We now come to my favourite Doctor of all time, yes of all the Doctors in the 60 year history of the show, my favourite is the one the casual fans are least likely to be familiar with. I honestly think the limited televised appearances actually helped build Eight into the Doctor he is today cos allowed the exanded universe from Big Finish to the novels to even the comics (my god The Glorious Dead!) to really strive and try all sorts of new, epic and ambitious ideas for him. This will be a lot shorter than before as I’m just gonna focus on Eight’s top tier stuff cos honestly, if I list every Eighth Doctor audio worth checking out, we’ll be here till Christmas Day! But I’ll give them a nod when convenient
The Chimes of Midnight - Just jumping in straight away, my favoruite Doctor Who story of all time! So many over the years have come close, many previous stories have been in the top spot from Heaven Sent to Blink, but listening to The Chimes of Midnight just blew me away the first time. It more than lives up to the hype being a chilling, atmospheric ghost story set on Christmas Eve where something isn’t quite right with time and it all centres on Charley’s past. The Web of Time story arc with Eight resucing Charley is among my favoruite Doctor Who storylines and The Chimes of Midnight represents the greatest achievement of that story arc.
Scherzo - From one Rob Shearman story to another we have Scherzo, a rare story in that it’s very far outside the normal comfort zone of Doctor Who, a bit similar to episodes like Heaven Sent or 73 Yards. So much of what you experience in this you’ll likely never have come across before in Doctor Who or will come across ever again, which is what makes Shearman my favorutie Doctor Who writer. When you look through his stories like this, Chimes, Holy Terror, Jubilee and Dalek you’ll find that they’re very unlike the kind of stories you’re used to getting in Doctor Who. The Divergent story arc does take a bit of a downward turn from this point on, the premise of the Doctor and Charley being banished to a universe where time doesn’t exist and having to explore and survive this new universe that is nothing like their own loses momentum very quickly as a lot of the stories end up feeling very conventional to your usual Doctor Who story. But Scherzo is still a unique and mind blowing experience.
Death in Blackpool - This story does require some prior context in introducing Lucie Miller and the story around her auntie and the tragic secret the Doctor keeps from Lucie. It all builds to this wonderfully depressing Christmas special which is some of the heaviest and heartbreaking material I’ve ever come across in Doctor Who. It’s a real shame Alan Barnes in recent years has been more focused on silly comedy to the point where he gets carried away with it (who’s idea was it for him to write in The War Master series?!?!?!) cos he used to be so good at balancing humour with emotional storytelling. The final scene between the Doctor and Lucie is just beautiful to listen to and almost brings tears to my eyes, the only reason it didn’t is cos of the hindsight of knowing she’d be back the following series. I really wish the show would try and give us a Christmas special of this calibre instead of the usual safe pantomime nonsense we always get, I mean I could be hopeful for this next one by Moffat but then again I’ve watched eight of his Christmas specials so I’m not holding my breath
Lucie Miller/To the Death - Now THIS is what brought me to tears!!! I think the best way to describe it would be Doctor Who does The Red Wedding from Game of Thrones, everything you wish wouldn’t happen toall these charming and likable characters you’ve grown attached to over the four series course of the Eighth Doctor Adventures does happen and it’s brutally uncompromising. This is probably the worst thing the Daleks have ever put the Doctor through and McGann truly sells it towards the end with this chilling and terrifying performance. The orginal Eighth Doctor Adventures had it’s ups and downs (not a fan of anything from Series 3) but the payoff was well worth the wait.
Solitaire - Still the best Toymaker story Doctor Who has ever done, it nails the concept of the character better than any other story written for the cosmic villain, by the way, did you know the guy playing the Toymaker was Mr Cotton (the parrot guy) from Pirates of the Carribean! Why they made him a mute I have no idea, David Bailie could’ve been a fantastic Pirates villain! Like the best Companion Chronicles stories, Charley is forced to put all her knowledge and experience travelling with the Doctor into practice in order to solve the Toymaker’s almost impossible puzzle with a solution that was in plain sight all along.
The Night of the Doctor - My one issue with this mini-episode is that Paul McGann wasn’t in Day of the Doctor and this was only really written to close his side of the circle by setting up the War Doctor. Maybe I’m just biased cos he’s my favourite by McGann deserved so much better than that. But nonetheless, he takes full opportunity of his limited onscreen return demonstrating why to this day fans are still calling for a televised spin off.
Dark Eyes Volume 4 - Dark Eyes was a fun experience being the immediate sequel to To the Death, featuring a pre Time War conflict between the Daleks and the Time Lords, bringing in new companions like Molly and Liv Chenka (Robophobia) giving us some of Alex MacQueen’s best work as the Master (and even featuring sircarolyn’s favourite 
). But it was also very heavy on technobabble and gets carried away with it’s many threads. Volume 4 sees these many strands come to a head in a finale that I guess stuck the landing, I certainly wasn’t disappointed. But this box set does feature an outstanding story that takes a break from the overall sage in A Life in the Day, without giving too much away, think of this as Groundhog Day but from Rita’s perspective.
