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The
Eighth Doctor
(1996) |
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The
Sound Vault |
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| Grace
Holloway |
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The Best Doctor
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if I am your favourite Doctor |
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 Following
an absence from our screens of over seven years, The Doctor
was back, in a new incarnation, with new companions, and a new
TARDIS control
room. His debut adventure captured all the spirit of The Doctor,
as the Eighth Doctor, dazed and confused from
his last regeneration, found himself in San Francisco at the
turn of the Millennium, locked in a desperate struggle with
his old adversary The Master,
who wanted to steal The Doctor's body, his TARDIS, and his remaining
five lives. Despite The
Master's best efforts, The Doctor managed to thwart him once
again, before setting off in his TARDIS to continue righting
wrongs and saving the universe, beginning the life of the incarnation
whose actions would have the second-greatest significance on
The Doctor’s future (The First
Doctor’s decision
to leave Gallifrey in the first place obviously having the greatest
impact on The Doctor’s lives).
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| Regeneration |
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This
Doctor was, in many ways, the most human of all his incarnations
to date. While other Doctors were often a bit constrained in
their emotions, the Eighth was far more expressive, even going
so far as to kiss his temporary companion Dr Grace Holloway when
he remembered who he was; on one occasion, he was even implied to have fallen in love with eighteenth-century courtesan Scarlette, to the point where she faked her death to ensure that The Doctor wouldn’t be tempted to abandon his travels so that he could stay with her ("The
Adventuress of Henrietta Street"). He also seemed far more eager to get involved in history as a whole where his other selves focused on the moment at hand, giving a couple of people useful advice for the future shortly after his regeneration and inviting Mary Shelley to travel with him despite the risk to history simply because he liked her company ("The
Silver Turk"), although this approach backfired when he created a temporal paradox by saving someone who had been meant to die in an accident ("Storm
Warning"). While none of his past selves had ever exactly been selfish, the Eighth Doctor sometimes went out of his way to avoid putting others at risk if something could be achieved on his own, as though trying to make up for his previous incarnation's manipulation of his companions; he even spent some time working on a farm as a form of self-imposed penance ("Totem"), openly expressing disdain of his seventh self’s willingness to sacrifice others for his own agenda ("The Resurrection of Mars"). He was also known for presenting a sense of vulnerability, much like his fifth incarnation, although he was able to counter this vulnerable façade with some skill in hand-to-hand combat when required where the Fifth was more easily overpowered. He also possessed certain
flairs for originality, ranging from simple solutions to problems
such as threatening to shoot himself to get a motorbike from
a policeman to coming up with various technical solutions to
defeat his enemies, including reprogramming a robotic brain
to emit an energy pulse that would shut down a group of insane
telepaths ("The
Taint") to disabling a city-destroying
bomb by using the nuclear power source to charge up a primitive
time machine he’d recently acquired ("Trading
Futures").
Unlike
many earlier Doctors, he was more prepared to make certain small
changes to time for the sake of his friends, such as going back to
a time when The
Brigadier was eight and lost a balloon to catch the
balloon for his future friend, or encouraging a past version of his
current companion Samantha
Jones to start a political revolution
to help her break out of her original purpose of having been created
simply to serve as his companion ("Interference
Book Two:
Hour of the Geek"). As this incarnation began, The Doctor presented
himself as possessing a certain endearing vulnerability similar to
his fifth incarnation - a similarity made more pronounced by his ‘penchant’ for
losing his memory under various circumstances - while retaining his
fourth self’s naturally flippant sense of humour in the face
of danger combined with his solemn attitude when the situation called
for it. He also possessing a strong air of urgency and decisiveness
as he quickly identified the problems he faced before working to
solve it, although he sometimes found himself resorting to increasingly
last-minute measures to achieve victory, such as using fake moonlight
to catch the werewolf-like Jax off-guard ("Kursaal"),
often wondering if his transition from the ‘master planner’ of
his last incarnation to ‘born-again novice’ cost him
some of his innate cunning ("The Taint"). Although more
emotional than his previous selves - to the extent that he twice kissed his companions on impulse (Grace in "Doctor
Who: The Movie" and Anji Kapoor in "Earthworld"),
although what this meant for him was never made clear - this Doctor
retained a certain distance from his companions, seeming almost unconcerned
about the death of companion C’rizz because he had grown used
to moving on from people leaving ("Absolution"),
although he still regretted the death in his own way.
