fifty frenchmen can't be wrong (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
some_stars) wrote2007-06-22 02:25 am
some_stars) wrote2007-06-22 02:25 am
The Eighth Doctor: Yes, He Exists
MediaFire has deleted my account without warning, so for the time being I can't provide download links. I'll remove these notices if I find a way to share episodes again.
I've assumed it's okay to share these books, since they're out of print and mostly only available secondhand, but if any authors would prefer I didn't upload theirs, please let me know and I'll comply.
I'm totally doing this one out of sequence, because he's my very favorite and I can't hold it in any longer. I must warn up front for this, though, that I know nothing about the Big Finish audioplays and therefore sadly cannot pimp them. I've only heard one, but it was excellent, and I will definitely be listening to the rest at some point. That means, though, that this section neglects half of Eight's existence, which is...a complicated sort of mess, but basically goes like this: A TV movie was made in 1996 attempting to resurrect the franchise; it was a dreadful Americanized and neutered affair for the most part, but was saved by an AMAZING performance by Paul McGann as the Doctor. Seriously, when you see how beyond wretched every single other actor is, you will understand how incredible he is. The whole movie is basically PMG giving a charming, thoughtful, unique performance and getting PUREST CRAP back, and he just keeps going. So, despite the complete and well-deserved flop of the TVM, there was an Eighth Doctor out there now, one who some people were actually interested in. And here it diverges, because Eight exists almost entirely in the form of licensed fanfic, which itself takes the form of either novels or radio plays. The books have their own canon and continuity, and the audios have a whole other canon/continuity, which are pretty much impossible to reconcile; luckily the 2005 revival came along and allowed us to just wave our hands vaguely and declare it an effect of the Time War, so everything can coexist.
The Time War comes in very handy, in fact, for anyone fond of Eight at all, because while the new series has now briefly acknowledged his existence, it's pretty clear that the show is not going to reference things that happened in a very lengthy series of out-of-print and occasionally damn near impossible to acquire books, much less consider itself bound by them. Basically, as of RTD's arrival, Eight was put on a shelf in the back of the narrative closet--and yet the untold story of the Time War would seemingly *have* to involve him, a conundrum which has led to a few excellent fics. My general approach is quantum handwaving and pointing at the Time War, and it has served me well so far! (Edit: I wrote this a few weeks ago, and if you have been keeping up with the third series of the new show you know that this whole paragraph may soon need editing.)
The TVM is, as above noted, a total wreck, and this sadly extends to the plot. There's an abundance of evil slime, an absurd insistence that human-devised schemes of telling time have actual cosmic meaning--in Pacific Standard Time specifically, no less--and a wooden-yet-excessively-camp version of the Master, as well as some extreme cheating the rules of time travel, even by Doctor Who standards of 'rules'. The short version of mostly highlights: Seven is accidentally shot in a gang war, rushed to the hospital, then accidentally killed because the surgeon doesn't realize he has two hearts. He regenerates hours later and is all traumatized and amnesiac, which will be a recurring theme for the poor thing; then he quickly acquires a sidekick, gets smoochy with her for the first time in Who history ZOMGWTFBBQ, and dresses in a lovely velvet coat and something which may or may not be an...ascot? Unless that's a piece of furniture. He is dressed in AWESOME, basically. Also, he has the only TARDIS interior in history with a console room that is not a small, room-sized....room, but is in fact CAVERNOUS, with high ceilings and lots of wood paneling. It's pretty excellent.
ANYWAY, the events of the movie finish, for which we are all grateful, and we move on to either the audios or, if you're reading this(which, of course, you are!), the BBC novels. Unlike most tie-in books, the Eighth Doctor Adventures--EDAs from here on out--are, after an initial period of adjustment and sucking, really high-quality thoughtful stories with plot arcs, character development, and literary experimentation. There's a whole complicated history of the legal issues surrounding the BBC's relationship with tie-in books, but the salient point is that for many years before the Eighth Doctor, fans had been writing equally-remarkable Doctor Who books--ever since Seven went off the air--creating stories that were much closer, in some ways, to fanfic as we know it('we' being you guys what I hang out with on LJ, writing pr0n), than the usual licensed stuff. So there was a solid base of great writers and a tradition of stories that really stretched and experimented with the universe. This, combined with the fact that there were just not that many people, relatively, reading the EDAs at all--being, as they were, about a Doctor who had never had an onscreen series, and incredibly continuity-heavy in places, and of course, about a show that had been off the air for a decade--means that the books can get away with some truly remarkable things, from gleefully insane postmodernism, to one of the most interesting and non-soul-destroying women-of-color characters I've ever seen, to what is possibly the gayest Doctor/companion relationship of all time. You want to talk about gay married in space--my OTP has kissing. And naked bottom dreams. --not to mention the actual canonical Doctor-queerness. That too!
