Im Fine With This.

im fine with this.

so you’re a doctor who fan? that means you’ve got strong opinions, right? tell me them i’ll assign you an underrated companion.

To see this representation on a show I have loved for so long means more than I’ll ever be able to express. I often wondered if I was crazy for believing something like this could happen on a show as established as Doctor Who, but 2022 has felt like a dream I never want to wake up from. As a result, 2018 me will be crying until further notice.

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i hate him. i love him. i find him very annoying and endearing, and forgivable, yet i am reluctant to trust him. he is my son and my enemy. he is honest and yet complex. he is straightforward and yet unpredictable. he is smart yet foolish and naive, and sometimes wise, and other times cunning. i see myself in him, and i am uncomfortable, conflicted, and happy. he is human, and watching humanity from the outside; paradoxically, that makes him even more human.

Just wanted to say that all your Big Finish reviews for Eight’s stories with Charley and Lucie we’re SUPER helpful to me when I first started listening to BF earlier this year!! Eight is now one of my favorite Doctors and I love your artwork of all his stories so much!! So I thought you’d be the best to ask this: if I just read a few EDAs, which would you recommend as the best?

Heyyy you’re welcome! It’s time for a new version of a rec list I made around the time I was reading The Blue Angel (= a while ago). Here are my 9 favorites among the 55 books I’ve already read!

(I’ve been stuck on Book of the Still for about ten months because 2019 has been complicated for me so far)

Vampire Science

Standalone? - YES

Required reading? - None

Quick summary - Modern vampires try to coexist with humans while some others just want to declare war on them. UNIT decides to intervene and kind of makes things worse.

Why is it good? - This book defined how to write Eight, basically, and don’t let the summary fool you, it’s very funny. Also, vampire squirrels.

Alien Bodies

Standalone? - A metric ton of references, but still readable without getting all of them, so let’s say YES

Required reading? - None

Quick summary - Some strange individuals representing different alien powers are invited to an auction in the middle of a rainforest. Apparently, they are bidding for some kind of weapon that could be used in some kind of, hmm, temporal War. Probably nothing to worry about, right?

Why is it good? - This book has so many amazing concepts and ideas that it has been pillaged by the new series, and you can find bits of its legacy in The Impossible Astronaut, The End of Time, The Pandorica Opens, The Name of the Doctor, The Doctor’s Wife and more.

Seeing I

Standalone? - NO (but still understandable out of context)

Required reading? - Vampire Science, Genocide, Longest Day, Dreamstone Moon

Quick summary - After being separated from Sam in Longest Day, the Doctor is looking for her on the planet Ha’olam. It… doesn’t go well. Meanwhile, Sam tries to rebuild her life, far away from home.

Why is it good? - THIS BOOK HURTS LIKE HELL but it‘s a very good and important book for Sam as well as Eight. It’s a great character study, and you’ll even manage to get a couple of laughs among all the pain of the first three quarters of the book. And the ending is wonderful.

The Scarlet Empress

Standalone? - YES (despite Iris referencing old episodes and stories)

Required reading? - None

Quick summary - The Doctor, Sam and Iris Wildthyme embark on an epic quest to dethrone the evil Scarlet Empress of the planet Hyspero. There’s magic and wonderful imagery everywhere.

Why is it good? - It’s a story about the power of stories and gets meta without being annoying. This book is one of the most joyful things I’ve ever read and if it doesn’t put a big happy smile on your face we definitely don’t like the same things.

Unnatural History

Standalone? - NO. NO. DEFINITELY NOT.

Required reading? - Vampire Science, Genocide, Alien Bodies, Longest Day, Dreamstone Moon, Seeing I, The Taint, Revolution Man, Dominion. Also you’ll need to have watched the TV movie.

Quick summary - The Doctor, Fitz and a version of Sam who never met them try to repair cracks in the fabric of reality in San Francisco. Someone wants to exploit the damage instead.

Why is it good? - Just like Alien Bodies, it’s full of great concepts and ideas that the new series has pillaged - both the entire arc of Series 5 and The Name of the Doctor, for example, owe something to this book. Also it allows everything to be canon at the same time, which is fantastic.

The Turing Test

Standalone? - YES. You just need to know the Doctor is stuck on Earth with a damaged TARDIS, and lost his memories after destroying Gallifrey.

Required reading? - None, really, but I recommend reading The Burning anyway.

Quick summary - The Doctor is stuck on Earth during WW2 and works with Alan Turing to break a mysterious new cipher. It only raises more questions once it’s cracked.

Why is it good? - The central question of the story is “what does it mean to be human?” and it really digs into it. It’s also told by three different narrators with completely different points of view and who know very little about the Doctor. And it will destroy your heart. In various ways.

The Year of Intelligent Tigers

Standalone? - YES. Mostly.

Required reading? - None. You just need to know the Doctor has spent a century stuck on Earth and has recently reunited with his friend Fitz just before meeting Anji.

Quick summary - Team TARDIS spends quite some time on a planet full of musicians and strange alien creatures which look exactly like tigers from Earth.

Why is it good? - It’s a book about identity, and difference, and music, it has some of the best worldbuilding ever put in the series, chapters ordered like an opera, great characters, top quality escapism - I can’t list everything, and it’s my favorite EDA so far.