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| The Eighth Doctor |
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Although
his initial companion in this incarnation was schoolgirl Samantha
'Sam' Jones, a teenager from the 1990s, who dived into the TARDIS
while escaping drug dealers, The Doctor initially spent very little
time with her, leaving her at a Greenpeace rally - for her, it was
an hour, but for him, it was three years, during which time he had
such temporary companions as Ice Warrior Ssard and human Stacy Townsend
("Placebo
Effect"), as well as brother and sister Samson
and Gemma Griffin. He also used the opportunity to have one last adventure with Romana and K9 to deal with a loose end that he had forgotten to tie up when Borusa’s attempt to play the Game of Rassilon ("The
Five Doctors") prevented the Fourth
Doctor from visiting an old friend at a key moment ("Shada"), requiring the Eighth Doctor to go back and do what his fourth self was meant to do before Borusa’s interference. A particularly notable companion at this time was Mary Shelley, whom The Doctor encountered on the night that she was originally inspired to write ‘Frankenstein’, Mary going on to spend some time travelling with him ("The
Company of Friends - Mary’s Story"), The Doctor giving into the temptation of travelling with Mary despite the risks to history if she died ("The Silver Turk"), although Mary eventually left out of fear of the death that followed her friend ("Army
of Death").
Another notable companion during three-year period was Charley
Pollard, a girl who was plucked off the R101 in
1933, and who it was hinted he actually developed feelings for, although
their relationship never really progressed beyond the platonic. However,
things were complicated by the fact that, since Charley's body had
to be found on the R101, The Doctor would eventually have to return
her to the ship, or a temporal paradox would be created due to the
radical change in history. Despite this knowledge, he still travelled
around with her in the hope of finding some way to cheat her fate,
enjoying her company and even teaching her some essentials of how
to operate the TARDIS ("Seasons
of Fear"), until the results
of her survival got so out of hand that they threatened the fabric
of reality - and even Gallifrey itself - by creating a rift into
the universe of anti-time, as destructive to time as anti-matter
was to matter ("Neverland"). In a desperate bid, The Doctor
materialised the TARDIS around the tear in space, taking the anti-time
released in the explosion into himself. This briefly gave him a second
personality, known as 'Zagreus' after an old Gallifreyian nursery
rhyme, which the revived Rassilon sought to use as his assassin against the Divergents - the race who would have evolved to surpass the Time Lords before Rassilon trapped them in another dimension - but this personality was eventually purged from The Doctor thanks to the actions
of Charley and his old companions Leela and Romana, Rassilon subsequent
being exiled to the Divergents’ anti-time universe.
Still
contaminated by anti-time, The Doctor exiled himself to the anti-time
universe to protect his home universe, accompanied by Charley despite
his attempts to leave her where she would be safe, the two subsequently
acquiring a new companion in the form of the chameleonic former assassin
C’rizz ("The
Creed of the Kromon"). After spending
some time wandering a planet divided into many zones searching for
the missing TARDIS, ‘aided’ by the manipulative being
known as the Kro’ka, The Doctor was able to recover his ship
("Caerdroia"), later facing Rassilon in a final confrontation
which revealed that Rassilon had purged the anti-time from his body
when The Doctor had entered this universe. With his infection cured
and Rassilon trapped for good in the anti-time universe ("The
Next Life"). The Doctor, Charley and C’rizz returned to The Doctor’s home universe, the three travelling together for some time. Following C’rizz’s death ("Absolution") and Charley’s subsequent departure - although a confrontation with the Cybermen left The Doctor’s memory of the exact circumstances of Charley leaving him unclear ("The
Girl Who Never Was") - The Doctor finally returned to the rally to pick up Sam, travelling with her for some time after this.
