The Eight Doctors

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The Eight Doctors
Doctor Who book

Series	Eighth Doctor Adventures
Release number	1
Featuring	Eighth Doctor Sam
Writer	Terrance Dicks
Publisher	BBC Books
ISBN	ISBN 0563405635
Set between	immediately after the television movie
Release date	June 1997
Followed by	Vampire Science

The Eight Doctors is a BBC Books original novel written by Terrance Dicks and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was the first of the Eighth Doctor Adventures range and features the Eighth Doctor and introduces his new companion, Sam Jones.

The novel takes place immediately after the 1996 television movie. Like all Doctor Who spin-off media, its canonicity in relation to the television series is unclear.

1 Plot
2 Notes
3 External links
- 3.1 Reviews

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Taking place immediately after 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": the time machine immediately lands.

He has landed at a scrapyard at 76 Totters Lane, London in 1997; where he encounters a young lady by the name of Sam Jones, who is being accused by some 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 from his first life back). 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 Doctor doesn't kill, after all. 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 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 fabeled Timescoop technology, perfectly preserved since the Death Zone incident. He uses it to take 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. 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 destroyed by guards in the Capitol.

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, he leaves, his memories almost completely intact.

He finally arrives on the planet Metebelis 3, 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.

Having saved Sam, she decides to join him on his travels...

[edit] Notes

This is one of several multi-Doctor stories, including the 10th Anniversary story The Three Doctors and the 20th Anniversary story The Five Doctors (also written by Dicks).
Terrance Dicks wrote this book not only to begin this ongoing book series, but also as an attempt to rectify the various continuity problems that had emerged from the 1996 film.
Terrance Dicks made no secret of the fact he hated the 1996 television film, and at the very beginning of the book he has the Doctor looking back over the preceding adventure as though it was the most confusing, nonsensical time of his life (as Dicks pointed out in a 2005 edition of Doctor Who Magazine).
When Sam tells her that her surname is Jones, and the Doctor tells him that his is "Smith", she says that they were made for each other. This is a reference to the television series Alias Smith and Jones as well as the comedy duo of Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones, who had a television series punningly named Alas Smith and Jones. It also foreshadows the revelations that would eventually be made about Sam's origins. A similar pun shows up in the title of the 2007 series episode Smith and Jones.
This story contradicts some of the continuity set in place by the Virgin New Adventures and Virgin Missing Adventures. Although some of this would be restored by later writers, the BBC and Virgin novels were not initially intended to be part of the same continuity, and some contradictory elements still exist.
In this story, the High President of Gallifrey is Flavia (as she was at the end of The Five Doctors). From the next story onwards, the Time Lord President would be former companion Romana.
In terms of publication, this book was preceded by a novelisation of the 1996 film, however the BBC chose not to consider the novelisation to be part of the Eighth Doctors Adventures series.