Eighth Doctor

Overview

The Eighth Doctor made his first television appearance in the 1996 Doctor Who television film, the first time the Doctor had returned to television screens since the end of the original series in 1989. Intended as a backdoor pilot for a new television series on the Fox Network, the film drew 5.5% of the US audience, according to Nielsen Ratings. In the United Kingdom, it was received well, attracting over 9 million viewers and generally positive reviews. It was also generally well received in Australia.

Although the film failed to spark a new television series, the Eighth Doctor's adventures continued in various licensed spin-off media, notably BBC Books' Eighth Doctor Adventures novels, audio plays from Big Finish Productions, and the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip. These stories spanned the nine years between 1996 and the debut of the new television series in 2005. He is the longest-serving Doctor in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip. In the wake of the positive reaction to the revived television series in 2005, several of the Eighth Doctor's Big Finish audio dramas were also broadcast on BBC7 radio in an edited form. The trailers for these broadcasts explained that these adventures took place before the destruction of Gallifrey as described in the revived TV series. In 2007, BBC7 aired a new series of Eighth Doctor audio adventures, created specifically for radio broadcast. Paul McGann has continued to portray the Eighth Doctor in the various audio spinoffs.

The canonicity of the spin-off media with respect to the television series and to each other is open to interpretation (the "Beginner's Guide to Doctor Who" on the BBC's classic Doctor Who website suggests this may be due to the Time War). It has been suggested that the Eighth Doctor's adventures in three different forms (novels, audio, and comics) take place in three separate continuities. The discontinuities were made explicit in the audio drama Zagreus. In response, it has become increasingly common to consider the three ranges separately. The final Eighth Doctor Adventures novel, The Gallifrey Chronicles, obliquely references this split in timelines, even suggesting that the split results in the three alternative forms of the Ninth Doctor (a reference to the fact three different versions of the incarnation have appeared in various media). Mary's Story, a 2009 audio story by Big Finish, contradicted these suggestions, as there the Doctor mentions his companions in order, with book companions before audio companions. In The Night of the Doctor, the Doctor "salutes" five of his companions by name, all from the Big Finish audio productions.

Despite the fact the Eighth Doctor appeared on television only twice, he is the most prolific of all the Doctors (to date) in terms of number of individual stories published in novel, novella, short story and audio form. In 2007, the Eighth Doctor finally made a second appearance (of sorts) within the television series' continuity. In the episode "Human Nature" he appears on-screen as a sketch (alongside other incarnations) in the book A Journal of Impossible Things by John Smith. In 2008 and 2010 he appeared again as a brief image in "The Next Doctor" and "The Eleventh Hour" along with every other incarnation up to that time. In 2010's "The Lodger", he is shown in a flashback with his first, second, third, fourth, ninth and tenth incarnations. In 2013's "Nightmare in Silver", he is shown in a flashback along with the Doctor's other incarnations; he is also fleetingly seen running past companion Clara Oswald in the following episode, "The Name of the Doctor", though his face is not shown. Later that year, McGann reprised the role for the mini-episode "The Night of the Doctor", a prelude to the show's 50th anniversary special. This appearance marked the Eighth Doctor's final adventure and his regeneration. "The Night of the Doctor" proved popular with fans of the series, some of whom petitioned the BBC to make a spin-off series starring the Eighth Doctor.

Personality

The BBC's official website calls the Eighth Doctor an "effortlessly charming, romantic figure". The site states that he is both unguarded about his own background and candid about the future of those he meets, noting the irony in an "open Doctor" remaining such a closed book.

The Big Finish Productions website describes the Eighth Doctor as "an enthusiastic figure who explores the universe for the sheer love of it", always surviving on the strength of his excellent improvisational skills rather than preparing elaborate plans. The site states that he is "passionate, direct, sympathetic and emotionally accessible", but notes that these traits are "balanced by occasional feelings of self-doubt and weariness of his endless battles against evil."

Discussing "The Night of the Doctor", McGann said, "[Moffat's] instinctive take on the Eighth Doctor was exactly how I'd imagined this character to be, even way back, back in the 90s. You know, this... like a bruised nobility. I know it sounds wanky now, but... he's decent, but he's compromised. He's not a warrior, really, at all. There's a pacifist side to him, but he's a realist as well."