So, now that we've established why you want to read these, some foreknowledge of the story arcs might be helpful. If you plan to read in order, of course, you don't need this, but if you are like me and read all over the series depending on what looks shiniest and is within reach at the moment, it helps A LOT to have a general idea of what's going on. There's actually a lot of character development, and in most of the books it really makes a difference in the relationships depending on where it falls in the chronology. Wikipedia's list of books is an IMMENSE help keeping things straight--I think I consulted it at least twice a day when I was zooming through the EDAs for the first time. Besides which, a lot of what attracted me to the EDAs was people talking about them, so maybe something in the following descriptions will grab your interest. --and most of all, I really don't think I could do descriptions of the main characters in under 5000 words each, because Eight is the one I feel is "my" Doctor, and my love for Fitz and Anji knows no bounds, so talking about the series as a whole feels slightly more manageable. The books fall into 'seasons' based on the companions present and the main plot arcs:
#1 (The Eight Doctors) through #18 (The Face-Eater): Sam Jones, a teenage girl, is the companion for the first part of the series, and it's generally agreed, as far as I can tell, that almost none of the writers had any idea what to do with her. I haven't read any of these, yet, and only a couple of them seem to be regarded as worth reading, which makes those 73 titles look slightly less intimidating. *g*
#19 (The Taint) through #26 (Interference II): The arrival of Fitz Kreiner provides a brilliant element of instability and shifts the dynamics. It doesn't hurt that the authors/editors allow him to have an actual personality and distinguishing characteristics, either. *snerk* We do get some fantastic women coming up, so I'm not too bitter. Anyhow, I have gone on at great length, on several occasions, about how and why Fitz is so incredibly interesting, but one of the most important factors is his relationship with the Doctor. Right from the start they're both drawn to each other, but also make each other quite uncomfortable. The progression of their relationship--however you care to read it; obviously I love the slash but the really undeniable stuff is later, IMO--isn't just an upward arrow, or a dip followed by a reconciliation, or anything simple and predictable. Right up to Interference(after which things change dramatically, for reasons explained below), they still haven't become particularly close or comfortable with each other, but every now and then there are moments of connection that leap off the page. Their relationship is *alive,* in this phase of the plot, and I could really spend hours dissecting it. (But fortunately will not.) And this new vibrant presence helps a great deal in providing friction and footholds for Sam to actually develop a character, and unsettles the dyad, which is ALWAYS good.
As far as the plot arc, it culminates in Interference and is explained there, but it doesn't really start to come together into an arc until Unnatural History; the books before that are more standalone(although interestingly, starting with Revolution Man the books lead directly into one another--there's a gap of only minutes between RM and Dominion, which quite startled me). Interference is ALL ARC, extending backwards and forwards--the repercussions of the events in the book last nearly to the end of the series, in one shape or another. I don't want to spoil any of that plot--as opposed to what happens to Fitz, which I will spoil in a moment, because you'll almost certainly run across a reference before you can get ahold of the books, and it's a fairly minor part of Interference proper--but basically, Interference is weird. Parts of it are confusing as hell, especially if you're not a really hardcore old-school fan, but I LOVE it. It's one of those stories that you could only tell about a fannish property, something old and communal and resonant and generational; not just referencing old stuff or responding to it but transforming it. And the sheer scope of what it does to the EDA storyline and characters impresses the hell out of me. It really is a fictional universe where people and relationships aren't "safe"--obviously the Doctor isn't going to die, but you absolutely can't count on a happy ending or even an ending at all.
So what happens in Interference that's important to know when reading books after it is, 1.) Sam leaves, and the Doctor and Fitz start traveling with Compassion, more on that below, and 2.) Fitz develops a very, very strange timeline, with the result being that at the end of Interference II, he's "remembered" by the TARDIS's telepathic circuits into a clone of his body, and the entire series from that point on is Fitz 2.0. There are no obvious differences at first, but the repercussions to the character are explored at length and with great success in the following books.
