Talk:Eighth Doctor

The Relic

(diff) (hist) . . Eighth Doctor‎; 17:07 . . ***Stardizzy*** (Talk | contribs) (→The Doctor's involvement in the Future War with The Enemy - cleaning up prose, also removing Doctor's "future corpse"; didn't the Relic come from the dead version of the Third Doctor?)

No... The Relic featured in Alien Bodies is buried by the third Doctor )or the fourth, can't remember). But it isn't the third Doctor, the third Doctor (in which ever timeline) either dies on Dust or dies or dies on Earth per Planet of the Spiders. The Relic is the body of the Doctor, the Doctor who lives through the future war with the Enemy... Ie The Relic is the body of the Doctor...from the same future that Homunculette is from, except slightly eariler than Homunculette obviously. By Homunculette coming back in time to bid on the Relic, and thus making the 8th Doctor aware of this it changes the future, but because of the temporal nature of the Time Lord's future it doesn't change it, 'change it'.

It is stated that the body of the Relic isn't the Doctor 'now' but his body in the future after he encounters even more things that change his biodata, the Faction Paradox and the Time Lords both want The Relic, the Faction Paradox because that's how their technology works the Time Lords because they've lost access to things through their war, time lines being written and re-written means they can't access some things, they think that the Relic with all its changes and information in the bio-data will help them in this quest. --Tangerineduel 13:05, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Is an "in-universe" approach really the best one to take with the Eighth Doctor?

Shouldn't there at least be a link to the Big Finish audios or the comics, both of which have detailed plotlines for the Eighth Doctor? I could understand just covering the TV movie and linking out to the books/audios/comics, but it seems really odd to imply that one of the non-telly media is the 'real' Eighth Doctor chronology and ignore the other two entirely.--Doyle 15:05, 9 August 2007

Anything that is to be written must be written from an 'in-universe' perspective, within the Eighth Doctor article. It is remiss that there isn't a passing reference to the other parts that you've mentioned. (Which I'll probably begin work on soon at some point). --Tangerineduel 14:17, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

To me, this article is organized in a way that will render it impossible to complete with accuracy. The Eighth Doctor simply cannot be written about from a completely in-universe point of view. There have been so many frankly discordant narrative runs — most of whom don't make reference to the other parts — that you really can't find a single, accurate chronology of events. This needs to be explained to the reader — in an out of universe voice — for the article to be genuinely useful. To say, simply, that the events of The Eight Doctors are what happened directly after the television movie is entirely biased towards that particular medium. There's no reason in the world why Storm Warning, End Game, or Dreadnought can't equally be viewed as the immediate post-TVM story.

The first duty of this wiki shouldn't be "write it in-universe", but rather "avoid bias". The Eighth Doctor is an obvious exception to the general guideline to write in-universe, because doing so immediately causes bias. You have to choose a place to start the biography, and that choice reveals your bias. It would be best if this article had four sections — Radio Times continuity, DWM continuity, Big Finish continuity, EDA continuity — and then explored each of those branches as separate. To the minor extent that there are crossovers — Placebo Effect, for instance — a little background note would suffice to explain the event as an attempt to integrate the events of one medium into another.

On the whole, though, it's folly — but most of all, unhelpful — to try to place all these events into a cohesive, singular biography. The defining characteristic of the "Eighth Doctor's era" is its lack of definition. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 18:34, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I absolutely agree that if you try and force all of the strands into one chronology you inevitably end up making your favourite the most real one. Whether that means going with the audios or comics and 'explaining away' the novels, or whether that means going with the novels and 'fitting in' the audios and comics. Very convincing Complete Eighth Doctor Biographies can be produced, and I'm very attached to my own mental one, but they all depend on massive ammount of speculation and bias.

On the other hand...I don't think this means we have to step 'out of universe'. As you say the defining aspect of his era has been a lack of definition, but that's as true 'in universe(s)' as without. The Big Finish Eighth Doctor's life has been an arc about a paradox, the BBC Novel's Eighth Doctor's life has been an arc about a paradox...

Why not start the biography with a brief section on the uncertain nature of the Eighth Doctor's life, referencing that great quote about it from The Gallifrey Chronicles -

"Look at the rest of the Doctor's time-stream, though. It's meant to be a neat line. The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail out of this chaos I don't know.

Whether you put it down to Charely Pollard or Faction Paradox, it's an in universe fact that this guy's timelines are shot to hell.

You could then divide the biography up into sections on the three different continuites and present them with equal weight, a disclaimer noting the uncertainty as to how they fit together.

The biography could then end with a 'Behind the scenes'/Speculative section detailing the different ways that have been suggested as to how it all might fit together.--Richard Jones 21:28, 27 November 2007 (UTC)