The Eight Doctors (novel)

The Eight Doctors (novel)

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The Eight Doctors
Doctor:	[[doctor::First Doctor Second Doctor Third Doctor Fourth Doctor Fifth Doctor Sixth Doctor Seventh Doctor Eighth Doctor]]
Companion(s):	Sam Jones (Introduction)
Main enemy:	Ryoth CIA
Main setting:	Earth, England, Shoreditch, Totters Lane, 1997 Earth, 100,000 BCE War Planet Earth, England, London, circa 1970s E-Space, Vampire Planet Eye of Orion Space Station Zenobia Gallifrey Metebelis III
Key crew
Publisher:	[[publisher::BBC Books]]
Writer:	Terrance Dicks
Release details
Release number:	1
Release date:	June 1997
Format:	Paperback Book, 280 Pages
ISBN:	ISBN 0-563-40563-5

The Eight Doctors was the first novel in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures series. It explored the amnesia theme of Doctor Who - that is, the TV movie - to have the Eighth Doctor encounter his predecessors.

Publisher's summary

Recuperating after the trauma of his recent regeneration, the Eighth Doctor falls foul of a final booby trap set by his arch-enemy, the Master.

When he recovers, the disorientated Doctor looks in a mirror and sees the face of a stranger. He knows only that he is called the Doctor - nothing more. But something deep inside tells him to trust the TARDIS, and his hands move over the controls of their own accord.

The TARDIS takes him to a strangely familiar junkyard in late-nineties London, where he is flung into a confrontation between local drug-dealers and Samantha Jones, a rebellious teenager from Coal Hill School.

But the Doctor soon finds the TARDIS transporting him to various other places in order to recover all his memories - and that involves seeing seven strangely-familiar faces...

Plot

to be added

Characters

• Eighth Doctor
• First Doctor
• Second Doctor
• Third Doctor
• Fourth Doctor
• Fifth Doctor
• Sixth Doctor
• Seventh Doctor
• Sam Jones
• The Master
• The Valeyard
• Miss Olive Hawthorne
• Tarak
• Ivo
• Rassilon
• Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
• Flavia
• Susan Foreman
• Barbara Wright
• Ian Chesterton
• Jamie McCrimmon
• Zoe Heriot
• Jo Grant
• John Benton
• Romana II
• Tegan Jovanka
• Vislor Turlough
• Raston Warrior Robot
• Ryoth
• Trev Selby
• Vicky Latimer
• Vrag
• Machete Charlie
• John Hart
• Jane Blythe
• Jack Harris
• Zarn
• Hurda
• Xan

Baz's gang

• Baz Bailey
• Mikey
• Pete
• Monster

Coal Hill police

• Foster
• Sanders
• Ballard

References

Foods and beverages

• Rassilon's Red is Gallifrey's finest vintage. The Sixth Doctor and Eighth Doctor drink several goblets of it.
• The Fourth Doctor and Romana drink red wine.

Gallifreyan culture

• Shobogans speak highly of the Doctor.
• The Eye of Harmony in the Doctor's TARDIS is a symbolic manifestation.

Individuals

• Olive Hawthorne may have latent telekinetic abilities.
• The Eighth Doctor meets the Brigadier.

Individual Time Lords

• Flavia is president.
• The Eighth Doctor loses his memory from a trap left by the Master.

Locations

• The Master left his TARDIS in Devil's End. He retrieves it following his escape from Fortress Island.

Races and species

• Drashigs, Sontarans and the Raston Warrior Robot are time scooped in order to launch an attack the Fifth Doctor and the Eighth Doctor.
• Deathworms were tamed by the Morg. The Master experimented on them for his own purposes.

Technology

• The Raston Warrior Robot feeds on atomic radiation in the atmosphere. It can be confused by two similar brain wave patterns combined with the principle of Buridan's ass.
• The Master uses his Tissue Compression Eliminator.

Notes

• The title of chapter eleven, The Vampire Mutation, was a working title for State of Decay.
• There are several...discontinuities within The Eight Doctors (owed perhaps to Dicks's tendency to insert continuity links everywhere).

• Flavia is president, however according to continuity so far Romana is President (Dicks' own novel NA: Blood Harvest established it).
• Borusa's time scoop was previously destroyed in MA: Goth Opera is now eaten.
• In this novel the Seventh Doctor has a "mid life crisis" while trying to deal with his approaching death...which was more or less addressed in NA: The Room With No Doors and Lungbarrow.

• There is an explanation of how the Master became worm-like in DW: Doctor Who.

• By the end of the novel:

• All 8 of the Doctors have appeared.
• Three versions of the Master (The Master (UNIT years), an unknown incarnation and the Master (Bruce)) have appeared.
• At one point there are two Sixth Doctors.
• Borusa testifies in a future where he's still locked in the Dark Tower.

• It has long been acknowledged by some fans (according to the Doctor Who Reference Guide) that the Eighth Doctor audio dramas and comic strips are set in the gap between The Eight Doctors and Vampire Science.

Continuity

• This novel also makes for one of the more continuity heavy novels with Terrance Dicks referencing: DW: State of Decay (which he had previous written a sequel as NA: Blood Harvest). Also DW: The Five Doctors (also by Dicks) is references heavily here.

• The Master retrieves his TARDIS from where he hid it in PDA: The Face of the Enemy.

• AG: Bounty follows on directly from this story.

• While pondering the Doctor's interaction with his other selves, Flavia mentions the events of DW: The Three Doctors, The Five Doctors, and The Two Doctors as other events where multiple incarnations were present.

• The Eighth Doctor would later meet the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors once again in BFA: The Four Doctors.

Timeline

For the First Doctor:

• This story occurs during episode 3 of An Unearthly Child.

For the Second Doctor:

• This story occurs during episode 9 of The War Games.

For the Third Doctor:

• This story occurs after DW: The Sea Devils
• This story occurs before DWM: Under Pressure

For the Fourth Doctor:

• This story occurs after DW: State of Decay
• This story occurs before DWM: Pathfinders

For the Fifth Doctor:

• This story occurs after DW: The Five Doctors
• This story occurs before ST: Lily

For the Sixth Doctor:

• This story occurs during episode 1 of The Ultimate Foe.

For the Seventh Doctor:

• This story occurs after PDA: Bullet Time
• This story occurs before NA: The Room With No Doors (when the Doctor returns to Chris)

For the Eighth Doctor:

• This story occurs after DW: Doctor Who
• This story occurs before AG: Bounty

External links

• The Eight Doctors at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• The Discontinuity Guide to: The Eight Doctors at The Whoniverse