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| Revelation |
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During their adventures, they became aware of a great War that would be fought at some point in the future, between the Time Lords
and an as-yet-unidentified Enemy, which would result in the
creation of sentient TARDISes, certain Time Lords erasing themselves
from history to become mere concepts to battle the Enemy - these
Time Lords calling themselves the Celestis - while others degenerated
into monstrous creatures to blend in with their foes... and
the death of the Thirteenth Doctor, killed while trying to make
a deal with the Celestis to stop them interfering in a battle
on the planet Dronid ("Alien
Bodies"). In the process, The Doctor also learned that
Sam was not the original Samantha Jones, but her biodata had
been manipulated by an outside agency to make her into a distracting,
ordinary companion for him. However, their plans had gone wrong;
Sam was nothing of the sort, even developing a crush on The
Doctor and running away from him for three years in the far
future after she realised her feelings after believing The Doctor
had died ("Longest
Day"). Despite being trapped in a time and place far
from Earth ("Seeing
I"), Sam proved more than capable of surviving on her
own during her time away, although she eventually started to
travel with The Doctor once again after rescuing him from a
prison because she felt she could do more good with him then
she could where she was.
Despite
the continued mystery of Sam’s origin hanging over The
Doctor, the two of them made an excellent team, although their
group dynamic was radically changed when they acquired a new
companion in the form of Fitz Kreiner, a sixties bar singer and the sole survivor of a confrontation with a group of mental patients with psychic powers ("The Taint"). However, Fitz only travelled
with The Doctor for a few adventures before he was captured
by Faction
Paradox, a cult of time-travelling voodooists who
worshipped time paradoxes, and brainwashed into becoming one
of them. Believing Fitz to be dead, The Doctor acquired a 'clone'
the Faction had made of Fitz as a new companion - the clone being generated from remembrance tanks where biomass is shaped by memories of those who knew the original person, providing them with greater variety than simply creating clones that would always be the same as the predecessor - restoring
the clone to approximately the original Fitz thanks to the TARDIS’s
own ‘memories’ of him and allowing him to continue
travelling with The Doctor and new companion Compassion (An
ex-Faction agent with a receiver in her that The Doctor wired
directly into the TARDIS to prevent her being influenced by
outside signals) after Sam left the TARDIS, The Doctor having
solved the paradox of her origin while investigating a temporal
rift in San Francisco ("Unnatural
History") and granting
her a purpose beyond being his companion. However, what The
Doctor didn't know was that the Faction, aided by the original
Fitz, had changed his history, killing the Third Doctor ahead
of schedule... and infecting him with a virus that, in his eighth
life, would turn him into a member of the Faction... ("Interference")
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| Outside The TARDIS |
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While
searching for further information about the Future War, The
Doctor was forced to deal with a problem of a more personal
nature as he attempted to encourage Compassion’s growth
into her own person after her departure from the Remote. Despite
his best efforts, The Doctor soon recognised his inability to
help her develop in his current environment, going so far as
to leave her on an Earth colony ("Frontier
Worlds")
and spend some time in London in 2012 ("The
Shadows of Avalon") to try and encourage her to live a life as a normal
person. This last visit, however, had serious consequences when
The Doctor’s return to pick Compassion up resulted in
the TARDIS materialising at the exact location of a dimensional
rift, causing the TARDIS to explode and stranding them in 2012.
Due to the manipulations of Time Lord agents sent by the newly-regenerated
Romana - now in her third incarnation - the receiver linking
Compassion to the TARDIS translated the signals from The Doctor’s
ship into block transfer computations that mutated her into
a sentient TARDIS, Type 102... and the mother of the sentient
TARDISes that would be used in the war. The Time Lords, led
by the new Romana, attempted to capture Compassion and use her
as breeding stock for the War, but The Doctor, refusing to let
Compassion become a slave, retreated into her with Fitz. Although he accepted his responsibility for Compassion, the loss of his old home left The Doctor feeling bitter for some time, devoting his energies to new problems more than ever before as though
trying to escape facing his own pain ("The
Space Age").
Despite
some complications such as Compassion objecting to The Doctor’s
installation of a Randomiser ("The
Fall of Yquatine"), he and Fitz travelled in Compassion for some time, The Doctor helping Compassion explore her new nature
while working to keep her safe, until they were drawn back to Gallifrey
("The
Ancestor Cell") to confront future versions of Faction
Paradox and restore The Doctor's original timeline, kept in the balance
by the valiant efforts of the TARDIS, which had rebuilt itself after
its apparent destruction on Avalon, and was now desperately trying
to contain the reality that should have been within itself. In a
final confrontation with Grandfather Paradox, the God of the Faction
(And the future self The Doctor would become in the infected timeline),
The Doctor resolved the timeline dilemma the only way possible; release
the TARDIS's energies through its ancient weapon systems, destroying
Gallifrey and the Faction Paradox fleet, but also forcing the TARDIS
to ‘choose’ between one reality or the other. The uninfected
timeline was chosen, but The Doctor’s entire memory was erased,
apparently from the trauma of the event.
