Who Joins Heroes?

Former Doctor Who star Christopher Eccleston will appear in several episodes of NBC's hit Heroes as an invisible-man character aptly named Claude, after Claude Rains, star of the 1933 classic SF film The Invisible Man, Tim Kring, creator and executive producer, told SCI FI Wire. "So far, he's been in four [episodes], and then we're trying to work out his dates with his movie that he's doing," Kring said in an interview at the Television Critics Association's winter press tour in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 17. "We'd like to have him come and play with us for a while."

Eccleston's character will first appear in "Godsend," the next new installment, which airs on Jan. 22. "His character acts as a sort of mentor for Milo's [Ventimiglia] character, Peter, who's having trouble controlling all of these crazy powers that he seems to have," Kring said.

Kring added: "So he runs into this character, literally, and forces him, basically, to teach him what's going on and to tell him what's going on. And it's the first indication for the audience that these powers have been around longer than we seem to have sensed it as an audience based on what we've seen so far." Heroes returns with all-new episodes starting Jan. 22 at 9 p.m. ET/PT