The City of the Dead

Standalone? - YES

Required reading? - None

Quick summary - The Doctor has recurring nightmares where some sort of void is chasing him, and team TARDIS tries to solve a strange murder in New Orleans. If that sounds weird, it gets weirder.

Why is it good? - It’s almost a Clive Barker novel, it’s full of strange and creative characters, and the murder mystery has a great resolution. And most importantly, it’s funny as hell even when it gets very dark. Maybe my second favorite? idk

Anachrophobia

Standalone? - Yes? No? Maybe? There’s an important plot point from Henrietta Street in it. Let’s say NO

Required reading? - The Adventuress of Henrietta Street

Quick summary - Experimental time-traveling goes very, very wrong very, very fast.

Why is it good? - It terrified me and I’m recommending it just so that more people can share my pain.

I’m sorry, but someone, PLEASE, give her a hug or I’ll have to go climb in and do it myself. look at her. look at how happy she used to be

now look at her. she’s fucking miserable.

you fucked up a perfectly good time lord there Chibnall. now look at her. she’s got depression.

it’s really funny actually that The Doctor, who is often characterized by their desire to be accepted by humans and tries very hard to not be too alien (multiple times basing their entire presentation upon seeming happier and younger so as to not come off as an unpalpable time god) literally does not care whatsoever about their companions seeing them act sweet and vaguely romantic towards the TARDIS. 

They go out of their way to avoid mentioning regeneration, anything about their species, the number of hearts they have, other companions, etc. unless directly asked (and even then tend to dodge the question) but they’re always shamelessly one step away from making out with that box and everyone just has to play it off as if it’s not the most ??? thing about the Doctor.

Graham/Ryan/Yaz are introduced to the TARDIS when the Doctor runs up and starts stroking the door and whispering to it. The third Doctor compliments the TARDIS’s intelligence and Mike goes “you make it sound like it’s alive” and he’s like “yep” and then promptly leaves forever without clarifying anything. Romana sees him kiss the console within 5 minutes of meeting him. Amy witnesses him calling it “dear” right off the bat. Mel’s like “yeah, not sure what’s going on but they’re basically an old married couple” in one. 

I mean, Bill has to ponder this conversation all the way to the wardrobe:

the way companions have to put up with how defensive he gets over the TARDIS’s feelings

 "Well, that’s the best I can do.“ He patted the console. “The rest is up to you, old girl!“  Ace could never quite get used to the way the Doctor treated the TARDIS like an intelligent living being. “You’re letting the TARDIS decide where we go?“  “Not entirely. I’m using the time-path indicator to lead us into the right spatio-temporal segment, and leaving the TARDIS to do the fine tuning.“  “How will it - “  “She!” whispered the Doctor. “If you hurt her feelings she’ll sulk.“  Ace gave him a look. "How will she know?" 

(Timewyrm: Exodus)

The Doctor spread his arms out across the restored console, pressing his cheek against the warm metal. ‘I was worried about you for a while,’ he whispered.  ‘It worries me when you talk to the ship,’ Jamie said. ‘Sssh, you’ll hurt her feelings.’

(The Nameless City)

Evelyn (and certainly many others) even has to listen to him go on about how much he loves his TARDIS and is at the eye rolling stage over it

EVELYN: Doctor, what are you doing? DOCTOR: Tinkering. EVELYN: Tinkering? DOCTOR: That is what I am doing. You just can’t beat the satisfying sound of metal on metal. EVELYN: You’re quite the busy preoccupied bee. DOCTOR: Really focuses the mind. Besides, she likes it, don’t you, old girl. There, you see? I swear she understands every word I say. EVELYN: Good heaven, you talk of her as though she’s your favourite pet dog or something. DOCTOR: More like a constant hand to hold. She’s always been the woman to me. EVELYN: Oh, thank you very much. DOCTOR: Oh, come now, Evelyn. I didn’t know you cared. EVELYN: Doctor, behave yourself. (Both laugh.) EVELYN: Well, I just mean to say, how’s a girl supposed to feel when a rickety old blue box holds more attraction? DOCTOR: This rickety old blue box, as you call her, has been the only fixed point in my ever-changing world. Even my own people have let me down. You, my dear Evelyn, will let me down one day. Oh, not in a drastic way, perhaps, but you will find your own path to walk, and you will walk it without me. EVELYN: Oh, here we go. DOCTOR: Companions come and go. Some leave deeper imprints on my hearts than others. But you all go eventually. But not my old girl. She’s the only one that shares all my memories.

(Medicinal Purposes)

The important part is that the Doctor never explains shit about this. There’s never a “oh by the way the TARDIS is alive and sentient and that’s why I keep talking to her like that” (possibly because everyone is too bewildered to even try to figure out how to ask why they keep whispering to their ship so it never occurs to the dr to say anything). All of this is just a one hit KO for anyone who knows them, every time it happens, which is pretty much all the time, until they either realize she’s alive or just settle into some form of acceptance that this guy sometimes calls the spaceship “sexy”. 

The five stages of realizing your alien friend is actually for real in love with their time machine (… which the viewers go through as well)