Television appearances

The Eighth Doctor debuts in the TV film Doctor Who. While transporting the remains of his longtime nemesis the Master to Gallifrey, the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) is caught in the crossfire of a gang shoot-out in 1999 San Francisco's Chinatown, USA. He is taken to a hospital where surgeons, confused by his double heartbeat, attempt to correct a non-existent fibrillation. These efforts instead "kill" the Doctor, and he is taken to a morgue where after several hours—due to the effect of anaesthetic on his alien biology—he finally regenerates into his eighth incarnation (McGann). The Master manages to cheat death, and while the Doctor is on Earth his spirit takes over the body of a paramedic named Bruce (Eric Roberts). The Master (Roberts) then attempts to steal the Doctor's remaining lives by opening the Eye of Harmony inside the Doctor's time machine, the TARDIS, nearly destroying the Earth in the process. However, the Doctor and his companion Dr Grace Holloway (Daphne Ashbrook) are able to prevent the Earth's destruction, and the Master is sucked into the Eye.

The TV film did not lead to the commissioning of a revived television series, and while Eighth Doctor stories continued in other media, Doctor Who did not air again on television until 2005. After this, footage and stills from the TV film would be used in later episodes "The Next Doctor" (2008), "The Eleventh Hour", "The Lodger" (both 2010) and "Nightmare in Silver" (2013). Edited archive footage in "The Name of the Doctor" very briefly shows the Eighth Doctor sharing an adventure with the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton).

McGann reprised the role for a webcast mini-episode, "The Night of the Doctor", in 2013, which precedes the 50th anniversary special, "The Day of the Doctor". He is shown to be a conscientious objector to the raging Time War between Daleks and Time Lords, and is killed when attempting to save a young woman who rejects salvation at the hands of a Time Lord. He awakens in the company of the Sisterhood of Karn, who explain that he has died and been temporarily resurrected. They urge him to bring the War to an end, and give him a choice of elixirs to trigger his regeneration. Saluting his various companions from the Big Finish audio range, he drinks an elixir designed to produce a warrior, regenerating into the War Doctor (John Hurt).

Costume

The Eighth Doctor initially wore a Wild Bill Hickok New Years fancy dress party costume which he liberated from the lockers at the San Francisco hospital he regenerated in. He completed it with a pair of black leather shoes taken from Grace Holloway's ex-boyfriend Brian to give him the appearance somewhere between a Victorian dandy and wild west gambler. By the time of "The Night of the Doctor" he sported a worn and scarred brown leather jacket, corresponding with his overall dishevelled and exhausted appearance, presumably as a result of his experiences during the Time War.

Big Finish Costume: In 2010, Paul McGann revealed a new costume and sonic screwdriver for the Eighth Doctor which he indicated would be the new costume going forward. The cover and promotional photographs for the 2012 Big Finish story, Dark Eyes is, however the first story to officially feature the new costume. The new outfit was originally premiered in 2010 at the Armageddon Pop Culture Expo, along with a redesigned Sonic Screwdriver, courtesy of Weta Workshop. These changes were independently produced and were not affiliated with Big Finish Productions or the BBC, but were accepted as suitable for official use after the fact. The costume consists of a black, leather peacoat, a white t-shirt, blue jeans and brown shoes. In this outfit the Doctor also carries a brown messenger bag. No story yet exists where he changes into the outfit we see in "The Night of the Doctor".

Novels

Almost as soon as he'd left San Francisco, the Doctor had another brief attack of amnesia, caused by a final trap of the Master's. To regain his memories, the Doctor was forced to visit all seven of his past selves and help them out with some crisis or another, at the same time acknowledging the responsibility his role gave him. Having regained his memories, the Doctor met a late twentieth-century Coal Hill School student named Samantha Jones; shortly after their encounter, the Doctor left her alone at a Greenpeace rally.

For a time, the Doctor adventured with an Ice Warrior named Ssard and a human woman named Stacy Townsend, who fell in love with each other; some while after they parted ways with the Doctor, the two invited him to serve as best man at their wedding (Placebo Effect). He also, at some point, teamed up with his old companion Bernice Summerfield, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT to combat an Ice Warrior occupation of Great Britain.