To
give The Doctor time to recover and the TARDIS time to regenerate
after the damage it had sustained in the fight, Compassion left The
Doctor on Earth in the year 1889, taking Fitz to 2001 to meet him
when they were ready before departing herself for parts unknown.
Meanwhile, The Doctor, having regained consciousness in a railway
carriage, discovered that he had no memory of his real identity,
and his only possessions were a small, shapeless box - the TARDIS,
shrunk down to that size after its energy was dissipated in the final
battle - and a note, saying simply 'Meet me in St. Louis', February
8th 2001. Fitz'. Despite his amnesia, The Doctor still retained a
wide general knowledge of all subjects as he investigated various
problems on Earth, ranging from a fire elemental ("The
Burning")
to another confrontation with his old foes the Players ("Endgame"),
once unknowingly working with his fourth incarnation’s old
companion Harry
Sullivan ("Wolfsbane") to defeat a woman
who claimed to be the reincarnation of Morgraine
Le Fay in 1936.
However, he appeared slightly colder at times, showing no hesitation in allowing a man fall to his death after the man helped to unleash an elemental being of pure fire onto the world ("The Burning"), and letting one of his enemy’s guards get shot in his place by knocking the guard out and stealing his uniform, to say nothing of violently attacking a man motivated by nothing more than anger. Despite this, he still was capable of feeling genuine human emotions, even dating a woman he met in the eighties and adopting
a young girl called Miranda, a young Time Lady from the future, as
his daughter ("Father
Time"). Eventually, The Doctor met
up with Fitz in 'St Louis' - in this case, the St Louis Bar and Restaurant
in London, owned by The Doctor himself, who had created his own St.
Louis as he was unsure what St Louis Fitz was referring to in the
note. With the aid of new companion Anji Kapoor, The Doctor and Fitz
completed the TARDIS's regeneration, dealt with a race of invading
aliens called The Kulan, and then began to travel through time and
space again.
Having
regained his ability to travel around the universe, The Doctor, having
spent a century with nothing but humans for company, was desperate
to meet as many truly alien aliens as he possibly could. Although
some of the aliens he encountered were a bit unusual - including
one species that exactly resembled the Earth tiger at a cursory glance
("The
Year of Intelligent Tigers") - he certainly got his
wish regarding meeting something other than humans, tackling everything
from mutated humans to water spirits ("The
City of the Dead").
Occasionally, he seemed slightly cold, such as in "Eater
of Wasps" when he seemed more concerned about damaged plums than
a dead man, but he always retained his passion for life in all its
forms; even in the above example, when facing down with a ruthless
mutant man/wasp hybrid that was trying to convert all humans into
its kind, The Doctor kept on appealing to its humanity until the
last minute, when he was finally forced to acknowledge that the man
it once was had died. Although his amnesia was a bother to him at times, after he spent four years brainwashed by a xenophobic Earth government to act as one of their 'Professionals' - alien soldiers captured and programmed to fight for Earth - The Doctor concluded that the past was best left alone, considering how he still remembered all the terrible things he did as a Professional even after being returned to normal ("Fear Itself"). As a result, he decided to focus on appreciating the possibilities offered by his amnesia, allowing him to reinvent himself and start afresh as he explored the
universe, enjoying exploring everything with no real knowledge of
aliens to hamper his previous perceptions while always recalling
vital scientific knowledge when required, such as when he correctly
identified a futuristic camouflage fabric ("Eater of Wasps")
or recognised an alien known as a Collector ("The
Slow Empire")
without having ever been exposed to information about them.
