Overview
The Eighth Doctor made his first television appearance in the 1996 Doctor Who television movie, the first time the Doctor had returned to television screens since the end of the original series in 1989. Intended as a backdoor pilot for a new television series on the Fox Network, the movie managed to draw 5.5% of the US audience, according to Nielsen Ratings. In the United Kingdom, it was received well, attracting over 9 million viewers and generally positive reviews. It was also generally well received in Australia.
Although the movie failed to spark a new television series, the Eighth Doctor's adventures continued in various licensed spin-off media, notably BBC Books' Eighth Doctor Adventures novels, audio plays from Big Finish Productions, and the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip. As these stories spanned the nine years between 1996 and the debut of the new television series in 2005, some consider the Eighth Doctor one of the longest-serving of the Doctors. He is unarguably the longest-serving Doctor in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip. In the wake of the positive reaction to the revived television series in 2005, several of the Eighth Doctor's Big Finish audio dramas were also broadcast on BBC7 radio in an edited form. The trailers for these broadcasts explained that these adventures took place before the destruction of Gallifrey as described in the revived TV series. In 2007, BBC7 aired a new series of Eighth Doctor audio adventures, created specifically for radio broadcast. Paul McGann has continued to portray the Eighth Doctor in the various audio spinoffs.
The canonicity of the spin-off media with respect to the television series and to each other is open to interpretation (the "Beginner's Guide to Doctor Who" on the BBC's classic Doctor Who website suggests this may be due to the Time War). It has been suggested that the Eighth Doctor's adventures in three different forms (novels, audio, and comics) take place in three separate continuities. The discontinuities were made explicit in the audio drama Zagreus. In response, it has become increasingly common to consider the three ranges separately. The final Eighth Doctor Adventures novel, The Gallifrey Chronicles, obliquely references this split in timelines, even suggesting that the split results in the three alternative forms of the Ninth Doctor (a reference to the fact three different versions of the incarnation have appeared in various media). Mary's Story, a 2009 audio story by Big Finish, contradicted these suggestions, as there the Doctor mentions his companions in order, with book companions before audio companions. Ultimately, however, all matters of canonicity remain typically unclear.
Despite the fact the Eighth Doctor appeared on television only once, he is the most prolific of all the Doctors (to date) in terms of number of individual stories published in novel, novella, short story and audio form. In 2007, the Eighth Doctor finally made a second appearance (of sorts) within the television series' continuity. In the episode "Human Nature" he appears on-screen as a sketch (alongside other incarnations) in the book A Journal of Impossible Things by John Smith. In 2008 and 2010 he appeared again as a brief image in "The Next Doctor" and "The Eleventh Hour" along with every other incarnation up to that time and "The Lodger" with his first, second, third, fourth, ninth and tenth incarnations.
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