We're a few months on from it now but if anyone didn't know on the 23rd of November last year it was the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who. What you didn't know? You manged to miss all the build up? The merchandise? The celebration episode itself? Blimey you'll have to tell me how you did it because there's five or six shows around at the moment I'd love to bypass. Anyway getting back to the point, 50 years... That is a long time, its 10 Prime Ministers, 0.000000000000000894 of an Ice Age and 11 Doctor Who's. (Don't mention Peter Cushing - I did but I think I got away with it)
For this blog I want to focus on a period of those years when Doctor Who wasn't on our screens, a period known as the wilderness years when The Doctor in his eighth incarnation was played by Paul McGann.
Sexy stuff indeed! I'm in the mood for a bit of 8th Doctor blogging because dear ladies and gentle readers I've been on a bit of an 8th Doctor binge recently. No I haven't been watching the TV Movie on endless repeat for a week and that's pretty much my point. The general public and fans who've signed up post comeback may very well think that from 1990 to 2004 there was only one Doctor Who story, when in fact there well over one hundred!
After Sylvester McCoy's third season the show left the airwaves to return six years later with the aforementioned 8th Doctor. Sadly this didn't lead to a new series however with the best part of a decade until Rusty Davies and Christopher Eccleston rolled into town most of the 8th Doctor's stories would be in the book range. To many a fan Doctor Who is synonymous with books, indeed I'd go as far as saying if it wasn't for the Target Novelisations of the TV stories and in particular Terrance Dicks I wouldn't be reading books today. As a child I gobbled those books up and refuse to part with them today. Anyway after the show went off air and with stories running out to be novelised someone came up with the bright idea of an ongoing series of books starring the 7th Doctor which proved so successful that when the 8th Doctor took over the BBC brought the license in house and started a range starring the 8th Doctor.
I have a fondness for this range as it overlapped with changes in my life as when the the first book in the range came out I was in college and eight years later when the final one came out I was managing two departments for a loan broker. During those years the Eighth Doctor Adventures (or EDA's as they were known) were one of the few constants. Never more was there so much variety in Who, future, past, aliens, done in ones and ongoing plots that last years these were a fantastic line of books. Personally I never got all of them as there's always one or two you don't fancy or other things that tend to get in the way. Of course there were companions with Fitz being a personal favourite, the lovable loser often hankering after a female guest character yet always loyal to the Doctor. It was due to this range I discovered Paul Magrs and Lawrence Miles, quite frankly I don't want to be living in a world where I haven't read their stuff. Regular authors I have to mention from this range are Lance Parkin, Kate Orman, Jon Blum and Steve Lyons, all firm favourites.
Diverging a bit (8th Doctor in joke for the hardcore fans there) around the late 90's a company called
Big Finish started doing audio's of Doctor Who. With no TV series about I was all over this and for a number of years before I fell behind I way buying/listening to them as soon as they came out. At first Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester Mccoy rotated on each months release and then lo and behold Big Finish announced that they had got Paul McGann - who and this was the key thing WAS THE CURRENT DOCTOR! On top of that he wasn't going to be fitting in and doing one audio every four months, he was going to be doing seasons! One of my favourite moments as a fan was playing
Storm Warning and hearing the Paul Mcgann the current Doctor continuing the series that I was convinced wasn't coming back. Over the years I've fallen behind with Big Finishes monthly output to the point where I'm only up to 2004's output. So in a way for me Paul Mcganns still going and I'm midway through his third season - with Capaldi right around the corner how timey wimey is that?
Getting back to the TV series it was a pleasant surprise to see Paul McGann come back to the series for the 50th anniversary and regenerate on screen. It was a lovely touch for this Doctor whose best moments were on audio and in book format to get a sendoff on TV. An extra nice touch was the audio companions getting a mention. Saying goodbye to Paul made me remember that despite being a reader of the EDA's I hadn't actually finished them. As I said earlier life has a habit of getting in the way and I'd completely forgot that I hadn't got an answer to the plot threads hanging in the books. A read of The Gallifrey Chronicles by Lance Parkin gave me a chance to say goodbye to a Doctor in the format that for a time kept going albeit nine years. Anyway to get to the point, there's a lot more to Paul McGanns Eighth Doctor than most people think. During the wilderness years most of fandom yearned for a comeback and something the anniversary was able to do was give an affectionate nod to the shows history, including the wilderness years and a Doctor TV never really got the chance to embrace.
