The War Doctor is an incarnation of the Doctor, the protagonist of the BBCscience fiction television programme Doctor Who. He is portrayed by English actor John Hurt. Although he precedes Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor in the show's fictional chronology, his first onscreen appearance came eight years after Eccleston's; the War Doctor was retroactively created by showrunner Steven Moffat for productions celebrating the show's 50th anniversary, owing to Moffat's desire to tell the story of the last day of the Last Great Time War in the special after Eccleston declined to appear.