The Curator was an elderly incarnation of the Doctor who had retired from his adventurous ways to become "[the] humble curator" of the Under Gallery.
Biography
A day to come
When encountering the "Vortex Butterfly", the Tenth Doctor was cryptically told that he would not be "limited" to "thirteen lives". (COMIC: Vortex Butterflies)
When the Eleventh Doctor's timeline became distorted, the Curator was seen as one of his future incarnations, at the end of his lifespan. (COMIC: The Then and the Now)
When Captain Lundvik threatened to shoot him, the Twelfth Doctor speculated that he would "keep on regenerating forever" if he was executed. (TV: Kill the Moon) Rassilon would later state his own uncertainty to the number of regenerations the Doctor had been granted, (TV: Hell Bent) with the Saxon Master and Missy also considering their own uncertainty when debating whether to throw the Twelfth Doctor from a roof, believing they "could have been up and down the stairs all night." (TV: The Doctor Falls)
Reunions
Many years after the Eighth Doctor had regenerated on Karn, in circumstances "too scandalous to relate" to others, the Curator asked Ohila what had been in his regeneration potion that supposedly contained the Elixir of Life. He and Ohila were good friends by this point, and she told him she had actually given him dry ice and lemonade and went on to explain that the dark nature of the Doctor had always been inside of him and she just needed him to believe it had come from somewhere else while he was the War Doctor.
The Curator was often visited by Clara Oswald, though he pretended not to remember her.
During one of his many visits to Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, the Curator asked him what the most important quality in a UNIT commander was, and he responded with the answer of "good handwriting". The Curator and Alistair got up to a lot of "mischief" and laughed with each other until he died, with the Curator often hiding under Alistair's bed when Kate Stewart come to visit so her father could pretend she was his only visitor. One activity they did was play Risk together, with Alistair always being the Daleks, which the Curator found "a bit unfair". (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)
Semi-retirement
After deciding to retire from "getting involved", the Curator took up a position as the curator of the Under Gallery. He still had the TARDIS in his possession, which retained its police box form. (AUDIO: Lost Property)
Under "remarkable circumstances", the Curator was able to acquire Gallifrey Falls No More and brought it to the Under Gallery. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
On another of his visits to see Alistair, he told him he was planning to write a book about the last day of the Last Great Time War called the Doctor Papers. Alistair told him that information within it was classified material to which the Curator responded he had a plan to mark the book as fiction. The Curator had the Doctor Papers published on psychic paper in 2003. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)
The day of the Doctor
At around the time the time fissure appeared in the Under Gallery in 2013, the Curator was in the middle of moving some of the more dangerous artifacts in the Under Gallery to the Black Archive marking the empty display cases and stands with a "B".
For the Doctor Papers, the Curator compiled them together in order to make comments about them. The sections where the Curator talked to the reader, however, were written live and sent ten years into the past because he got "sloppy about the deadline". Towards the end of the book, the Curator got his webcam working, meaning it would automatically translate what was going on into prose. As a treat, he set off to find his past incarnations and discover the identity of a mysterious stranger who met with him, possibly from the Doctor's past or future. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)
When his war, tenth and eleventh incarnations rendezvoused at the National Gallery after the final battle of the Last Great Time War, the Curator approached Clara Oswald, telling her he was looking for the Doctor. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) Another account suggested he accidentally alerted the Eleventh Doctor to his presence by speaking to himself around the corner at which point he decided to get involved in the narrative, even though it was strictly against rules. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor) When the Eleventh Doctor was alone, the Curator made his presence known when the Doctor noted how he could retire and be a curator, with the Curator exclaiming that he "really [thought] [the Doctor] might." Stunned by how familiar the Curator was, the Doctor noted that he "never forget[s] a face", the Curator merely noted that the Doctor would revisit a few in years to come but just the "old favourites".