#27 (The Blue Angel) through #36 (The Ancestor Cell): The Compassion books, so cleverly called because she's the other companion in them. Compassion is a fascinating character, and while a lot of authors mishandled her terribly, there are also some books that do AMAZING things with her. She has a great arc with an immensely satisfying ending in Ancestor Cell, and a truly unbelievable amount of disturbing sexual politics that the writers/editors seem only vaguely aware of. I keep meaning to write a paper on it. There is an overarching (heh) arc going on during these books besides Compassion's story, but I frankly don't understand it, and find her much more interesting. This 'season' is also the first big shift in the Doctor and Fitz's relationship, prompted both by the departure of Sam--meaning that Fitz becomes the partner, instead of the outsider--and by their dynamics with Compassion. (And by some interesting and unsettling questions about Fitz 2.0, I add obliquely. *g*)
Ancestor Cell confused me even more than Interference, because it's written more or less normally, so I kept trying to actually understand it. However, the character moments and emotional stuff are fantastic, and I always tend to regard plot as mainly there in order to enable that stuff anyway. Another big spoiler, because I think I found this out within a day of getting interested in the EDAs, and it's pretty impossible to talk about the later books without mentioning it: at the end of AC, the Doctor has to destroy Gallifrey to save the universe, which forms a large part of my argument that the EDAs did everything the new series doesbackwards in high heels several years earlier. This is NOT the destruction from the Time War referenced in the new series, which means that the Eighth Doctor somehow manages to destroy Gallifrey twice. Which I think is kind of special.
So the Doctor removes Gallifrey from existence and is so damaged by this himself that he develops total amnesia. Compassion sends him to the late nineteenth century, on Earth, with the seed of what will regrow into his TARDIS, before taking off herself. And thus we reach...
#37 (The Burning) through #41 (Father Time): The Earth arc! All of these books feature only the Doctor--no regular companions, except the guest stars--and he has no idea who, or what, he is. Some people find this annoying, but I love it. The amnesia is used to particularly brilliant effect in The Turing Test, which is told by three other characters and gives us a Doctor so incredibly enigmatic(npi) and elusive yet captures something essential about him. He actually never recovers his memory through the rest of the books--again, some people find this frustrating, but I think the authors generally do an amazing job of making him clearly the Doctor while using the amnesia to explore aspects of the character that wouldn't be available otherwise.
When Compassion drops the Doctor back in time, she leaves a note in his pocket telling him to meet Fitz--which name, of course, the Doctor doesn't recognize--in 2001. This note becomes extremely significant to the Doctor over the next century, and--well, let's move on to the next section:
#42 (Escape Velocity) through #50 (Grimm Reality): I have a special adoration for this part of the storyline, as it was where I first started reading, and has some of my all-time favorite books. Unfortunately, it starts with what may well be the worst Doctor Who book ever--somehow, they managed to find the world's most horrible writer, and assign him to one of the most pivotal and emotionally resonant installments. Or rather, it should be pivotal and emotionally resonant; in actuality you would be far, far better served by reading a synopsis and picking up the important stuff from the next few books. MOVING ON--this section is actually arc-less, or more accurately, it has only emotional arcs. There's the Doctor's abrupt discovery of the answers to all his hundred-year-old questions about himself and readjustment to having an identity; there's Fitz's reaction to the total role reversal in his relationship with the Doctor and the sudden intimacy between them; there's the introduction of Anji Kapoor and some really amazing development of her character and relationships with the other two. Anji is so brilliantly complex and real, and much like Fitz, her position aboard the TARDIS and her relationship with the Doctor is deeply fraught and difficult for a long time. It would be very easy, given her circumstances, for authors to portray her as 'the shrew', a killjoy, someone who unfairly and cruelly doubts the Doctor--but they never do, and in fact there are several fascinating explorations of just how justified those doubts are.
I heartily recommend every single one of these books except the first, as noted above, and the last--I haven't actually read GR, but every time I go to look it up on Amazon I remember that it's the only EDA I've ever seen get nothing but horrible reviews, which dissuades me. (Edit: I have been corrected by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
doyle_sb4, whose taste I trust, so consider the anti-rec rescinded. *g*) (Edit2: Okay, now I've read it, and I quite liked it, so apparently Amazon is just dumb.) Everything in the middle, though, is at least very good(Vanishing Point, Eater of Wasps, Dark Progeny) and often downright astounding(EarthWorld, The Year of Intelligent Tigers, The Slow Empire, The City of the Dead).
