the Eighth Doctor Adventures novels
By request from 
halotolerant, who's starting to get in to Classic Who, I've written up an overview of the Eighth Doctor Adventures novels (EDAs). There are also Big Finish audios called the Eighth Doctor Adventures, but I've only listened to a couple of them. The EDA novels are just about the limit of my extended-canon knowledge, in fact. I don't know most of the audios, any of the comics, any of the New Adventures, the old-school tie-in novels from back in the day, or the New Who novels etc. Doctor Who: there's always more canon! As for how it all ties together, I recommend a multiverse theory (which is semi-canonical anyway), because otherwise your brain will explode.
I've given my opinions below about which books are most worth reading; your mileage may vary and civil disagreement is always welcome.
The first thing to know about the EDA novels is that there are seventy-three of them (a complete list, in order, is here on Wikipedia). Naturally they're a range of the good, the bad, and the ugly, but they differ from current Doctor Who novels in one fundamental way: because the show wasn't airing while they were being published, the BBC didn't exercise the kind of control they do now. These books aren't written for teenagers and they're wilder and freer in all kinds of ways than what I've seen of the new novels.
I've only read one of the first 18 novels, in which the Doctor travels with Sam Jones, a teenage English girl. Sam is widely unpopular in the fandom because, well, she behaves like a teenage girl who's just discovered political activism. I dislike Sam a lot in some books and like her in others. Of the first 18, the only one I've read is The Scarlet Empress, by Paul Magrs. Magrs's Who novels are gloriously strange, postmodern affairs that don't necessarily have much continuity with anything but are delightful.
Book 19, The Taint, introduces Fitz Kreiner, who will remain with the Doctor through all the rest of the EDA novels. When the Doctor meets him in 1963, Fitz is a would-be rock star of 27 who works in a garden shop and whose vivid fantasy life compensates for his loneliness--he's spent much of his life caring for his schizophrenic mother, and the fact that his late father was German did not make growing up during WWII any easier for him. The Taint is not in itself a very good novel, but I recommend it as a starting point, because Fitz.
Books 20-24 follow Fitz, Sam, and the Doctor on some adventures. In #22 (Dominion), the Doctor kisses Fitz, thus cementing their status as even slashier than the Second Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon. Apart from that, the only one I'd strongly recommend is #23, Unnatural History, a creative and well-written book that sets up an important plot line about Faction Paradox and its guerrilla war against causality.
#25-26, Interference books 1 and 2, by Lawrence Miles, are strange, bleak, extraordinary books that resolve the Faction Paradox plot and among other things ask the question New Who canon keeps refusing to properly address: how can the Doctor, with his time machine, justify not saving everyone? These are not to be missed.
#27, Paul Magrs's The Blue Angel, is equally amazing in a very different way. It isn't quite in continuity with anything, except to some extent The Scarlet Empress, but it is fully engaged with the whole of Doctor Who as a story and as a way of telling stories. There's an AU Doctor who may be just an ordinary human with delusions (except he has two hearts and his mother is a mermaid), and gorgeous Doctor-Fitz domesticity, and also an interstellar war, a delicious Star Trek parody, and the Doctor's nemesis and alter ego Iris Wildthyme travelling through time and space in what looks very much like the #22 bus to Putney Common. If you only read one EDA, read this one.
Books 28-35 carry on from the events of Interference, with the Doctor, Fitz, and a new companion named Compassion on the run from the Time Lords. #29, Frontier Worlds, has a great Fitz storyline and a great Doctor-Fitz relationship. #30, Parallel 59, is another good Fitz story, though Fitz shows his less admirable side in it, and the book is daring in its refusal to offer easy solutions to the war that is its main plot. I can't recommend #33, Coldheart, as a story but it has some of my favorite Doctor-Fitz interaction. #35, The Banquo Legacy, is kind of a bore in my view but it does important stuff in the arc, developing the situation with the Time Lords and showing how questionably the Doctor sometimes reacts to it.