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| Inside The TARDIS |
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However,
only a few months after regaining his ship, The Doctor was forced
to undergo another radical change; specifically, the loss of his
second heart. Apparently, the heart served as his link to Gallifrey,
and, with Gallifrey gone, the heart was now turning black and cancerous,
pumping poison into The Doctor's system as it tried to bind him to
a world that no longer existed (Although it was later implied to
be the result of outside agents attempting to control The Doctor). Sabbath, an
eighteenth-century secret agent who'd somehow acquired the power
of time travel after a visit by mysterious beings from
the future, saved The Doctor by cutting out the heart in question
("The
Adventuress of Henrietta Street"); however, it turned
out he wanted it for himself, as, inserted into Sabbath's chest,
the heart gave him the natural time travel powers that had been bred
into the Time Lords for millennia. The Doctor, on the other hand,
found that the loss of his heart had also caused him to lose some
of his extra abilities, such as his respiratory bypass system or
his ability to metabolise any toxins injected into him. This new
change caused The Doctor to briefly question his abilities, causing
him to take the TARDIS into the distant future to see how far it
would go for him, but he eventually recognised that he was not defined
by what he was physically but what he was as a person, simultaneously
reaffirming his bond with humanity and his fondness for their innovation
and drive to survive ("Hope"). The loss of his heart, however,
did result in one rather interesting practical benefit; since one
of The Doctor's hearts was always beating in Sabbath's chest, even
if The Doctor was practically crushed, he would survive - without even needing to regenerate - thanks to his new ‘link’ with Sabbath, although Sabbath himself often felt weak when The Doctor
was injured. Eventually, after a woman Sabbath loved sacrificed herself
to save The Doctor from a malfunctioning time machine, Sabbath tore
out The Doctor's second heart, allowing The Doctor to begin growing
a new one - this time, presumably, with a link to Earth rather than
Gallifrey ("Camera
Obscura"). .
Shortly after the restoration of his heart, The Doctor found himself
locked in a desperate struggle with Sabbath as, along with his mysterious
business associates, Sabbath hatched a plan to destroy all alternate
realities. Sabbath believed that time travellers like The Doctor,
every time they landed somewhere, created an alternate reality where
they didn't show up, and that the universe was unable to support
so many alternates without suffering damage; therefore, he attempted
to trigger a dark matter explosion at Event One - the Big Bang -
that would erase all alternate universes and leaving only one possible
timeline. However, according to The Doctor - once again displaying
access to his own subconscious knowledge of temporal mechanics even
if he couldn’t consciously remember learning it - Sabbath's
allies had been lying to him, The Doctor knowing that Time didn’t
work the way Sabbath believed and realising that Sabbath’s
allies sought to restrict Time itself by essentially eliminating
the ability to choose. The explosion at Event One was averted when
The Doctor managed to divert the dark matter source to 1894 ("Time
Zero"), but this resulted in reality starting to 'slide' between
histories, each reality fighting to become the dominant one as new
worlds and histories appeared every time the TARDIS materialised.
Along with new companion Trix MacMillan, The Doctor, Fitz and Anji
travelled through the realities, The Doctor being forced to erase
at least two of them in order to restore the original reality. During
this adventure, The Doctor appeared to become a bit more cold and
calculating, sacrificing an innocent man to escape a pocket universe
("Reckless
Engineering") and even leaving alternate versions
of Fitz and Anji to die in order to preserve continuity ("The
Last Resort"); although Anji acknowledged that he did still
care about them, The Doctor had to put his compassion aside when
faced with danger on such a scale. However, in the end, their sacrifices
paid off, allowing The Doctor to stabilise reality long enough to
confront Sabbath’s masters ("Sometime
Never"); the Council
of Eight, mysterious beings who gained power by foreseeing
likely future events and then ensuring that they came to pass. The
Doctor, as a rogue element existing outside of Time, was the only
unpredictable factor in their universe, and was thus the only person
who could stop them. Ironically, it was Sabbath himself who gave
The Doctor the edge needed to stop the Council; realising that one
of the Council members expected Sabbath to shoot him with a weapon
designed to send the subject into the Time Vortex, thus fulfilling
a prediction he had made to power a weapon that would destroy Earth’s
sun before life could evolve, Sabbath instead shot himself, condemning
himself to eternal agony just to give The Doctor a chance to outmanoeuvre
the Council and save creation from them. With this prediction left
unfulfilled, the Council found themselves drained of all their energy,
restoring reality to its true state. With time and the universe now
safe, The Doctor, Fitz and Trix - Anji having left after the true
timeline was stabilised - resumed their original role as simple explorers
of the universe, travelling to various planets to see the sights
and solve whatever problems they found themselves facing.