Faction Paradox

Eventually, three years after his departure and one hour after he left, the Doctor returned to the Greenpeace rally. With Sam collected, the pair spent a great period wandering together, facing dozens of adventures. During their travels, Sam and the Doctor became aware of a great War, looming in the future of Gallifrey – a war between the Time Lords and an as-yet-unidentified Enemy, with dramatic and disturbing consequences. While exploring the subject, the Doctor discovered that his Sam was not the original Samantha Jones; rather, her biodata had been manipulated by an outside agency with the intent to mould her into a prosaic distraction for him (Alien Bodies). Ultimately this plan proved a failure, as Sam developed into a much more strongly-willed companion than intended; at one point she spent three years avoiding the Doctor, so as to cope with a crush she had developed on him, but managed to survive and make a good life for herself in the future until she rejoined the Doctor as she could make more of a difference with him.

The close dynamic between the pair was shifted with the introduction of Fitz Kreiner, a sixties bar singer incorrectly suspected of matricide. Fitz took on the role of a sort of younger brother to the Doctor, placing the Time Lord on as high a pedestal as Fitz had ever known. Eventually Fitz found himself abducted by Faction Paradox, a "time-travelling voodoo cult", and brainwashed into their legions. When the Doctor realised that a Faction member he had encountered was a biomass copy of Fitz- a 'clone' created and shaped based on others' memories and perceptions of Fitz-, he used the TARDIS's telepathic circuits to restore Fitz's memories and identity to the clone, believing that the original Fitz was dead and reasoning that the clone would essentially be the real Fitz in every way that mattered.

With both Sam and Fitz gone – Sam's origins established as a temporal paradox caused by exposure to a scar in reality created when the Doctor regenerated, which the 'original' Sam was only exposed to because the Doctor met blonde Sam – the Doctor continued his travels with the clone Fitz (Although he was treated as the real one and generally thought of himself as such) and Compassion, an ex-Faction agent implanted with an interface that the Doctor found compatible with his TARDIS. Unbeknownst to the Doctor, the Faction – with the aid of the original Fitz – had changed his history, triggering the Third Doctor's regeneration ahead of schedule and infecting him with a virus that, in his eighth incarnation- his immune system being too strong to allow the virus to infect him directly while allowing it to gain a hold on him each time he regenerated-, would transform him into a Faction member (Interference: Book One and Two).

Eventually, Compassion's implant, linked to the Doctor's TARDIS to prevent her being influenced by random local signals, triggered her unexpected mutation into a sentient Type 102 TARDIS, specifically the "mother" of the TARDISes that would be used in the pending War. With this knowledge, The Time Lords – led by Romana, now in her third incarnation – attempted to capture Compassion, for use as breeding stock in preparation for the War. In response, and in light of the apparent destruction of his old TARDIS in a dimensional rift, the Doctor and Fitz retreated into Compassion (The Shadows of Avalon).

The Doctor and Fitz travelled in Compassion for some time, until the machinations of Faction Paradox came to a head back on Gallifrey. As it turned out, in the new timeline triggered by the Doctor's infection, the Doctor was destined to become "Grandfather Paradox", the mythical founder of Faction Paradox. The only factor keeping the original sequence of events in play was the Doctor's TARDIS, which had rebuilt itself after its apparent destruction on Avalon, and had now materialised in a twisted form above Gallifrey, holding within itself the Doctor's original reality where he had regenerated on Metebelis III and never been infected ever since it sensed that something was wrong when the Third Doctor regenerated ahead of schedule.

In a final confrontation with his future self, the Doctor resolved the timeline conflict by channelling the TARDIS's built-up energies through its weapon systems, thereby destroying both the Faction Paradox fleet and Gallifrey itself. In so doing, the TARDIS was able to rewrite the altered timeline with the original one that it "remembered"; no longer able to contain both timelines as a result of its energy drain, one reality had to become 'real'. As a side effect, however, the Doctor's entire memory was erased – apparently from the trauma of the event (The Ancestor Cell).