Book 36, The Ancestor Cell, is the turning point for the whole EDA series. It's the original Time War story and also address a lot of the issues from Interference.
Books 37-42 are often called the "earth arc." As a consequence of what happens in The Ancestor Cell, the Doctor ends up on earth, alone and completely amnesiac, in the late nineteenth century. All he has is a small blue box in his pocket and a note that reads, "Meet me in St. Louis, 8 February 2001, Fitz." The earth arc follows the 100+ years that he spends on earth. The best are #39, The Turing Test, which is set in World War II and narrated first by Alan Turing, then Graham Greene, then Joseph Heller, and #40, Endgame, which is about the Cold War and Kim Philby. #41, Father Time has some good points but gives us yuppie!Doctor (Lance Parkin, who wrote this one, has a tendency to inject all his Who novels with right-wing politics) and the Doctor raising a child, both of which squick me. #42, Escape Velocity, concludes the arc but is absolutely, unreadably awful. It introduces a new companion, Anji Kapoor, but she's better served by many later books.
Books 43-50 are standalone adventures. #42, Earthworld is fun and provides a good introduction to Anji, while #44, Vanishing Point has an engaging plot and some great Doctor/Fitz moments, although Fitz also does something very sketchy. #46, The Year of Intelligent Tigers, by Kate Orman, is one I have mixed feelings about despite having loved it the first time I read it. It's well written in many ways and very engaging, but I have some issues with the way Orman writes the Doctor, especially at the end of the book. Also, Orman has a record of behaving very badly in fannish spaces, which makes it hard for me to wholeheartedly recommend anything by her. #49, City of the Dead, has some nice character moments and a vivid New Orleans setting. #50, Grimm Reality, which is set on a planet in which causality works by the logic of fairy tales, is great fun.
And then there's #51, The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, by Lawrence Miles. This is the start of a huuuuuuuuge arc that will last for most of the rest of the EDAs, and that is the only reason I'm recommending it. Well, that and a couple of cameo appearances by a certain clean-shaven gentleman. But I find its plot and writing dull and its gender politics offensive.
#52, Mad Dogs and Englishmen by Paul Magrs, is absolutely bonkers even by the standard of DW novels. It has talking poodles, an academic conference, a lightly-disguised JRR Tolkien, a lightly-disguised Star Wars, and a completely undisguised Noel Coward. Even though it's my least favorite of Magrs's three EDAs it's still a hell of a romp.
The plot arc (usually called the "Sabbath arc" after the antagonist introduced in Henrietta Street) resumes with #53 and carries on through #67, Sometime Never, which more or less wraps it up. It is incredibly complicated because it's all about time, linearity, and the multiverse, and if you want to actually understand what's going on, it's probably best to read all of the books. Fortunately, a lot of the books are excellent. #53-#55 are probably skippable, but I strongly recommend #56, The Book of the Still; #58, History 101 (the Spanish Civil War!); #59, Camera Obscura and #60, Time Zero, which form a two-part story with Victorian circuses, seances, and Fitz going on an Arctic expedition with his new boyfriend; #62, The Domino Effect, a dystopian AU with a cameo by Alan Turing; and #67, Sometime Never, which at least tries to answer all the questions and resolve all the plot threads.
The last few books are all pretty much standalones. #68, Halflife, is a favorite among Eight/Fitz fans--Fitz's dream has to be read to be believed! #69, The Tomorrow Windows is silly and fun. But the series conclusion, #73, The Gallifrey Chronicles, by Lance Parkin, should be avoided at all costs. Not only does it open a potentially huge plot arc that, because there were no further books, never concludes, it also manages to perform character assassination on both Fitz (whom Parkin hates) and Anji (whom Parkin loves but only because he completely misunderstands her). Honestly, Halflife is a good place to stop.
