4. The Early Days Of The War Doctor
In
Night of the Doctor, some deftly applied stills of John Hurt from 1975 horror
The Ghoul indicates that the War Doctor started life as a physically young man but the events of the Time War has visibly aged him. Whilst the cover art for
Engines of War shows John Hurt as the elder statesman that he is, there's no reason that the book series can't follow the War Doctor during his early days. Specifically, it would be interesting to see what happened immediately after he declared himself "Doctor No More". Typically, regenerations have always been traumatic for the Time Lord and this chemically-altered one, specifically designed to manipulate his personality, must have been jarring. Having only just excised an incarnation who tried thanklessly to stay out of the conflict, would his better nature fight back against his newly-strengthened impulses to anger and violence? How does he silence the voices of his past selves telling him to stop? Even if the Doctor regenerated into a form with stronger predilections to warfare, he's still the same man - with all the experience and knowledge and intense morality built up over centuries. Rather than just declaring this incarnation to be dark and renouncing his name, this would be a great opportunity to show the character's gradual slide into the moral grey. It'd also deepen the tragedy of the War Doctor, showing how even a man who "never would" can be driven "without choice" to commit atrocities "in the name of peace and sanity".