He told the Doctor that the name of the painting was neither No More nor Gallifrey Falls, but in fact one title Gallifrey Falls No More. Despite proclaiming to be a "humble curator [who] wouldn't really know", he told the Doctor that Gallifrey was lost, and pointed him in the direction to search for it, telling him he had "a lot to do" and congratulated the Doctor. When the Doctor tried to pry into his meaning, the Curator retaliated by pointing out it was the Doctor's choice. He was then about to tell the Doctor what he would do if he was him, but then teasingly said that "perhaps [he] was [him]," or that maybe the Doctor had been him, before deciding that it "[didn't] matter either way" and left (TV: The Day of the Doctor) to have tea with Ohila and Elizabeth I. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)
Being "good friends" with Henry Black, the Curator later showed him the Gallifrey Falls No More painting. He told him an even fuller title for the work, Gallifrey Falls No More (Until the Next Time), (PROSE: Dr Black) alluding to the later ransacking of the Capitol by the Spy Master. (TV: Spyfall)
Reunion with Liv and Helen
In 2020, the Curator was reunited with Liv Chenka and Helen Sinclair outside of the Eighth Doctor's damaged TARDIS, although he kept his identity secret. He asked Jim what he had given to the Eighth Doctor, feeling that time would soon be other than it should, and later told Ron Winters to send Midge to the Under Gallery. After giving Robin Bright-Thompson money for a hot chocolate, he allowed Helen to follow him and told her to look after the Doctor. (AUDIO: Lost Property)
Warning Anke
The Curator rang Anke, curator of the Verbier Museum of the Impossible. He apologised for his previous arrogance, admitting that the artefacts that she kept only existed because of his past self's mistakes during the Kotturuh Crisis. He warned her that he worried that in causing those things to exist he may have opened a door to “let something in”, (PROSE: Canaries) allowing Different and Same to escape the Last Great Time War through paradox energy. (PROSE: The Paradox Moon, Canaries)
Appearance
The Curator appears as the Doctor's future incarnation. (COMIC: The Then and the Now)
Having the appearance of an elderly Fourth Doctor, the Curator's face was wrinkled with baggy cheeks, a hooked nose and a pronounced throat. He had light blue eyes and big ears with dangling ear lobes.
Though he was balding, his hair was completely white and he lacked eyebrows. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
Clothing
The Curator wore an olive green moleskin blazer, a beige shirt with maroon check-marks, mahogany brown trousers and caramel brown slip-on shoes with ivory socks. In his blazer breast pocket, he kept a crimson handkerchief. He also walked with a cane and wore a navy blue cravat under his shirt. (TV: The Day of the Doctor) He also once wore a burgundy ascot, a cream shirt, black belt with a buckle and a jacket of a darker green. (COMIC: The Then and the Now)
Like some incarnations before him, the Curator owned a pair of "brainy" glasses that he didn't actually need, but would occasionally put on to make himself look clever. (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)
Behind the scenes
Being the Doctor
- The script for The Day of the Doctor never directly states that the Curator is the Doctor, but hints that he may be a future incarnation who has adopted the same form as the Fourth Doctor. The Then and the Now later depicts him as a future incarnation of the Doctor when the Doctor's timeline becomes distorted.
- In an early draft of The Day of the Doctor, the Moment was the one to play the role of the Curator. Moffat considered that the Curator could still be interpreted as the Moment interacting with the Doctor using the Fourth Doctor's appearance, though Moffat personally preferred to interpret him as a very distant future incarnation of the Doctor who settled down and chose a different incarnation per day to revisit.[1]
- In DWM 487, showrunner Steven Moffat confirmed in the magazine's regular "Ask Steven" feature that the Curator is intended to be a future incarnation of the Doctor and suggests that, just as the war and tenth incarnations retain no memory of the events of The Day of the Doctor, the Eleventh Doctor would not remember the specifics of his conversation with the Curator but will leave the Under Gallery" with the strange, groundless conviction that Gallifrey is still out there". This is reflected in The Time of the Doctor, in the Eleventh Doctor voices his uncertainty regarding whether Gallifrey was actually saved.
Casting
- Tom Baker is not separately credited for this performance, receiving only a credit for playing "the Doctor", as did all the other past Doctor actors, who appeared in the episode through the use of archive footage.
- Tom Baker previously played several nameless characters suggested to be future incarnations of the Doctor.
- In the 1992 release of Shada, Baker played the narrator for the unfinished links of the story. He described this as a "cancelled" adventure of his, and he mentioned that he had once defeated the Cybermen, Daleks, and Davros. He wore a pin stripe suit, a blue shirt, and a floral tie.
- In 1997, Baker played the Doctor in a series of superannuation advertisements in New Zealand.
- In an Introduction to the Night for the 1999 Doctor Who Night, Baker's future version of the Doctor referred to the Doctor in the third person but walked through in the Doctor's TARDIS and mentioned that he was "called Paul McGann in this one" when introducing TV: Doctor Who. He encountered multiple Daleks in the TARDIS before he introduced a "night of pure entertainment". This character was forgetful and consequently found himself laughing at most situations; he wore a black suit jacket, an open-neck shirt, and an ivory cravat.
Other matters
- Despite Big Finish's license being expanded to include the new series of Doctor Who, the BBC specifically instructed them not to use the Curator character in their audio dramas, (VOR 88) though after discussions with Steven Moffat, this decision was later overturned, allowing the Curator to be included in Stranded 1.
