Doctor Who: 14 Cool Details Steven Moffat Just Revealed About The Day Of The Doctor

3. John Hurt's Regeneration Was Added At The Last Minute

Doctor Who The Day Of The Doctor Steven Moffat John Hurt War Doctor regeneration
BBC/Twitter: @StevenWMoffat

Immediately after that scene, the episode cuts to a shot of the War Doctor stood inside his TARDIS, before he regenerates into Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor.

It's quite an important moment in firmly establishing the link between War and Nine, but amazingly, it wasn't always part of Moffat's script.

In fact, the former showrunner added Hurt's regeneration "at the last minute", at the same time he was writing The Night Of The Doctor, the 50th anniversary prequel mini-sode starring Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor.

While it was disappointing that we didn't get to see War fully turn into Nine (Eccleston didn't want to reprise the role), it's always good to see a regeneration scene, and with Murray Gold's fantastic score and director Nick Hurran's sweeping aerial camera shot, this was a solid one.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!