O War Doctor originalmente pretendia ser Christopher Eccleston?

Eu não tinha ouvido esse boato antes, e sou muito cético de que isso tenha sido um pensamento legítimo na mente de Moffat. Existem vários problemas com esse cenário (tanto no universo quanto fora do universo).

O cânone, por que isso não faz sentido, é bem simples: tudo que sabemos sobre a história do Nono Doctor nos diz que ele teve apenas regenerado quando aparece em Rose

Além disso, enquanto você afirma que essas ações se encaixam na personalidade do 9, eu não vejo isso. Para ser o "Doutor da Guerra", 9 teria que lutar em guerra, levando ao seu eventual evento final. A essa altura, ele provavelmente teria uma personalidade muito combatida, como você vê em muitos soldados veteranos de longa data. O Nono Doutor poderia ter alguns problemas de raiva surgidos de vez em quando, mas ele claramente não era "rude e endurecido pela batalha"; ele estava arrependido e tentando arduamente fugir do que tinha feito. Não foi realmente até Onze que vemos alguma tentativa de "fazer as pazes" com suas ações.

(Se qualquer coisa, a teoria não-Hurt mais razoável seria que o Oitavo Doutor, Paul McGann, era o Doutor de Guerra. Nós não vemos nada dele na tela entre o final do filme e o mini-episódio filmado o especial, então há muito espaço para ele lutar na guerra.)

Além disso, a idéia de um não-médico secreto e sem nome na verdade parece exatamente o tipo de desvio que Moffat gosta de colocar em suas histórias, então eu não ficaria surpreso se essa fosse a primeira coisa sobre o episódio do 50º aniversário que ele tinha bloqueado em sua mente.

É claro que não sabemos do que Moffat e Eccleston realmente falaram, mas duvido que tenha sido uma parte importante; Espero que ele tenha, pelo menos, sido convidado a fazer uma cena de regeneração adequada, mas, caso contrário, acho que seria difícil encaixar os três médicos recentes com histórias adequadas no episódio e ainda obter o cerne da questão - Hurt-Doctor's dilema moral - do outro lado.

Uma "edição especial" da Doctor Who Magazine intitulada "O ano do médico: o guia oficial para o aniversário de 50 anos do Doctor Who" revela que os primeiros rascunhos incompletos do especial de aniversário de Steven Moffat fizeram apresentava o Nono Doutor em vez do Doutor de Guerra, embora este tivesse sido mudado para o Doutor de Guerra no momento em que Moffat escreveu um rascunho completo de toda a história. De p. 13:

Steven's take was that what the Doctor remembered about the Time War might not actually have been what happened. Steven's idea fitted a narrative featuring the three most recent incarnations of the Doctor; the Ninth played by Christopher Eccleston who may have been involved in the war (despite a suggestion of being newly regenerated in 2005's Rose), the Tenth played by David Tennant, who was still concerned by the conflict, and the Eleventh Doctor, who had learned to be more at peace with his actions. Steven knew David as a friend and as a devotee of the show to be sure that he would do everything possible to be available for the project, but was concerned about the availability of Christopher Eccleston, who had left the series after a single year in 2005.

E também na p. 13, há uma barra lateral intitulada The Time War: Scripts de rascunho que começa:

Prior to full draft scripts of Doctor Who: 50th Anniversary Special there were incomplete drafts headed Doctor Who 50th Special: The Time War. A 'Partial Draft' dated Monday 14 January 2013 was fundamentally the same as the start of the finished programme with minor changes. Osgood was Kate's 'harried PA' and did not have a scarf, and Kate had the helicopter rescue the TARDIS because whe believed it was being attacked by a motorcyclist. The main differences were that the figure in the ruined building on Arcadia was the Ninth Doctor and the Moment was 'a girl in rags... young, elfin-faced, beautiful. A mass of hair and a feral stare' (referred to in stage directions as 'Raggedy Girl'). The Raggedy Girl explained that the barn was a crucible in which she would test the Ninth Doctor's worthiness. When the girl showed him his future, the Ninth Doctor was sucked through the portal she summoned up and dropped into the forest clearing next to a cottage to meet the Tenth Doctor and two Queens. The Tenth Doctor's encounter with the Zygon was then narrated through to the second appearance of the portal in 1562 through which came a fez... and the script ended.