Amnesia on Earth

To give the Doctor time to recover and the TARDIS time to regenerate from the extensive damage it had suffered, Compassion dropped the Doctor off on Earth in the year 1889; she then delivered Fitz to 2001, with the intent that he wait for the Doctor to catch up to him. With that, Compassion departed for parts unknown. Back in 1889, meanwhile, the Doctor awoke in a railway carriage to discover no memory as to his real identity, and no possessions save a small, shapeless box– what was left of the TARDIS after its power loss— and a note, simply stating "Meet me in St. Louis', 8 February 2001. Fitz".

Despite his amnesia, the Doctor retained a wide general knowledge. However, he also showed an uncharacteristic callous streak, easily allowing others to die if he felt that they 'deserved' to perish (The Burning). To contrast, he was capable of feeling unusually poignant warmth, even dating a woman in the 1980s, and adopting a young girl named Miranda, a Time Lady from the future (Father Time). During this time, he often became involved in strange problems outside the norm, such as confronting an entity that was essentially sentient fire (The Burning). He experienced a particular funk in the 1950s, feeling that his efforts to learn about his past were pointless, but his interest in life was re-inspired when he was recruited to defeat his old enemies the Players as they sought to escalate the Cold War.

Unsure what "St Louis" was intended by the note, the Doctor created his own in London: the St Louis Bar and Restaurant. As 2001 rolled around, Fitz indeed turned up there to meet him. With the aid of new companion Anji Kapoor, the Doctor and Fitz completed the TARDIS's regeneration, dealt with a race of invading aliens, then set back again to exploring time and space (Escape Velocity).

With his freedom restored, the Doctor chose to counteract his extended exile by seeking as much non-human company as possible. During this period, the Doctor encountered all manner of unusual beings – from a species that at cursory glance resembled the Earth tiger (The Year of Intelligent Tigers), to water spirits, to talking apes from another dimension. Though at times the Doctor seemed somewhat cold – as when he seemed more concerned about damaged plums than a dead man (Eater of Wasps) – he retained his passion for life in all forms. Although his amnesia remained a bother, the Doctor acknowledged that whatever had happened to him had happened for a reason, and he might as well make use of the advantages it offered.

Sabbath and parallel times

Only a few months after resuming his old lifestyle, the Doctor faced another radical change: the loss of his second heart. As it happened, the heart served as a bond with Gallifrey; with the planet gone, the heart had begun to fester within the Doctor's body, pumping it with poison.

A man named Sabbath, an eighteenth-century secret agent gifted with time travel abilities, excised the blackened organ, both saving the Doctor's life and robbing the Doctor of some of his higher Time Lord abilities (his respiratory bypass system and his ability to metabolise toxins). It transpired that Sabbath was actually after the heart for his own purposes: when implanted into Sabbath's own chest, it imparted upon him those same Time Lord powers. An unexpected side effect of this experiment was that so long as the Doctor's heart remained within Sabbath's chest, the Doctor himself remained practically invulnerable to harm (though any injury sustained by the Doctor would weaken Sabbath).

Eventually, after a woman Sabbath loved sacrificed herself to save the Doctor from a malfunctioning time machine, Sabbath tore out the Doctor's second heart, allowing the Doctor to begin growing a new one.

Shortly after the restoration of his heart, the Doctor found himself locked in a desperate struggle with Sabbath as, along with his mysterious business associates, Sabbath hatched a plan to destroy all alternate realities. Sabbath believed that time travellers like the Doctor, every time they landed somewhere, created an alternate reality where they didn't show up, and that the universe was unable to support so many alternates without suffering damage; therefore, he attempted to trigger an explosion at Event One – the Big Bang – that would erase all alternate universes and leaving only one possible timeline. However, Sabbath's allies had been lying to him; in reality, Time would only split if absolutely necessary, and even then, it was nearly impossible to travel between alternate realities. Effectively, all that would be wiped out was free will itself...

