Good news: John Hurt's been given the all-clear by his doctors on the pancreatic cancer front.
Very good news. He seemed extremely happy in the news article I read about this. Amazing how quickly (4 months since diagnosis I think) they can cure people these days.
EDIT: About finding Gallifrey: I know the number 1 rule is that Moffat lies, but I do believe that Gallifrey being missing is still going to be a long-term (vague) goal for the show, just like the Doctor trying not to go back was the vague reason for his travels in the classic show. Moffat's reason was simple but true: when Gallifrey became a frequent location for adventures in the classic series (which outside of some earlier 2nd/3rd doctor adventures started mostly with Tomb Baker) it took away a lot of the mystery behind the Doctor, and Gallifrey turned out to be a fairly boring place filled with boring people.
I don't think he'll find Gallifrey in the finale this season. Not in a way that allows Gallifrey to stick around in any case. There might be storylines that tie into his search though (like the Master misleading the Doctor about where to find it last season). I can see him running into other Timelords besides the Master in his search though, either someone new or someone like Romana or Susan.
re: regenerations - thanks for the Matt Smith quote, didn't remember his exact words. It seems he did get a full set of regenerations, but I do like the idea of the Doctor not knowing exactly how many he has left (although we as viewers know it's endless as long as they keep making the show - it'll never get a definitive ending). I figure Moffat left that ambiguous for a lead writer in the far future to play with if he wants.
Semi-relevant to his regenerations: The Valeyard. Something that could of course easily be ignored for future storylines, but it's fun to speculate, and the Great Intelligence mentioned the Valeyard as 'one of the names' the Doctor will be known by in the future in a Matt Smith episode. A reminder, shamelessly stolen from the DW wiki:
The Valeyard was, according to the Master, "an amalgamation of the darker side of the Doctor's nature", taken from somewhere between his "twelfth and final incarnations".
So that raises some question. It's incarnation, not regeneration, so Hartnell counts. John Hurt counts. Tennant 2 (the one who went with Rose) probably doesn't, as he's not exactly the same person, although that's debatable. So by that logic Capaldi is the 13th incarnation (12th regeneration - 14th incarnation and 13th incarnation if you count Tennant 2, but like I said, I don't). That suggests Capaldi counts as the final incarnation (although we know he won't be, but it would explain his suspicions that he might die for real if he dies now), and that the Valeyard was created when Smith regenerated into Capaldi. So he could turn up somewhere in his run, possibly in relation to a certain Roman and British PM looking exactly like Capaldi.
Also, just as a reminder, according to The Deadly Assassin (and repeated in a couple of stories after that), the Doctor had 13 possible lives, which meant that he could regenerate 12 times, but that he wasted one of them by creating Tennant 2 so that meant that Smith was, according to those rules, the last version of the Doctor. I don't think that changes anything about the Valeyard though, as Tennant 2 is a different, separate person, not an incarnation of the Doctor.
All this stuff about the Valeyard obviously comes from an old, deliberately vague story written by writers who never had to bother with that actual later storyline, and it's something that might never be addressed again. Even if it is, the 'rules' are easy to bend to fit whatever explanation might work.
This was a confusing post to write while sleep-deprived. Sorry if it's unreadable.
