Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special 2013 [VIDEO]: How Will Steven Moffat Announce Twelve in Season 8? What He Says of John Hurt's Episode

By now, we all know that John Hurt is playing some sort of a "missing link" Doctor in the upcoming 50^th anniversary special of BBC's Doctor Who. The season 7 finale definitely left us with a whole lot of questions, but apparently Hurt will be a Doctor from the past that links Eight and Nine together. Both Ten (David Tennant) and Eleven (Matt Smith) will appear in the special (airing November 23) as well, and Steven Moffat recently shared some insight into working with Hurt as 8.5 (?).

"He's terrific," the showrunner exclaimed. "It's a lovely 50th anniversary treat, I suppose. You get a whole new Doctor played by a proper screen legend."

A costume designer working on the special recently answered the big question concerning John Hurt's character: "He is a past Doctor, not a future Doctor."

Moffat also recently revealed how long the upcoming special will be.

"I think you could call it movie-length, yeah," he said. "I mean, I'm saying that with a slight hint of vagueness because I don't know the finished running time. It's certainly well over an hour."

Current Doctor, Matt Smith, recently announced his departure from the iconic show and Moffat announced that the 2013 Christmas special would be Smith's swansong episode. The Internet has been buzzing about Smith's replacement for season 8, but Moffat might have slowed rumors a bit with this following statement.

"Unless we have an insane plan, we'll announce a new Doctor within days of finalizing the new Doctor. Because it's very very hard to keep any kind of a secret. The last time, when we chose Matt, we had to hold over on that one, because there was a Christmas Doctor Who special called 'The Next Doctor' for which Russell (T. Davies, former Doctor Who showrunner) was playing the game of pretending it was going to be David Morrissey. So we couldn't deflate that. But I think we'll go public pretty fast."

Moffat has always been secretive and at times trolling during his tenure as showrunner, but it has always been pretty fun.