The explosion at Event One was averted, but instead, what occurred was reality starting to 'slide' between histories, each reality fighting to become the dominant one. Along with new companion Trix, the Doctor, Fitz and Anji travelled through the realities, the Doctor being forced to erase at least two of them to restore the original reality. During this adventure, the Doctor appeared to become a bit more cold and calculating, sacrificing an innocent man to escape a pocket universe and even leaving alternate versions of Fitz and Anji to die to preserve continuity. However, in the end, their sacrifices paid off, the Doctor managing to stabilise reality by resolving a paradox that had been hanging over them since the beginning of the crisis, and then, with Sabbath's help, they confronted his masters; the Council of Eight, mysterious beings who gained power by foreseeing likely future events and then ensuring that they came to pass. The Doctor, as a rogue element existing outside of Time, was the only unpredictable factor in their universe, and was thus the only person who could stop them. Ironically, it was Sabbath himself who gave the Doctor the edge needed to stop the Council; realising that one of the Council members expected Sabbath to shoot the Council member with a weapon designed to send the subject into the Time Vortex, Sabbath instead shot himself, condemning himself to eternal agony in the Time Vortex, but completely undoing the Council's plan and destroying their space station, simultaneously restoring the possibility of parallel worlds to the universe.

The Gallifrey Chronicles

Some while after this, the Doctor was captured by Marnal, one of the few surviving Gallifreyans, and accused of destroying Gallifrey. Although Gallifrey had been all but wiped from history by the Doctor's actions, Marnal was able to jury-rig a Time Space Visualiser to witness the Doctor actually push the button as he faced off against the Grandfather, although there were about three minutes between the Doctor firing the shot and Gallifrey's actual destruction where the Doctor's activities in the TARDIS were unaccounted for. Reflecting on his discoveries in the TARDIS, the Doctor, along with the aid of K9 (who had been transported into a hidden area of the TARDIS and trapped there following Gallifrey's destruction) realised that his memory loss hadn't been caused by the trauma of destroying Gallifrey; in fact, the Doctor had wiped his memories to give his mind space to store the contents of the Matrix within his brain, compressed down so he wouldn't be driven mad by the voices of all the dead Time Lords within him, his own memories presumably stored somewhere else in his mind, given his occasional flashes from his past. However, right then, the Doctor had more immediate worries; namely, saving Earth from a species of massive fly-like aliens called the Vore, who would soon have the power to devour the planet. As The Gallifrey Chronicles ended, the Doctor, Fitz, and Trix dove into the Vore mountain, the Doctor equipped with a plan to stop the Vore and save the world.

Audio dramas

Sometime after the events in San Francisco, the Doctor finds himself wandering alone through the Vortex. In the wake of a Vortisaur attack, he is forced to land on Earth, in October 1930, aboard the doomed R101 airship. Aboard the vessel, the Doctor meets a young adventuress by the name of Charley Pollard. In the course of his adventure, the Doctor saves Charley's life and takes her aboard the TARDIS as his latest companion (Storm Warning). Though done in good faith, the Doctor soon understands that Charley's rescue would have much greater impact upon the timestream.

For two "seasons" of audio adventures, Charley's continued existence- despite established history being in part contingent on her death on the R101- forms a rough plot arc in which the universe becomes infected with "anti-time", culminating in a conflict with the wraithlike Never People and the Doctor choosing to sacrifice himself and his TARDIS by absorbing anti-time energy and transforming into the bogeyman Zagreus. This is only resolved when, restored to sanity but still infected with anti-time, the Doctor chooses to sacrifice himself for the sake of Charley and the universe as a whole by removing himself from space and time, plunging into a divergent universe, of which he had no knowledge or frame of reference and in which there was no concept of linear time (Zagreus). Charley stows away on his TARDIS, in a sense nullifying the Doctor's sacrifice by again placing herself in danger; for a time, this fact causes great friction between the characters and personal angst for the Doctor.

For another two seasons, the Doctor, Charley, and a new companion by the name of C'rizz, explore the divergent universe, gradually unravelling a deep plot designed around the Doctor by Rassilon, founder of Time Lord society. Eventually, with the aid of his companions, the Doctor escapes the trap built for him, overcomes his emotional burden, learns that he had been purged of Zagreus and returned to his normal universe with Charley and C'Rizz in tow (The Next Life).

