The Eight Doctors (novel)

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

Publisher's Summary

Recuperating after the trauma of his recent regeneration, the 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...

Characters

• Eighth Doctor
• First Doctor
• Second Doctor
• Third Doctor
• Fourth Doctor
• Fifth Doctor
• Sixth Doctor
• Seventh Doctor
• The Master
  • Retrieves his TARDIS from Devil's End.
  • Eats a Deathworm to cheat death (again).
• The Valeyard
• Miss Olive Hawthorne
  • May have latent telekinetic abilities.
• Tarak
  • Dead vampiric leader.
• Ivo
  • Plans to make an Inn of the town hall.
• Rassilon
• Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
  • Meets the Eighth Doctor.

References

• Flavia is president.
• Drashigs are time scooped in order to launch an attack on the Doctor.
• Shobogans speak highly of the Doctor.
• Deathworms were tamed by the Morg. The Master experimented on them for his own purposes.
• The Eye of Harmony seen in the TARDIS is a symbolic manifestation.
• The Raston Warrior Robot feeds on atomic radiation in the atmosphere. You can confuse it with two similar brain wave patterns.
• Rassilon's Red is Gallifrey's finest vintage, the Sixth Doctor and Eighth Doctor drink several goblets of it.

Notes

• 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: The TV Movie.

• By the end of the novel:

• All 8 of the Doctors have appeared.
• Two versions of the Master (Roger Delgado and another) 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.

• The BBC audio Bounty follows directly from this.

• 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.

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 ST: Culture War
• This story occurs before NA: Lungbarrow

For the Eighth Doctor:

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

External Links

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