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| The Doctor With Grace |
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Some while after this ("The
Gallifrey Chronicles"), The
Doctor was captured by Marnal, one of the few surviving Gallifreyians,
and accused of destroying Gallifrey. Although Gallifrey had been
all but wiped from history by The Doctor's actions, Marnal was able
to jury-rig a Time Space Visualiser in order to witness The Doctor
actually push the button as he faced off against the Grandfather,
although there were about three minutes where The Doctor's activities
in the TARDIS were unaccounted for. Reflecting on his discoveries
in the TARDIS, The Doctor, along with the aid of K9 (Who had been
transported into a hidden area of the TARDIS and trapped there following
Gallifrey's destruction) realised that his memory loss hadn't been
caused by the trauma of destroying Gallifrey; in fact, The Doctor
had wiped his memories in order to give his mind space to store the
contents of the Matrix within his subconscious (Presumably along
with his own memories given his occasional flashes to his past),
this discovery leaving The Doctor with a resolution to restore Gallifrey
after saving Earth from the fly-like Vore as he dived into their
mountain with a plan to defeat them for good…
Exactly what happened from there on in is unknown; available evidence suggests that The Doctor was able to restore Gallifrey and the Time Lords, along with his own memories, before resuming his usual travels. What is known is that, at some point after Gallifrey was restored, The Doctor found himself being ‘assigned’ a new companion in the form of Lucie Miller ("Blood of the Daleks"), a young woman who was mistakenly placed in a Time Lord ‘witness protection program’ (The Time Lords believed that she would become a dictator in the future, but the dictator was later revealed to be another woman who simply attended the same job interview as Lucie). Although their relationship was initially hostile due to The Doctor’s current desire for solitude and Lucie being essentially forced to travel with him, the two developed a teasingly antagonistic relationship with each other over time, with Lucie continuing to travel with The Doctor even after it was revealed that the Time Lords had made a mistake (They had sent Lucie to The Doctor to stop her becoming a dictator in her future, but the actual dictator was a woman who had been applying for the same job as Lucie).
After The Doctor spent several years - it was described as centuries, but The Doctor admitted that he adjusted his age for convenience's sake - trapped on the distant planet Orbis after he was presumed killed in a fight with the resurrected Morbius ("Sisters of the Flame", "The Vengeance of Morbius" and "Orbis"), Lucie proved vital in encouraging The Doctor to resume his travels through time and space when he was content to remain on Orbis, forcing him to recognise that the universe still had need of him, helping The Doctor re-adjust to spending time among humans after so long with only the jellyfish-like Keltans for company. Subsequent adventures with Lucie helped The Doctor regain his sense of hope and wonder at the universe, such as defeating a new breed of Krynoid ("The Hothouse") or discovering a planet where humanity had formed a tentative peace with the Wirrn ("Wirrn Dawn"). Unfortunately, The Doctor's relationship with Lucie soured when she learned that her favourite aunt had been replaced by a Zygon after she died during a trip to Lucie's past ("The Zygon Who Fell to Earth"), resulting in Lucie briefly leaving The Doctor, although she subsequently began to travel with his old enemy, The Meddling Monk. At the same time, The Doctor took on a new companion in the form of actress Tamsin Drew, who - as it would later be revealed - had responded to an advertisement the Monk had placed to find a companion for himself and been diverted to a meeting that The Doctor had infiltrated himself ("Situation Vacant"). Initially The Doctor and Tamsin got along well, while Lucie cautiously enjoyed her time with the Monk, but eventually the Monk's more ruthless methods prompted Lucie to leave him and return to The Doctor during a crisis on Mars, only for the Monk to take advantage of the situation to manipulate Tamsin's perception of events to believe that The Doctor had allowed hundreds of people to die to preserve history and save Lucie ("Deimos" and "The Resurrection of Mars"). While Tamsin joined the Monk, Lucie went on to form a friendship with The Doctor's great-grandson, Alex Campbell, when The Doctor decided to visit his granddaughter Susan at Christmas, The Doctor leaving Lucie to travel Earth with Alex for a time. However, after The Doctor was tricked into working for three years to keep a sun alive, he returned to Earth to discover that the Monk had provided the Daleks with aid in mounting a new invasion of Earth, the Monk devastating and destroying billions of lives simply to make The Doctor hurt while stealing relics for himself. Although The Doctor made it back in time to stop the Daleks turning Earth into a time-travelling plague planet, Tamsin was killed by the Daleks after she had learned the truth about the Monk, while Alex and Lucie sacrificed themselves to set off a bomb that would destroy the Dalek invasion fleet ("Lucie Miller" and "To the Death").
