The Curator

The curator of the National Gallery in London was a mysterious individual who had insight into a particular Time Lord painting.

After the Eleventh Doctor remembered his face (presumably due to his resemblance to the Fourth Doctor), the curator told him that, "in years to come, you might find yourself… revisiting a few. But just the old favourites, eh?"

He spoke with the Eleventh Doctor and told him that the name of the picture was neither No More nor Gallifrey Falls but in fact Gallifrey Falls No More, and pointed the Doctor in the direction of a search for Gallifrey, telling him he had "a lot to do."

The man then suggested that he had perhaps been the Doctor once, or that the Eleventh Doctor had once been him. He agreed with the Eleventh Doctor's suggestion that the Doctor would one day become the curator. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)

Behind the scenes

 * The script never directly states that this character is an incarnation of the Doctor, but it certainly implies that he may be a future version of the Doctor who has reassumed the form of his fourth incarnation, or is in fact, said previous incarnation.
 * Further fueling either possibility is the production note that Tom Baker is not separately credited for this performance, receiving only a credit for playing "The Doctor".
 * In her instructions, Elizabeth I named the Doctor as the acting curator of the Under-Gallery.
 * Tom Baker's surprise appearance as the Curator marks his first canonical return to the franchise since his departure in 1981. He declined to appear in TV: The Five Doctors (footage of him as the Fourth Doctor was taken from the then-unreleased TV: Shada). Baker has occasionally taken part in retrospective specials and the like and briefly appeared as the Fourth Doctor in the non-canonical Dimensions in Time.