Literally this. Something something “I love this life” being such a key line at the end of The Robots. Either Liv feels SO guilty about leaving that she sends a synthetic duplicate of herself, which is a possibility as we’ve learned in aforementioned franchise, or Helen dies and she has no heart in carrying on/facing possible guilt… or, and this is a hot take… Liv and Helen both bite the dust, and Eight sends a duplicate off to Tania because he doesn’t have the hearts to explain what actually happened (or whatever have you, I’m just rambling at this point).
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I love BF but one of their biggest issues is keeping characters going beyond their natural life span.
They did it with Charley, Hex and now, if comments here are anything to go by, Liv and Helen.
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While the Doctor/Liv/Helen adventures are still ongoing, The Eighth Doctor audios also delved into the Time War with currently 5 boxsets and more on the way. What are your thoughts on how these sets worked or didn’t work? Did you like Bliss? Do you think this series still has life in it?
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I’ve enjoyed the 8TW boxsets so far and will listen to more if/when they make them, and I did really like Bliss, but honestly I’m getting pretty tired of the time war in general. There’s some interesting stuff in it, but really there’s only so many shouty daleks I can take and that by nature of what the time war is, is a lot of what we’ve been getting
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Yeah, lots of shouty Daleks in an audio make it a tricky listen for me and it gets very tedious very quickly. I’ve generally steered clear of the Time War sets although I’ll get to them eventually.
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I listened to the first 2 volumes a while back and didn’t care for them, but I recently went back through and binged the whole run and adored them, especially volume 3, especially The War Valeyard
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Re: the Eighth Doctor boxets! I’m only 3/4 of the way though Dark Eyes (decent but definitely not a fav of mine) but I did listen to all of Stranded when it came out! I was disappointed in the overall storyline—I felt they played it too safe, especially the first and last boxsets. But I was really moved by a lot of the individual stories—UNIT Dating, Patience and Snow spring to mind. Even though I wish it had gone further with the ‘stranded’ concept and utilised the characters better, I wouldn’t give it up for those stories, I think.
Oh, and Albie’s Angels was stunning. And I’ll echo the fears that Helen is going to end up dying in an upcoming story. Please, no…
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So, having looked at Eight’s time with Big Finish, let’s look at his other main appearances. Let’s start with the Radio Times comics featuring the Eighth Doctor, Stacy Townsend and Ssard the Ice Warrior. There were five stories all written by Gary Russell. Has anyone read these, and were they any good? Also, does anyone know where they might’ve been collected?
I saw a collection of these once, years ago on Whovians Amino I think, and they’re not impressive. From what I remember, they’re short and generic, and the plot is extremely limited by the fact that you only have a couple panels a week, each installment needs to end on a cliffhanger, and the doctor has to be prominently in every scene. I believe they’re the first piece of 8th Doctor media released after the movie, and I suspect that most of the work and all of the writing was done before the movie came out
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They’re collected in a scrap book I have at home 
They were fun but VERY short and the run got curtailed abruptly. The final Victorian set story was supposed to feature the Zygons but ended up just having generic aliens.
Stacy and Ssard got married in Gary Russell’s EDA, Placebo Effect and I did like the idea of the Doctor having an Ice Warrior companion but because it was all so brief, the potential was never realised. The Ice Warrior storyline was probably the best of the three but that’s probably because it got the most parts.
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The first story dips its toes into the horror of the Cybermen that I wish happened more often with the partially converted humans. I consistently remember one panel showing Stacy’s fiancé converted without the faceplate and just wish we got more scenes like that every so often. The others I do not remember much about but that one panel chills me to the core.
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Beyond the Radio Times, the Eighth Doctor had a fairly lengthy run in the DWM comic strip. There, he started in black-and-white before switching to color halfway through. What are your thoughts on this run of stories?
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Personally, I enjoy the DWM Eighth Doctor comics I’ve read. The Glorious Dead and The Flood being particular highlights off the top of my head. I connected more with Destrii than I did with Izzy though.
The Radio Times strips are all on Youtube, here is the link to the first one:
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The final main chunk of Eighth Doctor media are the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures novel range. This can be divided roughly into two halves: the “War in Heaven” half which covers The Eight Doctors through The Ancestor Cell, and the “Sabbath/Amnesia” half which covers The Burning through The Gallifrey Chronicles. Personally, I’ve only read a smattering of the 73 books and all from the first half. What are your thoughts on them? Are the arcs interesting and do they pay off well? Or are most of these middle-of-the-road and skippable?
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I’m currently attenpting (yet another) run at the EDAs - I’m on Seeing I which I’m excited for because it’s meant to be a good one. I have some idea of what happens later in the range because I haven’t really avoided spoilers for it, but I am interested to meet Fitz properly in the books and to see how the War in Heaven plays out. I’ve heard several people say the Time War is a ripoff of it, and indeed that New Who steals a bunch of ideas from the EDAs, so I’m looking forward to (eventually) drawing my own conclusions on that one
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Oh, oh, oh! The EDAs are possibly my favourite corner of DW media. I’ll definitely admit that they can be extremely inconsistent, especially in their first few years, but good lord don’t I adore them anyway! There’s a particular magic to them which exemplifies the best of the Wilderness years—less grim and more character-led than the VNAs, more wild and wonderful than the early audios, and full of beloved (to me, and others!) characters like Fitz, Anji, Compassion, Iris, Sabbath… The EDA version of Eight is also, personally, my favourite interpretation of the Doctor.
Basically I could talk for eons about the EDAs! One of my greatest DW loves.
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Anyone who accuses any part of Doctor Who of ‘ripping off’ or ‘stealing ideas’ from any other part of Doctor Who really needs to pay attention to how the show works!
And to suggest that things that happen in the books and audios should be off limits to the TV show is going to severely limit the stories it can tell, just so a tiny section of the viewership doesn’t sit there with grumpy faces grumbling ‘well this is basically just what they did in the EDAs in the 90s’.
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I love these! The Compassion arc in particular is one of my favorie things the franchise has ever done. I’m not too far into the second half (I’m just barely past the earth arc), but it’s shaping up to be great as well
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On the one hand, I get that. On the other, it’s hard to read something like Demontage without thinking “This is just an earlier and better excecuted version of the 3D paintings bit from Day of the Doctor.”
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