The Eight Doctors - Terrance Dicks

This was the first appearance of the Eighth Doctor in print. It has an atrocious reputation and it's easy to see why. For the first major outing of a new Doctor, after the Telemovie (Which was also regarded badly, though I enjoyed it) it turns out to be not an outing. Barely an adventure. In fact, the Doctor only goes back to visit his other selves and pass on some advice and help some of them out of a spot of bother that occurs during or after a televised adventure. Managing to be both a boring premise and yet incredibly complicated is quite a feat, however Dicks cannot take all the blame. He's obviously been given an impossible brief by the BBC. Introduce a new Doctor and a new Companion to an audience who may well have only seen the TVM or never seen Who at all, introduce them to the premise of Who, deal with the inconsistencies of the TVM and fit it all into a story. I don't think there's a writer on Earth who could have filled that brief successfully.


But, and there is always a but, Terrance Dicks can't help being a good writer. There is nice stuff within this story. The Fifth and Sixth Doctors come across fantastically. Their parts are enjoyable and most importantly fun, regardless of the continuity implications of the Sixth Doctor part. All the other Doctors however, come across wrong. As is mentioned in all other reviews, the Third Doctor's chapter should just be torn straight out of the book and discarded.

So, as opposed to Terrance's other disaster in Book form (again the start of an era - An Unearthly Child), The Eight Doctors does have some merit, purely in characterisation. The plot being an unmitigated bomb site. Fortunately, due to the nature of the book, the adventures with the various incarnations can be easily found. Five and Six are definitely worth reading the once.

While not a complete disaster, this book contains absolutely nothing of value about the New Doctor or his new companion Sam and thus fails in the most basic part of its brief. Both remain essentially blank slates for the next book Vampire Science which is essentially where the Eighth Doctors adventures truly begin. A little enjoyment to be had here, if you look very selectively.

1/10