The BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures was a series of original paperback novels published by BBC Books from June 1997 to June 2005, taking over the literary Doctor Who franchise from the Virgin New Adventures line. The first BBC Book release was in fact Doctor Who - The Novel of the Film, a novelisation of the 1996 telefilm. However, this is not considered part of the EDA series, which launched with a novel featuring all eight incarnations of the Doctor.
Initially, the novels were not linked to the previous Virgin New Adventures series of books (which had included one Eighth Doctor novel). Even so, as the series progressed and more writers from the Virgin line came to write for the EDA series, the barriers began to come down and many books contain characters and references to events in the Virgin series.
The EDA novels were marked by complex and lengthy story arcs, some lasting over many books, in particular a series of stories relating to a great Time War. A time war is a major part of the backstory of the revived television series, but the production team have generally stated that their Time War is a separate (or possibly follow up) event to the one featured in the EDA novels.
After the launch of the EDA line, BBC Books launched two spin-off series of books: the BBC Past Doctor Adventures line and the Short Trips short story collections.
Although the final EDA release was The Gallifrey Chronicles, published in June 2005, the following September one final Eighth Doctor novel, Fear Itself, was published, albeit under the Past Doctor Adventures line, recognising the coming of the Ninth Doctor to television.
With more than seventy novels published, the Eighth Doctor Adventures are the longest-running series of novels of any incarnation of the Doctor to date.
In 2005 BBC Books retired its EDA and PDA lines, preferring to focus its publishing efforts on novels based upon the revived TV series. Although there was speculation that the Eighth Doctor's adventures might continue in a revived PDA line of books, as of mid 2010 this has not occurred. The literary adventures of the Eighth Doctor continued in the Short Trips short story anthologies published by Big Finish Productions (many of which were written by veterans of the EDA and PDA ranges), until that series was also retired in the spring of 2009.