10 Shocking New Doctor Who Era Cliffhangers

During the build up to the 50th Anniversary we were all left with one question: what was Steven Moffat going to do? The thought heading into the anniversary year was ‘who was Clara Oswald?’, and every episode of the second half of Series 7 was devoted to seeding in the mystery, through further hints and speculation.

Then came the series finale, where not only was Clara’s mystery going to be told, but we were teased that an even greater question would be revealed. The name of the Doctor. Finally, we discovered what Trenzalore was, and what the fall of the eleventh would entail, bringing together a lot of the loose ends established since The Eleventh Hour. The Doctor would fall in battle, in a siege that would leave behind the graves of thousands of fallen soldiers, and a tomb for the mighty warrior himself.

After the Great Intelligence attempted to enter the Doctor’s timestream within his tomb, Clara sacrificed herself by splintering her essence across the Doctor’s many lives, saving him at every point in space and time. The Doctor then followed her in order to save Clara from her fate. It is here that we learned a grave secret that the Doctor has kept close to his chest, that he actually had a secret incarnation, one in which he was ashamed of. The War Doctor, portrayed by Sir John Hurt.