Is John Hurt more than a one-off Doctor?

Steven Moffat has claimed that John Hurt is only playing a one-off Doctor in the 50th anniversary special, but could his role in fact be larger, expanded to feature in Peter Capaldi’s debut series? It’s a rumour that is gathering pace.

Hurt himself added fuel to the fire shortly after the Capaldi casting announcement earlier in the month. Hurt congratulated Capaldi on his official Twitter account writing:

“Congratulations, Peter Capaldi. I’m suboth and we will have a lot of fun”

Hurt deleted the tweet shortly after and replaced with:

“Congratulations to Peter Capaldi and to the BBC. Another splendid Doctor!”

Now the second sentence of his first message is confusing, but it appears Hurt intended to write something like: “I’m sure both of us will have a lot of fun.” The second message doesn’t attempt to correct the grammatical mistake, so was he asked to remove it and replace with something less revealing?

When confronted with pictorial evidence of the deleted tweet, Hurt denied any knowledge of ever having written it: “No idea where that came from, Ryan … not from me.”

Curiouser and curiouser…

Further potential hints that Hurt could be playing the ‘8.5′ Doctor has also emerged. In a preview of Paul Cornell’s upcoming Doctor Who comic, The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who, look at the positioning of the silhouetted Doctor…

The BBC press material all refers to Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor so that doesn’t leave us with many other options.

[Thanks to Joe]