18 da revista fala sobre como o Nono Doutor foi substituído pelo Doutor em Guerra:

By mid-February [of 2013], Steven had a third partial draft of The Time War but resisted writing a full script, since he was concerned about Christopher Eccleston's availability, and he also had doubts that it was the Ninth Doctor who had fought in the Time War. Steven had a couple of enjoyable meetings with Christopher to discuss his involvement and the direction of the story. In The Guardian, Steven explained that the pair had enjoyed a "very amiable and gentlemanly" conversation and that the actor considered the project "quite seriously" before turning it down. "It's just not the sort of thing he does," explained Steven. "But Chris was perfectly sweet and kind about it." Speaking to DWM Steven admitted, "I sort of knew, despite a valiant attempt, that I wasn't going to get Chris Eccleston. He was lovely about it, but it just wasn't for him."

Rather than being a major blow, the actor's non-involvement opened up the story for some even bigger surprises. Steven toyed briefly with having the Ninth Doctor's role carried by the Eighth Doctor, but could not reconcile the warrior Doctor with the incarnation played by Paul McGann in the 1996 TV Movie. Then the writer recalled watching The Five Doctors in 1983; for this story, the First Doctor had been played by Richard Hurndall, cast since William Hartnell — the original First Doctor — had died in 1975. While Hurndall's performance was effective, Steven had been aware that it bore little resemblance to Hartnell's Doctor... almost as if this was an entirely different incarnation who had also engaged upon other, untelevised adventures. This notion of a 'mayfly' Doctor who appeared for just one show was something Steven had previously considered, particularly if a major movie star could be persuaded to guest as a future incarnation. The opportunity now arose to introduce an incarnation of the Doctor who had fought in the war and who had never been talked about. This incarnation wouldn't even refer to himself as 'the Doctor' because of the terrible decisions he had made during the Time War. This new incarnation could offer the age and the irritability of the First Doctor as in The Three Doctors; a Time Lord who had existed during the nine years between 1996 and 2005, whose adventures had never appeared on television. "What was he up to?" pondered Steven at the ExCeL. "What was he up to when we weren't looking at him...?" Such a part would be able to attract a major star.

Esta página mostra até alguns trechos de um storyboard com o Doctor de Eccleston:

Outro artigo recente no qual Moffat fala sobre o caos nos bastidores do planejamento do especial de aniversário pode ser encontrado aqui . Moffat parece dizer que a decisão de ter uma encarnação "oculta" e a contratação de John Hurt foram ambos assuntos de última hora, com Moffat indicando que depois de terminar o roteiro ele só tinha cerca de duas semanas para encontrar um ator:

He was top of our list. I wrote the War Doctor script and we sent it off to John Hurt, assuming that was the beginning of a frantic two weeks of sending it off to every actor you’ve ever heard off and got Janette Krankie. And – God bless him for ever! – he said yes almost immediately. That was the first stroke of luck we had on that sodding show.

Como uma nota lateral, a resposta de Mike Edenfield diz que "tudo que sabemos sobre a história do Nono Doctor nos diz que ele teve apenas regenerado quando aparece em Rose , ao ponto em que ele ainda está olhando para o seu novo rosto no espelho ", mas na verdade outra edição recente da Doctor Who Magazine mostra que isso não era a intenção original de escritor / showrunner Russell T. Davies. Da edição de maio de 2015 (edição 485), p. 42:

The Doctor saying "Look at the ears" as he looks in the mirror was added in the second draft, and could be taken to imply he has only recently regenerated. DWM asked Russell if this was meant to be the case. "Well, I hate being prescriptive here, cos sometimes, when I give an opinion on a scene, because I'm the writer and producer, it can become a fact. When I much prefer it if you make your own mind up. But enough time has passed now so, for the record... No, I do not think he'd just regenerated. If you have certain physical features like big ears, or buck teeth, you look at them and sigh at them every time you look in the mirror. And I think, if you'd had eight different faces, even if you'd been in this current form for a hundred years, you'd still mutter at them. So it was meant as a nod to the fact that he'd once had other faces. But I wrote the Titanic stuff and Krakatoa assuming that the Ninth Doctor had been around for a while. He doesn't act very post-regeneration, does he? He appears in command, waving a bomb. This is a man who knows himself, and has known himself for a while."

(O " Titanic e o Krakatoa" referem-se à cena mais tarde no episódio de estréia onde Rose se encontra com um obcecado Doctor-tracker que encontrou algumas fotos antigas do Doctor de Chris Eccleston reaparecendo em vários pontos ao longo da história, incluindo o Titanic , Krakatoa e o assassinato de JFK