Devastated by so many losses so close together, The Doctor attempted the dangerous task of flying to the end of the universe to look back on what had gone before to try and find some hope, prompting the Time Lords to offer him an 'assignment' to look after WWI volunteer nurse Mollie O'Sullivan, who had become the subject of a complex Dalek plot that would have seen her being 'conditioned' to power a weapon that could have destroyed Gallifrey ("Dark Eyes"). Although his time with Mollie restored some of his old optimism, for a time The Doctor continued to travel alone, the harsh experiences he had endured in this incarnation leaving him in a darker mood as he faced a grimmer series of threats. On one occasion he worked against The Master to prevent a Time Lord plan to take control of the mysterious psychic entity known as the Eminence ("Eyes of The Master"), but he was then forced to aid the Daleks in defeating the Eminence afterwards ("The Traitor"), starting a series of moral compromises he would be forced to make at this point in his life, even if he also found a new companion in the form of Liv Chenka, a med-tech he had met while averting an anti-robot conspiracy in his previous incarnation ("Robophobia"). While travelling with Liv, The Doctor became keenly aware of the threats faced by Gallifrey at this time when his investigation into the recent escape of the insane Time Lord known as the Eleven led to the discovery of a conspiracy led by his old friend Padrac ("Doom Coalition"), Padrac having seen the future through the Matrix and determined that Gallifrey was doomed in every future apart from a timeline where Gallifrey was the only civilisation left in existence. With the Eleven as a distraction, Padrac's followers were able to calculate the precise point in time and space where they could generate a massive psychic pulse and destroy the rest of existence, but The Doctor was able to determine their plan, defeating Padrac's group with the aid of Liv and their new companion Helen Sinclair, as well as the treachery of the Eleven. As his former friend was taken away to be frozen in stasis for prison, Padrac accused The Doctor of dooming Gallifrey, but The Doctor countered that the Time Lords should recognise their responsibility to life as a whole rather than the life of their own people above all else, and even if he had doomed Gallifrey, he would take on those consequences for himself ("Stop the Clock"). While The Doctor and Liv had to spend some time finding Helen after the Eleven took her hostage and their Battle TARDIS was forced into the vortex ("World of Damnation/Sweet Salvation"), their 'holiday' was only brief before they found themselves forced to work with the Eleven against The Ravenous, beings from Time Lord mythology who essentially 'ate' the regenerative energy of the Time Lords ("Seizure"). Although the Eleven betrayed them and the universe when he learned that his condition made him unpalatable to The Ravenous ("The Odds Against"), his plan to turn the rest of the universe into food for The Ravenous was defeated with the aid of the ancient Time Lord Artron and three different incarnations of The Master, Artron restoring The Ravenous to a more peaceful state in their evolution while The Masters killed the Eleven ("Day of The Master"). Unfortunately, this victory resulted in serious damage to the TARDIS, forcing The Doctor, Liv and Helen to be trapped on Earth in 2020 without any immediate means to repair it ("Stranded").
