"The Creature from the Pit," I believe. Not the first time ever but it was, IIRC, the first time on the new series. There had been a few instances on the classic series where numbers had been mentioned. Richard Hurndall referred to himself as "the original" in "The Five Doctors." The Time Lords also referred to Hartnell as the 1st Doctor in "The Three Doctors." (So we really need to reexamine how we interpret "The Brain of Morbius." Not really a problem since it's pretty vague on how the mind-duel works anyway.) RTD kept the time period between the Paul McGann movie & Eccleston's debut extremely vague and there could have been all kinds of new Doctors in there that we never knew about, or not. RTD didn't really pin things down too hard at all until we saw the little flashback recap of the previous Doctors in "The Next Doctor." Moffat was a lot more blatant, first by calling Smith's first episode "The Eleventh Hour," and then even more so when the Doctor referred to himself as "eleventh" in "The Lodger." Then we get the "Fall of the Eleventh" references in "The Wedding of River Song." I can't really recall that many instances of things that are "contrary" to the existence of the NX-01. They got around a lot of the natural problems with it by having it be the Enterprise from the pre-Federation version of Starfleet, so it doesn't count for numbering purposes. The only instance I can think of where it would really have been natural to refer to the NX-01 and they didn't was when we saw all of the previous Enterprises on the rec deck in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Speaking of Star Trek, this whole thing with the John Hurt Doctor is reminding me of that DS9 episode where we found out that there was another Dax host between Torias & Curzon who's existence had previously been hidden because he was a murderer.
And Clara (who's in a good position to know that kind of thing) tells him "You're the eleventh Doctor" in The Name of the Doctor.
Which isn't a real problem, because that display didn't have *all* previous ships named Enterprise. It only shows two navel vessels when there have been quite a few between the Royal and US Navies. It only shows one aircraft carrier and they had been two at the time the movie was made (and a third is on the way now). So that perceived contradiction is false.
It would make sense for him to, to be honest. I don't think it's going to happen, but it fits the timeline. It also fits in interestingly with Moffat's possibly serious, possibly not comment that Matt Smith said he'd do one more season if he could split it with David Tennant. It would unnecessarily screw up Rose Tyler's final arc, though, which I'm not sure I see the point of.
I can't wait to see the 57th Doctor! On a side note, my cousin saw a quiz that showed the then-all 11 Doctors, and it asked, "Can you name all 11 Doctors?" Someone wrote: "Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, "Doctor, Doctor, Doctor" Now if I could find it...
Wrong answer. The correct answer is "Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, War Doctor, Doctor and Doctor"
On a serious note, what did the War Doctor call himself? In Name of the Doctor the Eleventh states "he's me, but he's not the Doctor" and in Day of the Doctor the War Doctor himself states "I'm not the Doctor anymore." Yet the other Time Lords and the Daleks still refer to the War Doctor as the Doctor. I'm guessing he didn't revert back to his real name, so how did the War Doctor introduce himself?
After years of name searching her came up with... Joe. Apparently, like all nameless sci-fi Doctors he couldn't think of anything, so he just said, I shouldn't be the Doctor. He called himself "also the Doctor" when he joined the Gallifrey conference call.
That's silly. That's like if you were called Alex, calling you School Alex while you were in School. It's not a name in-Universe.. it was in the credits to show that John Hurt played the Doctor during the stage in his life when he was gonna go off to war. If you wanted to go by credits then you could say the character is called 'Doctor Who' as he has been listed as.
John Hurt is the Doctor. I call him the Ninth Doctor because he calls himself The Doctor, just as the High Command did and the other two did. Do I support renumbering? Yes, because he's the Doctor. Does it really matter? No, not really, go about your business.
I was thinking today about how this re-numbering shenanigans reminds me of the difficulty people have with changing pronouns around trans people. In situations like those, or when it's unclear what pronouns to use, it's bet to politely ask which they'd prefer used. I think in this instance it would be polite to ask the Doctor how he wishes to consider his incarnations numbered, or perhaps even lettered. THE DOCTOR (Smith): Just call me Doctor K. My incarnation during the time War is identified as Doctor H.5b.
What?....What!? It's a TV show. You may think it's polite, however the Doctor is not real. You can't actually ask him how he prefers to be numbered. Transgender people are real. To compare their issues with some imagined fantasy about a TV show character is absurd.
I prefer the theory that Tentoo eventually became the Peter Cushing Doctor. I think he still considered himself to be the Doctor up until the end. After he used the Moment, then he would consider himself unworthy to be called "the Doctor." It's like in "The Beast Below," when the Doctor contemplated murdering the star whale and said, "...And then I find a new name because I won't be the Doctor anymore." What I find more interesting is that no one else has mentioned the War Doctor before this. I can understand the Doctor himself ignoring that part of his history because he finds it shameful but I doubt that anyone else would make that distinction. So why was the War Doctor completely absent from the files of the Cybermen in "The Next Doctor" & the Atraxi in "The Eleventh Hour"? Or is it difficult to find any information on that particular part of the Doctor's history because most of his activity occurred during events that are now time locked?
Not by the end of the movie, that is. And even then, that would mean that the meme would have stopped with Tennant, not Smith.
All this discussion is rather meaningless. We all know that, although he's now the Tenth Doctor, when anyone in the official press or otherwise refer to the Ninth Doctor, they refer to Eccleston's characterization, and not John Hurt. Same with the rest of them.
I assumed the War Doctor likely spent most of his life on Gallifrey or on the front lines of the Time War. There likely aren't anyone who had direct contact with him around and the only record of his existence was on Gallifrey. After all, his existence must be a great secret even in the Doctor's personal time stream. If Clara didn't recognize him it stands to reason the Great Intelligence didn't know about him either and therefore never attacked him. It'll be interesting to see, now that the War Doctor is considered to be a true Doctor, whether he'll be included the next time we see a montage of the Doctors. IDW has already done so in their Ongoing comic series.