Wow, that is a twist.. I was thinking after I watched it again that maybe somehow he was an older version of McGann's doctor, not one that he regenerated into.. Of course that news the Sun is reporting could be how it is being thrown out there just to throw us off..
If he was forgotten then why all the talk about the time war and what he did in it??? That part does not make any sense to me.. The Doctor has clearly stated on
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Last_Great_Time_WarI know this is a fan site and it has the eighth Doctor named.. This is gong to be a lot of issues and facts to rewrite now.
After reading this article below I can see how they possibly could work more regenerations in now (bolded red part).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_War_%28Doctor_Who%29As the war progressed the Time Lords became increasingly aggressive and unscrupulous. At one point, they resurrected the Master, renegade Time Lord and nemesis to the Doctor, as they believed him to be the "perfect warrior for a time war". It's implied that they gave him a full new set of regenerations as was done to all Time Lords fighting in the war, and that the Eye of Harmony could be used as a means to gain more regenerations. However, after the Dalek Emperor gained control of the Cruciform, the Master deserted his post, used the chameleon arch to disguise himself as a human and escaped to a time period shortly before the end of the universe. Genetically a human, he escaped the destruction of all Time Lords as well as detection by the Doctor – who was unaware of his resurrection in the first place. The Master also remained ignorant of the latter phase and outcome of the war until told by the Doctor many years later.[9]
And this..
Eighth Doctor Adventures
In a story arc stretching through several of the Eighth Doctor Adventures, sometime in the Doctor's future, a war is fought between the Time Lords and an unnamed Enemy, the Eighth Doctor becoming involved in the events of the war during the events of Alien Bodies, when he unintentionally becomes involved in an auction for the body of his future self due to his biodata codes being the only means of accessing dangerous Time Lord secrets, and The Taking of Planet 5, where he must stop a group of future Time Lords from releasing the monstrous Fendahl in an attempt to use it as a weapon. In this story arc, Gallifrey is also destroyed as a result of the Eighth Doctor attempting to prevent the war from beginning as the Enemy begin their first assault in- having learned that he unintentionally provoked the War-, believing that it would be better for the Time Lords to die now rather than experience a war that would dehumanise them to the point of becoming monsters which all evidence suggests they could not win (The Ancestor Cell, 2000). This cataclysm also creates an event horizon in time that prevents anyone from entering Gallifrey's relative past or travelling from it to the present or future. The last Eighth Doctor Adventures novel, The Gallifrey Chronicles, establishes that the Doctor has the ability to restore the planet and its inhabitants, having downloaded the contents of the Matrix into his subconscious mind in the minutes before Gallifrey's destruction, albeit at the cost of his own memories. The novel ends without revealing if he does indeed do this.
Russell T Davies, executive producer of the series, commented that there is no connection between the War of the books and the Time War of the television series, comparing Gallifrey being destroyed twice with Earth's two World Wars. He also said that he was "usually happy for old and new fans to invent the Complete History of the Doctor in their heads, completely free of the production team's hot and heavy hands".
Despite this unequivocal statement, writer Lance Parkin speculated in an essay that the two destructions of Gallifrey may be the same event seen from two different perspectives, with the Eighth Doctor present twice (and both times responsible for the planet's destruction). This is supported due to the novels' destruction of Gallifrey involving an evil future version of the Eighth Doctor as the leader of the invading force, with the events leading to Gallifrey's destruction being triggered by the Doctor's attempt to prevent that future from coming to pass.
Another version of the Eighth Doctor Adventures' War, referred to as the "War in Heaven", also appears in the Faction Paradox novels conceived by Lawrence Miles.
Of course the easiest way to fix this is to use the Doctor's "secrets" angle..
But then it still does not make sense as he has stated multiple times since Eccleson that he ended the time war, so that cannot be the act which made John Hurt the "forgotten" Doctor.
It has to be something else.
Also the talk of 12 regenerations, I am willing to bet that when that was put in there the writers did not realize or think that the show would still be going strong some 50 years later..