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Doctor Who: That Time Steven Moffat Created Another Secret Doctor

Remember Steven Moffat hiding a secret Doctor for the first time in Doctor Who that nobody ever figured out? Here's what Moffat had to say...

Former Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat loved to insert timey-wimey easter eggs throughout the series, even before he became showrunner. A few years ago, he revealed that there was one last easter egg that nobody ever noticed in his third story for the show during Russell T Davies' third series as showrunner. Davies brought up a brief outline that Moffat had e-mailed him during production, imagining the future (and past) of the Doctor and River Song (Alex Kingston), who was introduced in the two-parter and began her arc that Moffat would carry through to its conclusion in the Christmas special "The Husbands of River Song" years later at the end of his penultimate series as showrunner.

"When we were making 'Silence in the Library', you once told me the Very Last Scene Ever of Doctor Who. Does it still stand?" Davies asked Moffat when they were interviewing each other for Doctor Who Magazine.

As far as Moffat was concerned, Doctor Moon, the psychiatrist played by Colin Salmon, who was assumed to be an AI construct in the virtual world in the library, was in fact a digitised version of a future reincarnation of the Time Lord after he died.

"In my head (and ONLY in my head, this will probably never appear on screen, or be confirmed in any way) River's not just his wife – she's his widow," Moffat wrote at the time. "Somewhere in the terrible future, on a battlefield, the 45th Doctor dies in her arms and makes her the same promise she once made him – it's not over for you, you'll see me again. So River buries her husband and off she goes to have lots of adventures with his younger selves and confuse the hell out of them.

"Until, of course, she ends up in the data core of the Library Planet, and realises she'll never see him again. And then she starts to wonder why anyone would call a moon 'Doctor.' Ahhh…"

"Yeah, some version of that could still work," Moffat continued. "The Doctor worrying that she'll get lonely in the library, and popping his dying mind inside a moon. God, look at those words. I actually typed those words!!!!!!"

"I can't believe you didn't remember!" Davies replied. "I've never forgotten that Doctor Moon thing, it's so clever. Every time I watch that story, I think, it's him, it's the Doctor, and no one knows!"

Moffat went on to reveal another secret regeneration in the form of The War Doctor, played by John Hurt for the 50th Anniversary special "The Day of the Doctor" after Christopher Eccleston turned down his overture to return as the Ninth Doctor for the special, which prompted Moffat to create a whole new Doctor for the event story.

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