#51 (The Adventuress of Henrietta Street) through #59 (Camera Obscura): Here's where it gets plot-arcy again, and how. The arc that starts in Henrietta Street actually continues through 67, but there's a definite transition point at CO in several ways, not least of which is coherence. This first half of the arc makes sense, generally, and I find it compelling--after CO it starts to get tangled up in itself rather dreadfully. ANYHOW. The plot of HS centers around the repercussions of the destruction in Ancestor Cell, so it's all very enormous and cosmic, but the story in HS itself was aptly summarized thus bydoyle_sb4: "it's the one where the Doctor plans to save the world from killer apes from another dimension by marrying a 13-year-old prostitute." And so it is! It takes place over the course of a year, and I absolutely love how in the following books, you can really feel the difference in the characters' relationships--Fitz and Anji, in particular, feel like their friendship has deepened a lot, and Anji's grown much more integrated into the whole weird little family. Basically the story arc is our heroes running around after the villain introduced in HS, who has Grand Cosmic Plans involving time. What this means is that we actually get quite a few stories about time travel, which is comparatively rare in the EDAs, considering. Some of these plots (History 101) are more successful than others(Anachrophobia), but all of the books in this period (with the exception of Hope, possibly--I couldn't get past the first few pages, but I should retry it) are great. (Trading Futures also involves invading space rhinoceroses, so you can imagine the delight I felt watching Smith & Jones and racking up yet more validation for my pet theory.)
There are a handful of excellent books after Camera Obscura--Time Zero, although it's completely impossible to find; The Infinity Race, with some delightful Anji narration; Halflife, where Fitz and the Doctor SOULBOND, SERIOUSLY, LIKE IN FANFIC--but in my opinion CO is really the peak of the series' genius, and while the ones after are certainly worth reading if you grow to love the characters, they're not books I'd pimp with.
Downloads
(e-mail me for download link)
First off, there's the TV movie--okay, there's a lot to suffer through, but Paul McGann's Doctor really is great, and it helps immensely when reading the books.
As noted above, many of the EDAs have been scanned by wonderful people from the internet, and quite a few of those happen to be stories that are both relatively standalone and very good. I've included one book from the Sam-Fitz-Doctor period, three from the period right after the Earth Arc, and three from the post-Henrietta Street arc. (Sadly there don't appear to be any Compassion books available scanned, so you'll have to take my word on those. *g*) You might actually want to start with what I've numbered as 43a, Fear Itself, because it was written to be part of the series of standalone books featuring all the different Doctors, and so it doesn't assume its audience is familiar with the backstory--in my opinion it does a good job of being graceful with the necessary exposition, and seems like a good place to jump on, not least because it features some fantastically slashy and/or emotionally significant moments between Fitz and the Doctor. It fits in the series timeline soon after the end of the Earth Arc.
edit: actually I've just said hell with it and uploaded a .rar of all the books I have that aren't awful. *g*
Back to the index post
I've assumed it's okay to share these books, since they're out of print and mostly only available secondhand, but if any authors would prefer I didn't upload theirs, please let me know and I'll comply.
I'm totally doing this one out of sequence, because he's my very favorite and I can't hold it in any longer. I must warn up front for this, though, that I know nothing about the Big Finish audioplays and therefore sadly cannot pimp them. I've only heard one, but it was excellent, and I will definitely be listening to the rest at some point. That means, though, that this section neglects half of Eight's existence, which is...a complicated sort of mess, but basically goes like this: A TV movie was made in 1996 attempting to resurrect the franchise; it was a dreadful Americanized and neutered affair for the most part, but was saved by an AMAZING performance by Paul McGann as the Doctor. Seriously, when you see how beyond wretched every single other actor is, you will understand how incredible he is. The whole movie is basically PMG giving a charming, thoughtful, unique performance and getting PUREST CRAP back, and he just keeps going. So, despite the complete and well-deserved flop of the TVM, there was an Eighth Doctor out there now, one who some people were actually interested in. And here it diverges, because Eight exists almost entirely in the form of licensed fanfic, which itself takes the form of either novels or radio plays. The books have their own canon and continuity, and the audios have a whole other canon/continuity, which are pretty much impossible to reconcile; luckily the 2005 revival came along and allowed us to just wave our hands vaguely and declare it an effect of the Time War, so everything can coexist.
The Time War comes in very handy, in fact, for anyone fond of Eight at all, because while the new series has now briefly acknowledged his existence, it's pretty clear that the show is not going to reference things that happened in a very lengthy series of out-of-print and occasionally damn near impossible to acquire books, much less consider itself bound by them. Basically, as of RTD's arrival, Eight was put on a shelf in the back of the narrative closet--and yet the untold story of the Time War would seemingly *have* to involve him, a conundrum which has led to a few excellent fics. My general approach is quantum handwaving and pointing at the Time War, and it has served me well so far! (Edit: I wrote this a few weeks ago, and if you have been keeping up with the third series of the new show you know that this whole paragraph may soon need editing.)