Crossposted at Dreamwidth (
comments); you can comment here or there.
halotolerant, who's starting to get in to Classic Who, I've written up an overview of the Eighth Doctor Adventures novels (EDAs). There are also Big Finish audios called the Eighth Doctor Adventures, but I've only listened to a couple of them. The EDA novels are just about the limit of my extended-canon knowledge, in fact. I don't know most of the audios, any of the comics, any of the New Adventures, the old-school tie-in novels from back in the day, or the New Who novels etc. Doctor Who: there's always more canon! As for how it all ties together, I recommend a multiverse theory (which is semi-canonical anyway), because otherwise your brain will explode.
I've given my opinions below about which books are most worth reading; your mileage may vary and civil disagreement is always welcome.
The first thing to know about the EDA novels is that there are seventy-three of them (a complete list, in order, is here on Wikipedia). Naturally they're a range of the good, the bad, and the ugly, but they differ from current Doctor Who novels in one fundamental way: because the show wasn't airing while they were being published, the BBC didn't exercise the kind of control they do now. These books aren't written for teenagers and they're wilder and freer in all kinds of ways than what I've seen of the new novels.
I've only read one of the first 18 novels, in which the Doctor travels with Sam Jones, a teenage English girl. Sam is widely unpopular in the fandom because, well, she behaves like a teenage girl who's just discovered political activism. I dislike Sam a lot in some books and like her in others. Of the first 18, the only one I've read is The Scarlet Empress, by Paul Magrs. Magrs's Who novels are gloriously strange, postmodern affairs that don't necessarily have much continuity with anything but are delightful.
Book 19, The Taint, introduces Fitz Kreiner, who will remain with the Doctor through all the rest of the EDA novels. When the Doctor meets him in 1963, Fitz is a would-be rock star of 27 who works in a garden shop and whose vivid fantasy life compensates for his loneliness--he's spent much of his life caring for his schizophrenic mother, and the fact that his late father was German did not make growing up during WWII any easier for him. The Taint is not in itself a very good novel, but I recommend it as a starting point, because Fitz.
Books 20-24 follow Fitz, Sam, and the Doctor on some adventures. In #22 (Dominion), the Doctor kisses Fitz, thus cementing their status as even slashier than the Second Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon. Apart from that, the only one I'd strongly recommend is #23, Unnatural History, a creative and well-written book that sets up an important plot line about Faction Paradox and its guerrilla war against causality.
#25-26, Interference books 1 and 2, by Lawrence Miles, are strange, bleak, extraordinary books that resolve the Faction Paradox plot and among other things ask the question New Who canon keeps refusing to properly address: how can the Doctor, with his time machine, justify not saving everyone? These are not to be missed.
#27, Paul Magrs's The Blue Angel, is equally amazing in a very different way. It isn't quite in continuity with anything, except to some extent The Scarlet Empress, but it is fully engaged with the whole of Doctor Who as a story and as a way of telling stories. There's an AU Doctor who may be just an ordinary human with delusions (except he has two hearts and his mother is a mermaid), and gorgeous Doctor-Fitz domesticity, and also an interstellar war, a delicious Star Trek parody, and the Doctor's nemesis and alter ego Iris Wildthyme travelling through time and space in what looks very much like the #22 bus to Putney Common. If you only read one EDA, read this one.
Books 28-35 carry on from the events of Interference, with the Doctor, Fitz, and a new companion named Compassion on the run from the Time Lords. #29, Frontier Worlds, has a great Fitz storyline and a great Doctor-Fitz relationship. #30, Parallel 59, is another good Fitz story, though Fitz shows his less admirable side in it, and the book is daring in its refusal to offer easy solutions to the war that is its main plot. I can't recommend #33, Coldheart, as a story but it has some of my favorite Doctor-Fitz interaction. #35, The Banquo Legacy, is kind of a bore in my view but it does important stuff in the arc, developing the situation with the Time Lords and showing how questionably the Doctor sometimes reacts to it.