Following that point, which coincides with the end of the official Big Finish "seasons" in light of the return of Doctor Who to television in 2005, the trio wanders freely. The only continuing plot element involves C'rizz and his unusual, potentially destructive psychological development. This culminates in C'rizz's death (Absolution) which leads Charley to also wish to leave the Doctor's company. Due to an episode of amnesia, brought on by a healing coma induced by a cyber planner, the Eighth Doctor believes Charley has left him (The Girl Who Never Was), when she is in fact stuck in the year 500002, where she is rescued by the Sixth Doctor (The Condemned) suggesting that when the Eighth Doctor first meets Charley he already knows her in some form. However, in a Big Finish Productions podcast, executive producer Nick Briggs, when speaking on this development, confirmed that the Eighth Doctor in fact does not know Charley at "their" first meeting, which itself strongly suggested that when the Sixth Doctor and Charley ultimately part company any memory on his part of their adventures will either be altered or erased. This was later confirmed when Charley departed after she was replaced for a while with a woman called Mila who assumed her appearance; before Charley's final departure, she had an alien race called the Viyrans alter the Sixth Doctor's memories to replace his memories of her with Mila's true face and name to preserve the timeline, telling the Sixth Doctor that he had died before she left him so that he would 'accept' the new memories (Although this assumption was a mistake on Charley's part, the Eighth Doctor having merely fallen into a healing coma after an attack).

It has also been revealed (in Terror Firma) that prior to meeting Charley, the Doctor travelled with at least two other companions – a brother-and-sister pair (Samson and Gemma Griffin) – of whom the Doctor's memories had been erased by Davros, as part of an elaborate revenge plot.

Romana and K-9 briefly travelled with the Eighth Doctor in the 2003 remake of Shada.

In September 2006, Doctor Who Magazine announced a new audio miniseries featuring the Eighth Doctor and new companion Lucie Miller (played by Sheridan Smith), set later in the character's chronology, after he has parted ways with Charley and C'rizz. Produced by Big Finish Productions, the miniseries was broadcast on BBC7; they began on New Year's Eve 2006 and ended on 18 February 2007. The miniseries consisted of eight episodes, constituting six stories (the first and last stories having two parts). These are Blood of the Daleks, Horror of Glam Rock, Immortal Beloved, Phobos, No More Lies and Human Resources. In this series, the Time Lords have placed Lucie Miller in the Doctor's care as part of a "witness protection programme", contrary to the wishes of either the Doctor or Lucie. A second series of adventures featured the Doctor and Lucie and ended on a cliffhanger. A third season was streamed from the Big Finish website, as well as being available on CD. A fourth season started in 2009 with the Christmas episode Death in Blackpool which dealt with the departure of Lucie Miller. Also in December 2009, a standalone episode, An Earthly Child, was released, in which the Doctor visits his granddaughter, Susan Foreman, on Earth, following up on the events of the First Doctor adventure The Dalek Invasion of Earth, also meeting his great-grandson, Alex Campbell. In Situation Vacant the Doctor gained a new companion, Tamsin Drew – drawn from four prospective companions. This season puts the Eighth Doctor up against a new incarnation of the Meddling Monk – who is now travelling with Lucie Miller. However, in the course of the season Tamsin is seduced to the Meddling Monk's way of thinking, while Lucie Miller – having no taste for his violent methods – resumes travelling with the Doctor. Tamsin, Lucie and Alex are subsequently killed when the Monk helps the Daleks launch a new invasion of Earth, although the Monk betrays the Daleks at the last minute to help save the Doctor and Susan from the Daleks.

Big Finish in November 2012 released a boxed set of audio dramas taking place after To the Death . The boxset is called Dark Eyes and comprises four stories: The Great War, Fugitives, The Tangled Web and X and the Daleks. The boxset also introduces a new companion, Molly O'Sullivan (played by Ruth Bradley), an Irish Voluntary Aid Detachment nursing assistant in World War I. Here the Eighth Doctor changes his appearance, cutting his hair and changing into a WWI navy trench coat after his Victorian clothing is ruined.

The first season, second series and some of the third series of the Eighth Doctor Adventures have been broadcast on BBC7. Currently only the episodes of the third season not featuring returning monsters have been broadcast due to the BBC allowing their rights to lapse.

