Doctor Who will once again celebrate its anniversary by bringing together multiple Doctors: Matt Smith, David Tennant and John Hurt, who will play a previous incarnation of the Doctor. Accordingly, there will be three separate time periods featured in the episode reveals the synopsis for “Day of the Doctor.”
The Doctors embark on their greatest adventure in this 50th anniversary special. In 2013, something terrible is awakening in London’s National Gallery; in 1562, a murderous plot is afoot in Elizabethan England; and somewhere in space an ancient battle reaches its devastating conclusion. All of reality is at stake as the Doctor’s own dangerous past comes back to haunt him.
The current Doctor will presumably be in present, while the Tenth Doctor will be in the past. That leaves the disowned Doctor to deal with the ancient battle in space, which is clearly a reference to the Time War between the Time Lords and the Daleks that was ended by John Hurt’s Doctor as revealed in “The Name of the Doctor.”
“What I did, I did without choice,” Hurt explains. “In the name of peace and sanity.”
“But not in the name of the Doctor,” replies the Eleventh Doctor.
