore, since he was the head of UNIT, he wouldn't have been memory-wiped like every other companion.

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