The Eight Doctors (novel): Difference between revisions

After an encounter with {{Roberts}} in [[1999]] [[San Francisco]], 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 on [[Vampire planet|the planet]] of the [[Three Who Rule]], 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 incident in the [[Death Zone]], where he saves his fifth incarnation and his companions from the Raston Warrior Robot and a passing platoon of [[Sontaran]]s 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 III]], 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.