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Matt Smith Leaves "Doctor Who"
First time accepted submitter Dave Knott writes "The BBC has announced that Matt Smith will be leaving 'Doctor Who', after spending the last four seasons in the titular role of The Doctor. Smith will remain for the upcoming 50th anniversary special, where he will star alongside a majority of the other actors who have taken on the character, and will exit following the yearly Christmas episode. No actor has yet been cast as the twelfth incarnation of The Doctor, although there was a teaser involving John Hurt at the end of the most recent season of the show."
That was The Curse of Fatal Death and Joanna Lumley was the Doctor. It was, indeed, a spoof and quite a welcome one during the Dark Time of the Hiatus.
How much would he have cost me? ;)
A bag of Jelly Babies
Watch those corners
Actually Donna Noble became a sort of Doctor in Journey's End.
If anything was News for Nerds, this is it.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
I assumed that he was meant to be the Valeyard, who showed up in the series as the prosecutor when the Time Lords put the Doctor on trial. He was revealed to be a future incarnation of the Doctor who really has it out for himself. He's not necessarily exactly one of his normal regenerations, but may instead actually be an intermediate form like the Watcher. The Watcher was a mystery masked figure who semi-stalked the Fourth Doctor right before his death and regeneration and who actually became the new Doctor at the moment of regeneration. Another Time Lord featured in the series whose name I can't remember right now actually had his own future incarnation working for him as a sort of butler/apprentice until his own death. So, the Valeyard was meant to be possibly something similar from the Doctor's 12th regeneration (back when there was a supposedly firm limit on the number of regenerations), but evil and intent on destroying the Doctor and achieving a completely independent existence.
Through the entire series since its revival there has been a running theme that's popped up of repressed self-loathing the Doctor keeps under the surface. There was an episode where Rory and Amy were either living in an alien-infested small village or on the Tardis with the Doctor about to plunge into a "cold star" and had to figure out which was a dream and which was real. There was a creepy dream-lord villain plaguing them through the whole thing and the Doctor made a comment to him at one point that he had figured out who he was since there was only one person in the Universe who hated him that much. It turned out to be an aspect of the Doctor's unconscious mind. So, unless they're pulling some other big twist, then this new "Doctor" is probably that aspect of his mind incarnate, probably as an intermediate form produced as part of a regeneration.