Doom Coalition Volume 1 - This saga introduces The Eleven who would go on to be one of Big Finish’s top original villains, this intro is the Eleven at his absolute best, it establishes very quickly and very perfectly what his deal is. This box set does suffer from having a second half that absolutely sucks! But the first two stories more than make it worth buying. We get the opener, The Eleven, being a fantastic introduction to the villain in a Silence of the Lambs mixed with Batman Arkham Asylum. The we get The Red Lady and in my opinion, John Dorney’s best written work of his writing career, and that’s really saying something!
Doom Coalition Volume 3 - If The Red Lady was John Dorney’s best script, then Absent Friends is a close second! I absolutely adore the opener to this box set where the Doctor, Liv and Helen arrive at an English village where a new phone mast has been set up and the villagers have been recieving strange phone calls from people they’ve known who died and yet they speak to them as if they were still alive! Fantastic stuff, and the rest of the box set holds up pretty strongly too, we get the introduction of the Nine and this is where the key players and the bigger picture of the storyline begins to take shape resulting in an excellent cliffhanger.
Doom Coalition Volume 4 - Picking up from Volume 3, we have the conclusion to Doom Coalition, probably the best saga in the Eighth Doctor box set adventures, the story arc is more tight and focused compared to something like Dark Eyes and each episode plays a key role in the overall picture. We get a fantastic opening to this with Ship in a Bottle and the climax just about sticks the landing
Ravenous Volume 2 - It’s weird that they would call this saga Ravenous cos the titular monsters don’t even become involved until the last story of this box set! It just seems like this saga is barely interested in its own title for the first halfof it. The highlight of this story is definitely the two part Christmas story featuring the Krampus, another dark but moving and clever Christmas story that the show really could take a page from just once for their Christmas Specials! Our proper introduction to the Ravenous in the finale is also very effective, setting them up as these monstrous creatures fromlegend that even the Doctor, the Eleven (and later the Master) are terrified of!
Ravenous Volume 4 - The Ravneous saga comes to an epic conclusion as the bulk of this box set features the Eleven carrying out his master plan with the Ravenous, but now the Master has stepped in, but not just one Master, we get four incarnations of the Master! Including Missy from the Capaldi era, the Movie Master Eric Roberts, and my favourite Master of all time, the War Master played by Derek Jacobi. We also get a definitive ending to the Decayed Master’s story as his centuries of suffering, torment and stealing bodies to prolong the inevitable finally come to an end in a fitting final scene. It is pure fan service, but it’s fan service done brilliantly.
Time War Volume 4 - This is where the Time War series with Eight really starts to hit its stride after a bit of a rocky start. Volume 4 picks up from the cliffhanger ending to the previous volume where the Time War has been brought to a premature end with the Daleks being erased from time with only the Time Strategist the only survivor, escaping through a dimensional portal vowing to return with a new army. The highlight of this set being the two part opener Palindrome set on an alternate Skaro with a very different Davros to the one we’re normally used to, but this kindly figure suffers a tragic downfall through the manipulation of the Time Strategist, but not without some temporal weirdness that plays into the title. We get a great outing for Julie McKenzie as the Twelve in Dreadshade and an awesome action packe finale that reignites the Time War while setting up the future of the series with a whopping cliffhanger.
Stranded Volume 2 - It’s really eerie how Stranded started; recorded in 2019 and having the premise of the Doctor, Liv and Helen struggling to live a normal life in 2020, then it gets released in the summer of 2020 when Lockdown was at its most intense and it even features a story of the Doctor feeling trapped and longing to be free like the animals at London Zoo! Stranded Volume 2 on top of being where the story arc begins to take shape, we have two excellent stories in UNIT Dating, both very funny and very heartwarming. And the other being The Long Way Round, an intriguing glimpse into an alternate future for Earth that the Doctor and his team are determined prevent even though they are partly responsible for its existence. Now that I think about it, it’s basically the Purity storyline from the Sixth Doctor Adventures but done better.
The Truth of Peladon - The finale of a one off box set chonicling a dark time in the history of Peladon, this story sees Peladon at it’s lowest point and the Doctor planting the seeds for it’s people to take back their lives and make a change for the better.
Connections - I think it’s for the best that they’ve dropped the saga box sets for the Eighth Doctor as it’s allowed the writers more freedom to write their own stories that aren’t tied together by an overarching narrative. That said, I do feel this TARDIS team has run its course after almost a decade, I’m kind of ready for one or both of them to make their exit next time Big Finish revisit this team. The other box set releases alongside this featured an excellent Dalek story, Paradox of the Daleks, one of Dorney’s cleverest scripts to date. And this one features a wonderfully emotional tale called Albie’s Angels, in my opinion, the best Weeping Angels story since Blink and Hattie Morahan’s best work as Helen.
And those were my absolute favourites for the Eighth Doctor I’d love to read your thoughts, hope everyone’s has a wonderful Christmas tomorrow and Wednesday and remember to eat lots of plum pudding, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without plum pudding