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| The Night of The Doctor |
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Although The Doctor was eventually able to resume his travels, some time after Liv and Helen departed the Time Lords became caught in a massive war with the Daleks across all of time and space, The Doctor soon establishing himself as a conscientious objector to the Time War. While The Doctor regained his resolve and dedication thanks to his time with Liv and Helen, his mood became grimmer when he learned that a new War had begun, this war being waged between the Time Lords and the Daleks across all of time and space, resulting in The Doctor establishing himself as a conscientious objector to the War. While The Doctor acknowledged that the Daleks had to be opposed, he refused to actively fight as he felt that the Time Lords were making too many moral compromises, such as feeling that Time Lord marshals were training recruits to basically be targets ("The Conscript"), regarding all deaths in battle as basically pointless. His dedication to staying neutral in the war was so great that, at one point, The Doctor apparently even attempted to save Davros when the Dalek creator was seemingly devoured by the Nightmare Child in the first year of the war ("The Stolen Earth/Journey's End"). Despite his good intentions, The Doctor often found his efforts to be limited at best, such as when the history of the planet Drakkis was permanently corrupted into a state of perpetual warfare when a battle in the Time War near the planet disrupted its history, The Doctor powerless to do anything more than prevent a Sontaran invasion of Drakkis and establish a temporary truce between its two warring major cities before he was asked to leave by temporary companion Sarana Teel, who blamed him for the Time Lords' role in what her world had become ("The Sontaran Ordeal"). On one occasion, he sabotaged a Time Lord plan to ensure the aid of a particular planet close to Gallifrey, although his actions were motivated by both the wider moral reason that the Time Lords were blowing up fuel depots to convince the native population to work with them and the personal reason that one of the lives lost in this plan could have been his old companion Nyssa ("A Heart on Both Sides"). Even as he was still willing to protect his people when faced with the opportunity to do so, such as when he saved Cardinal Ollistra from a Time Lord experiment to weaponise the Vashta Nerada ("Day of the Vashta Nerada"), The Doctor made it clear to Ollistra that he was a doctor rather than a soldier, refusing to help his people fight such a war en masse after some of the actions they had committed in the name of victory. Even as he acknowledged that a cease-fire with the Daleks was impossible, The Doctor rejected the idea that the only way to stop the Daleks was to adopt their methods, focusing on protecting the rest of the universe to continue his stance of protecting the oppressed, observing that Gallifrey's fixation on victory made them almost as bad as the Daleks ("The Conscript"). The Doctor's distaste for the war became even more resolute when he learned that the Time Lords had destroyed the history of the homeworld of his new companion Bliss to turn it into a weapons depot ("The Lords of Terror"), although he reluctantly accepted an assignment to investigate a Dalek plot that resulted in an Ogron being augmented with his DNA ("Planet of the Ogrons") before tracking a temporal anomaly on another planet ("Jonah"). Despite him rejecting a permanent role in the War, most Time Lords still recognised his skills and accepted his aid when it was offered, such as arranging for key shipping lanes to be free to civilian traffic ("The Famished Lands") in return for The Doctor assisting in the investigation of reports that a race the Time Lords had erased from history had survived ("Fugitive in Time"). One such mission led to the Time Lords managing to create a new version of The Valeyard (this Valeyard older than the 'original' and wearing a duplicate of The Doctor's current clothing) ("The War Valeyard") who was able to end the War by using a stolen Dalek weapon to erase them from history, but this was only a temporary 'respite' from the War as the Dalek Time Strategist was able to escape being wiped from history and recreate the Dalek race by manipulating an alternate version of Davros ("Palindrome").
Despite his best efforts, the Eighth Doctor's role as a conscientious objector came to an end when his attempt to save the pilot of a crashing ship forced him to face how far his people had fallen when Cass, the pilot of the ship, refused to be saved by him, proclaiming that there was now no difference between the Time Lords and the Daleks after the destruction both had inflicted in the crossfire, even sealing herself on the other side of the door to the room leading to the TARDIS despite The Doctor's pleas to let him save her ("The Night of The Doctor"). Badly injured from the crash after he stayed on the ship to try and convince Cass to let him help her, to the point where he would have apparently been unable to regenerate on his own, The Doctor was rescued and restored to a temporary form of life by the Sisterhood of Karn. Having been forced to face the scale of the conflict and the need for him to stop it, The Doctor accepted a potion from the Sisterhood that would allow him to control his regeneration and become a specific type of person in his new life. As a result, he transformed into a new incarnation that disregarded the name of 'The Doctor' in favour of becoming a warrior, his new incarnation - known to fans as the 'War Doctor' - specifically intended to fight in the Time War, abandoning his desire for peace to become the soldier who could save the universe, continuing the Eighth Doctor's tradition of being The Doctor who made the decisions that no other incarnation could have made.
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