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
- Retrieves his TARDIS from Devils End.
- Eats a Deathworm to cheat death (again).
- May have latent telekinetic abilities.
- Dead vampiric leader.
- Plans to make an Inn of the town hall.
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.