Book 36, The Ancestor Cell, is the turning point for the whole EDA series. It's the original Time War story and also address a lot of the issues from Interference.
Books 37-42 are often called the "earth arc." As a consequence of what happens in The Ancestor Cell, the Doctor ends up on earth, alone and completely amnesiac, in the late nineteenth century. All he has is a small blue box in his pocket and a note that reads, "Meet me in St. Louis, 8 February 2001, Fitz." The earth arc follows the 100+ years that he spends on earth. The best are #39, The Turing Test, which is set in World War II and narrated first by Alan Turing, then Graham Greene, then Joseph Heller, and #40, Endgame, which is about the Cold War and Kim Philby. #41, Father Time has some good points but gives us yuppie!Doctor (Lance Parkin, who wrote this one, has a tendency to inject all his Who novels with right-wing politics) and the Doctor raising a child, both of which squick me. #42, Escape Velocity, concludes the arc but is absolutely, unreadably awful. It introduces a new companion, Anji Kapoor, but she's better served by many later books.
Books 43-50 are standalone adventures. #42, Earthworld is fun and provides a good introduction to Anji, while #44, Vanishing Point has an engaging plot and some great Doctor/Fitz moments, although Fitz also does something very sketchy. #46, The Year of Intelligent Tigers, by Kate Orman, is one I have mixed feelings about despite having loved it the first time I read it. It's well written in many ways and very engaging, but I have some issues with the way Orman writes the Doctor, especially at the end of the book. Also, Orman has a record of behaving very badly in fannish spaces, which makes it hard for me to wholeheartedly recommend anything by her. #49, City of the Dead, has some nice character moments and a vivid New Orleans setting. #50, Grimm Reality, which is set on a planet in which causality works by the logic of fairy tales, is great fun.
And then there's #51, The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, by Lawrence Miles. This is the start of a huuuuuuuuge arc that will last for most of the rest of the EDAs, and that is the only reason I'm recommending it. Well, that and a couple of cameo appearances by a certain clean-shaven gentleman. But I find its plot and writing dull and its gender politics offensive.
#52, Mad Dogs and Englishmen by Paul Magrs, is absolutely bonkers even by the standard of DW novels. It has talking poodles, an academic conference, a lightly-disguised JRR Tolkien, a lightly-disguised Star Wars, and a completely undisguised Noel Coward. Even though it's my least favorite of Magrs's three EDAs it's still a hell of a romp.
The plot arc (usually called the "Sabbath arc" after the antagonist introduced in Henrietta Street) resumes with #53 and carries on through #67, Sometime Never, which more or less wraps it up. It is incredibly complicated because it's all about time, linearity, and the multiverse, and if you want to actually understand what's going on, it's probably best to read all of the books. Fortunately, a lot of the books are excellent. #53-#55 are probably skippable, but I strongly recommend #56, The Book of the Still; #58, History 101 (the Spanish Civil War!); #59, Camera Obscura and #60, Time Zero, which form a two-part story with Victorian circuses, seances, and Fitz going on an Arctic expedition with his new boyfriend; #62, The Domino Effect, a dystopian AU with a cameo by Alan Turing; and #67, Sometime Never, which at least tries to answer all the questions and resolve all the plot threads.
The last few books are all pretty much standalones. #68, Halflife, is a favorite among Eight/Fitz fans--Fitz's dream has to be read to be believed! #69, The Tomorrow Windows is silly and fun. But the series conclusion, #73, The Gallifrey Chronicles, by Lance Parkin, should be avoided at all costs. Not only does it open a potentially huge plot arc that, because there were no further books, never concludes, it also manages to perform character assassination on both Fitz (whom Parkin hates) and Anji (whom Parkin loves but only because he completely misunderstands her). Honestly, Halflife is a good place to stop.
Crossposted at Dreamwidth (
comments); you can comment here or there.