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 1970 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, ? 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 Devils 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 Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart

• Meets the Eighth Doctor.

References

• Flavia is president.
• 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 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 Blood Harvest established it).
• Borusa's time scoop was previously destroyed in 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 The Room With No Doors and Lungbarrow.

• There is an explanation of how the Master became worm like in 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 a future where he's still locked in the Dark Tower.

Continuity

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

• The Eight Doctors revisits point in the past during:

• First Doctor: An Unearthly Child.
• Second Doctor: At the end of The War Games.
• Third Doctor: After The Sea Devils.
• Fourth Doctor: After State of Decay.
• Fifth Doctor: After The Five Doctors.
• Sixth Doctor: Just before The Ultimate Foe.
• Seventh Doctor: Some point before Doctor Who: The TV Movie.

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

External Links

• Outpost Gallifrey The Eight Doctors page
• The Doctor Who Reference Guide detailed synopsis of The Eight Doctors
• The Whoniverse Discontinuity Guide - The Eight Doctors