An alternate version of the Eighth Doctor, from a timeline where the Seventh Doctor regenerated after being shot by the Nazis in the 1950s, was first mentioned in the audio drama Colditz, and appears (played by McGann) in Klein's Story. Under the name Schmidt he taught Klein how to pilot the TARDIS, thereby putting her in a position to inadvertently assist the Seventh Doctor in preventing this timeline from occurring (Unable to go back himself as the TARDIS security protocols would prevent him from going somewhere where he was already).

In a trilogy of adventures, released at the end of 2011 (October, November, December) as part of the continuing monthly range, The Doctor travelled with Mary Shelley (as played by Julie Cox), first acknowledged as a friend of the Eighth Doctor's in The Company of Friends. The first story, The Silver Turk, featured the early breed of the Cybermen as seen in The Tenth Planet. The Witch from the Well tested the pair's relationship and the trilogy concluded with Army of Death.

In 2013, Big Finish released a special 50th Anniversary story, The Light at the End, in which the Master (Geoffrey Beevers) implements a plot to trap and destroy all eight incarnations of the Doctor. The Eighth Doctor and Charley meet up with the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) and Leela (Louise Jameson), the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) and Nyssa (Sarah Sutton), the Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) and Peri and the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) and Ace (Sophie Aldred), and working together (along with the First Doctor (William Russell), Second Doctor (Frazer Hines) and Third Doctor (Tim Treloar)), manage to break free of the Master's trap and prevent time from being rewritten so that the Doctor would never have left Gallifrey. Companions Susan (Carole Ann Ford), Ian Chesterton (William Russell), Vicki (Maureen O'Brien), Steven Taylor (Peter Purves), Sara Kingdom (Jean Marsh), Polly (Anneke Wills), Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines), Zoe Heriot (Wendy Padbury), Jo Grant (Katy Manning), Tegan Jovanka (Janet Fielding) and Turlough (Mark Strickson) also made appearances in the audio drama.

In the 2013 live action mini-episode "The Night of the Doctor", the Eighth Doctor saluted Charley, C'rizz, Lucie, Tamsin and Molly from the Big Finish range prior to his regeneration into the War Doctor.

Unfinished business

In the Doctor Who Magazine comic strips, at an unstated time after his regeneration (and after an adventure in the 1930s involving Fey Truscott-Sade and psychic weasels), the Doctor revisited the town of Stockbridge. After being caught up in the games of the Celestial Toymaker, he picked up a new companion in lively sci-fi fan Izzy Sinclair. The two of them were soon caught up in the machinations of the Doctor's old enemies the Threshold, a mercenary organisation. The Threshold attempted to manipulate the Doctor into stopping the Daleks gaining access to the multiverse (which would kill an artificial solar system as a side effect) and dying in the attempt, but were outmaneuvered. Unknown to him, they implanted a device in Fey Truscott-Sade so that they could use her as an unwilling spy when she next encountered the Doctor. She did so in 1939, assisting him and Izzy against the vampiric Varney; the Doctor was left infected with a deadly bacillus, and he had to be taken to Gallifrey to be cured, luring him into a battle against a Time Lord cult called the Final Chapter.

Working out that the Threshold were using Fey as a spy, the Doctor and his old comrade Shayde faked a regeneration. The Threshold was conned into believing they were facing a vulnerable new Doctor (Shayde in disguise), allowing the real Doctor to infiltrate their base. While he and his friends were too late to stop the Threshold from destroying every single spacecraft in the universe, they were able to bring about the organisation's destruction before it could profit. Fey returned to her time, having also bonded with Shayde to save his life.

Unknowingly, the TARDIS had been taken over by the Master, who was manipulating events to gain the power of the omniversal Glory. The Doctor was specifically sent to times and places that would undermine him – discovering he had upset the course of Grace Holloway's life in 2001, encountering an alien race with motivations uncomfortably similar to his which caused death and horror in 17th Century Japan, and almost killing the benevolent Kroton by mistake. (A slight diversion between events saw the Doctor and Izzy team up with the actor Tom Baker and other 1970s television actors against Beep the Meep in 1979.)

