Doctor Who: Why we’re surprisingly lucky with the Eighth Doctor
By James Aggas
While the Eighth Doctor might not have had many Doctor Who stories on TV, his fans have been surprisingly lucky when it comes to his Doctor.
In some ways, Eighth Doctor fans haven’t exactly been lucky. After his appearance in the Doctor Who TV movie, he didn’t have another appearance on television until The Night of the Doctor seventeen years later. And even then, it was just for six minutes. It was great to see him again, especially for something as major as his long overdue regeneration story. Still, it would’ve been great to see more from him.
But having said that, in a strange way, we’ve been rather lucky with his Doctor, too. Maybe not on television, but definitely in other media. Across the Wilderness Years, the Eighth Doctor was given a huge number of stories across various media, including books, comics and of course audios.
It’s this last medium that feels especially key. Because unlike comics and novels, the audios feature something crucial for the Eighth Doctor: Paul McGann himself. Throughout these stories, we’ve been given consistently strong performances with McGann in the role. Performances he’s been doing for Big Finish since Storm Warning in 2001.
It’s strange to think that McGann has been playing the Doctor on audio for that long. For over 18 years, the Eighth Doctor’s had so many adventures. It’s easy to imagine McGann becoming tired with the role and giving up on it.
But instead, the opposite has happened. Not only do we still have McGann playing the role with so much enthusiasm and energy. We’re actually getting a lot of his Doctor every year.
To this day, we’re still getting plenty of great stories with McGann’s Doctor – across several different series!
(Image credit: Doctor Who/Big Finish Productions.
Image obtained from: Big Finish Productions.)
One Doctor, many series
For the past few years, we’ve generally received at least two box sets a year featuring the Eighth Doctor. And I do mean “at least”. Because while we get two volumes a year focused on arcs based around him and his companions Liv and Helen, we also get one volume a year of his own series set in the Time War. These two series are extremely different, so it works very well. Still, there was no question that it was definitely nice to get the equivalent of twelve hours for the Eighth Doctor last year.
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If anything, that output has only increased this year! Along with the second half of the series Ravenous and the third volume of The Time War, we’ve also had another Eighth Doctor box set released just this month set around his earlier adventures with Lucie Miller! On top of that, he’s also appeared in other box sets, including The War Master and The Legacy of Time.
We’ve had a regular output from Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor almost every single year since 2001. That’s actually pretty fantastic, especially since later Doctors like Eccleston, Smith and Capaldi have only kept to the TV series so far (although of course, we have enjoyed stories with their Doctors in other mediums, such as comics and books).
Even better is that there’s still plenty to enjoy of the Eighth Doctor, with so many more stories left to be told. While it may not be in the medium that we’d prefer, (and considering how fantastic Big Finish’s stories continue to be, that may not be true for many of his fans,) there’s definitely a lot to enjoy with McGann’s Doctor on audio, enough to make him this writer’s favorite Doctor. And that’s something we can definitely be grateful for.
dark. Next. The joy of watching the series in random order
Are you glad at the sheer volume of Eighth Doctor stories we have on audio? Or would you prefer him to get more stories on television? Let us know in the comments below.
