The Eight Doctors was the first novel in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures series. It was written by Terrance Dicks. It explored the amnesia theme of the Doctor Who TV movie by having 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
Immediately after the events of the television film, the Eighth Doctor finishes reading The Time Machine (a book written by his old friend H.G. Wells). After he checks the Eye of Harmony in his TARDIS, he falls prey to a final trap set by his old enemy, the Master, which erases all of his memory. The only fact he knows for certain is that he is called "the Doctor" - but Doctor who? His instincts tell him to "trust the TARDIS", which immediately lands.
He has landed at a scrapyard at 76 Totter's Lane, London in 1997, where he encounters a young lady by the name of Sam Jones, who is being accused by local drug dealers, led by Baz Bailey, of "grassing" them over to the police. Having saved Sam from these insidious characters, who were intending to force Sam into taking drugs to get her addicted, the Doctor falls foul of the local police who promptly charge him with possession and selling the cocaine he has confiscated from the thugs. Sam tells her two teachers, who have noticed her lateness, and takes them back to the junkyard to verify the story. The Doctor escapes in the confusion of Bailey's desperate attack on the local police station. He runs back into the TARDIS and it dematerialises - taking the cocaine with him to dispose of it safely. This leaves Sam alone, defenceless against the knife-wielding druggies...
The TARDIS lands in the year 100,000 BC, and he meets his first incarnation in the jungle and they psychically link (giving the Eighth Doctor his memories up to that point in his life). The Eighth Doctor stops his other self from killing a caveman who was slowing their party down. The First Doctor explains that he must get away before the "time bubble" his eighth self is in bursts and starts to damage the timeline. The Eighth Doctor then leaves.
The TARDIS then lands during the events of the War Games, where he helps his second incarnation, Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot with their important mission to contact the Time Lords. Having regained his second life's memories, he leaves happily.
He next meets the Third Doctor, who himself has just fought the Master and the Sea Devils and has saved humanity by blowing up a Sea Devil base. He, blaming his eighth self for his exile to Earth and for the Master's concurrent escape, threatens him with the Master's Tissue Compression Eliminator. But he tosses the weapon to him instead. The Master has again escaped to fight another day, and the Eighth Doctor leaves.
Having landed during the events of State of Decay, the Eighth Doctor gives the Fourth Doctor an emergency blood transfusion after his younger self is attacked and nearly fatally drained by another group of vampires, and leaves with yet more memories (to the astonishment of companion Romana).
Meanwhile, back on Gallifrey, Lady President Flavia has noticed the Doctor crossing his timelines and demands that he be carefully watched. A Time Lord called Ryoth demands the Doctor be executed: the resulting paradoxes could be irreversible. Flavia denies this. Ryoth alerts the Celestial Intervention Agency to the situation, and the Agency give him access to the fabled Timescoop technology, perfectly preserved since the Death Zone incident. He uses it to send a Raston Warrior Robot to the Fifth Doctor and his companions, Tegan Jovanka and Vislor Turlough. Luckily, the Eighth Doctor then arrives at the aftermath of The Five Doctors, where he saves his fifth incarnation and his companions from the Raston Warrior Robot and a passing platoon of Sontarans by tricking the two into fighting each other. The Doctors create a feedback system, so when Ryoth sends a Drashig to kill them, it instead materialises in the same room as Ryoth and eats him and the Timescoop. It is then caught and transmatted to the Death Zone by guards in the Capitol in the hopes that it will take care of the other horrors there.
Soon he arrives in the middle of his second trial by the Time Lords, which his Sixth self seems to be losing (especially as the insidious Valeyard has just accused him of a mass genocide attack against the Vervoids). After giving him advice and encouragement, as well as helping to begin an investigation into his past self's trial on Gallifrey, he leaves, his memories almost completely intact.
He finally arrives on the planet Metebelis Three, where the alone and depressed Seventh Doctor is trapped by a giant spider. After rescuing his former self (by killing the arachnid with the TCE), he remembers leaving Sam, and immediately dashes back into the TARDIS to her rescue.
Once saved by the Doctor, Sam decides to join him on his travels.
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
- Marilyn Simms
- Vrag
- Machete Charlie
- John Hart
- Jane Blythe
- Jack Harris
- Zarn
- Hurda
- Xan
- Engin
Baz's gang
Coal Hill police
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.
Species
- Drashigs, Sontarans and the Raston Warrior Robot are time scooped in order to launch an attack on 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, owing 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 PROSE: Blood Harvest established it).
- Ruath destroyed the Timescoop chamber in PROSE: Goth Opera.
- 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 PROSE: The Room With No Doors and Lungbarrow.
- There is an explanation of how the Master became worm-like in TV: Doctor Who.
- By the end of the novel:
- the first eight Doctors have appeared
- three versions of the Master — the Delgado and Roberts Masters, as well as an unknown incarnation — have appeared
- we meet two versions of the Sixth Doctor
- 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
- From the Eighth Doctor perspective, it follows on from DW: Doctor Who.
- This novel also makes for one of the more continuity-heavy novels, with Terrance Dicks referencing TV: State of Decay (which he had previous written a sequel to as PROSE: Blood Harvest). TV: The Five Doctors (also by Dicks) is referenced heavily here.
- The Master retrieves his TARDIS from where he hid it in PROSE: The Face of the Enemy.
- AUDIO: Bounty follows on directly from this story.
- While pondering the Doctor's interaction with his other selves, Flavia mentions the events of TV: 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 again in AUDIO: The Four Doctors.