In 17th Century Japan, the Doctor's attempt to save the life of samurai Katsura Sato, a friend of Izzy, left the man inadvertently immortal and thus robbed of both an honourable death and any sense of empathy. The Master later came for Sato, when he was mentally vulnerable, and gave him a fake religion to focus his mind on; Earth's history was altered as Sato, renamed Lord Morningstar, and his Church of the Glorious Dead conquered the planet, creating a technological advanced, highly brutal planet of jihadists. The Doctor, Izzy and Kroton wandered into their invasion of the museum planet Paradost; while the Doctor faced the Master over the Glory, Izzy and Kroton spent weeks on the occupied world. The Doctor was defeated, only for the Master discover he was not able to access the Glory, as instead Kroton and Sato had been the ones prophesised to battle for it. Kroton won the Glory, the Master was purged from the TARDIS and history was reverted, and the Doctor and Izzy took a well-earned break.

Destrii

During a battle against the body-stealing Ophidians and their gigantic snake-shaped techno-organic warship, the Doctor and Izzy encountered a brash and adventurous fish-woman called Destrii. While seemingly friendly and bonding with Izzy, Destrii was secretly on the run and she swapped bodies with Izzy to cover her escape; when Destrii was seemingly killed, Izzy seemed trapped within an alien body. The Doctor's next few journeys were spent trying to help her in this situation, both in coming to terms with the change and finding out what her new body's abilities were. Frida Kahlo helped Izzy mentally deal with the change, but the attempt at testing Izzy's abilities led her and the Doctor into a turbulent encounter with the humanised Daleks he had created in his second incarnation. Unable to prevent their tragic end – self-destructing to escape the machinations of the malevolent psychic Kata-Phobus -, the two of them were distracted and caught off-guard when Helioth and Hassana, two of the energy-beings called the Horde, abducted Izzy thinking she was Destrii.

The Doctor went on a relentless search to rescue his friend, with the help of Fey/Shayde and by forcing co-operation from Destrii, still alive in her stolen body. His quest led him to the planet Oblivion, a surreal and brutal world ruled by Destrii's mother, the Matriax. Izzy was rescued and returned to her original form, while Oblivion's court system and the menace of the Horde were both destroyed, leaving Destrii free to leave her world and explore the universe with her roguish uncle Jodafra. However, Izzy had decided she wanted to return home to her family, and the Doctor was left alone.

Feeling slightly morose, the Doctor was cheered up by an unknowing encounter with his old companion Frobisher and went on several 'holiday' adventures on his own. He eventually re-encountered Destrii and Jodafra in America during the 19th Century, where the upcoming clash between General Custer and Chief Sitting Bull was interrupted by Jodafra's machinations involving the monstrous wendigo. Jodafra had made a deal with the creature: power in exchange for being fed children. Unable to stomach this and with the Doctor urging her to listen to the spark of decency in her, Destrii helped the Doctor stop her uncle. In revenge, she was left beaten and abandoned, and the Doctor took her in as a probationary companion. Together, the two of them teamed up with MI6 and faced an invasion of early 21st Century Earth by time-travelling Cybermen; they were preparing to chemically overload the emotions of humans and thus make them willingly surrender to have their emotions removed by conversion. The Doctor destroyed them through use of the Time Vortex (similar to the later "The Parting of the Ways"), almost surrendering to it but giving up its power to save Destrii.

In 2007, Panini Books published Doctor Who: The Flood, the final collection of comic strips featuring the Eighth Doctor in Doctor Who Magazine. The book includes the essay "Flood Barriers" by strip editor Clayton Hickman in which he reveals that Russell T Davies had authorised the comic strip to depict the regeneration of the Eighth Doctor into the Ninth Doctor at the end of the 2004–2005 arc, The Flood. The cause of the regeneration would have been the Doctor's exposure to the Time Vortex in his efforts to destroy the Cybermen (the same cause that triggered the later Ninth to Tenth Doctor regeneration in Parting of the Ways). Destrii would have witnessed the regeneration and would have continued to travel with the Ninth Doctor in a proposed Year One arc. However BBC Wales vetoed the Year One arc and indicated the Ninth Doctor could only be shown travelling with Rose Tyler, Hickman and writer Scott Gray eventually decided not to depict the regeneration as they would have been unable to give Destrii a proper departure. The Panini collection includes the original script for the regeneration sequence, as well as never before published art showing the regeneration itself.