The TVM is, as above noted, a total wreck, and this sadly extends to the plot. There's an abundance of evil slime, an absurd insistence that human-devised schemes of telling time have actual cosmic meaning--in Pacific Standard Time specifically, no less--and a wooden-yet-excessively-camp version of the Master, as well as some extreme cheating the rules of time travel, even by Doctor Who standards of 'rules'. The short version of mostly highlights: Seven is accidentally shot in a gang war, rushed to the hospital, then accidentally killed because the surgeon doesn't realize he has two hearts. He regenerates hours later and is all traumatized and amnesiac, which will be a recurring theme for the poor thing; then he quickly acquires a sidekick, gets smoochy with her for the first time in Who history ZOMGWTFBBQ, and dresses in a lovely velvet coat and something which may or may not be an...ascot? Unless that's a piece of furniture. He is dressed in AWESOME, basically. Also, he has the only TARDIS interior in history with a console room that is not a small, room-sized....room, but is in fact CAVERNOUS, with high ceilings and lots of wood paneling. It's pretty excellent.
ANYWAY, the events of the movie finish, for which we are all grateful, and we move on to either the audios or, if you're reading this(which, of course, you are!), the BBC novels. Unlike most tie-in books, the Eighth Doctor Adventures--EDAs from here on out--are, after an initial period of adjustment and sucking, really high-quality thoughtful stories with plot arcs, character development, and literary experimentation. There's a whole complicated history of the legal issues surrounding the BBC's relationship with tie-in books, but the salient point is that for many years before the Eighth Doctor, fans had been writing equally-remarkable Doctor Who books--ever since Seven went off the air--creating stories that were much closer, in some ways, to fanfic as we know it('we' being you guys what I hang out with on LJ, writing pr0n), than the usual licensed stuff. So there was a solid base of great writers and a tradition of stories that really stretched and experimented with the universe. This, combined with the fact that there were just not that many people, relatively, reading the EDAs at all--being, as they were, about a Doctor who had never had an onscreen series, and incredibly continuity-heavy in places, and of course, about a show that had been off the air for a decade--means that the books can get away with some truly remarkable things, from gleefully insane postmodernism, to one of the most interesting and non-soul-destroying women-of-color characters I've ever seen, to what is possibly the gayest Doctor/companion relationship of all time. You want to talk about gay married in space--my OTP has kissing. And naked bottom dreams. --not to mention the actual canonical Doctor-queerness. That too!
So, now that we've established why you want to read these, some foreknowledge of the story arcs might be helpful. If you plan to read in order, of course, you don't need this, but if you are like me and read all over the series depending on what looks shiniest and is within reach at the moment, it helps A LOT to have a general idea of what's going on. There's actually a lot of character development, and in most of the books it really makes a difference in the relationships depending on where it falls in the chronology. Wikipedia's list of books is an IMMENSE help keeping things straight--I think I consulted it at least twice a day when I was zooming through the EDAs for the first time. Besides which, a lot of what attracted me to the EDAs was people talking about them, so maybe something in the following descriptions will grab your interest. --and most of all, I really don't think I could do descriptions of the main characters in under 5000 words each, because Eight is the one I feel is "my" Doctor, and my love for Fitz and Anji knows no bounds, so talking about the series as a whole feels slightly more manageable. The books fall into 'seasons' based on the companions present and the main plot arcs:
#1 (The Eight Doctors) through #18 (The Face-Eater): Sam Jones, a teenage girl, is the companion for the first part of the series, and it's generally agreed, as far as I can tell, that almost none of the writers had any idea what to do with her. I haven't read any of these, yet, and only a couple of them seem to be regarded as worth reading, which makes those 73 titles look slightly less intimidating. *g*
#19 (The Taint) through #26 (Interference II): The arrival of Fitz Kreiner provides a brilliant element of instability and shifts the dynamics. It doesn't hurt that the authors/editors allow him to have an actual personality and distinguishing characteristics, either. *snerk* We do get some fantastic women coming up, so I'm not too bitter. Anyhow, I have gone on at great length, on several occasions, about how and why Fitz is so incredibly interesting, but one of the most important factors is his relationship with the Doctor. Right from the start they're both drawn to each other, but also make each other quite uncomfortable. The progression of their relationship--however you care to read it; obviously I love the slash but the really undeniable stuff is later, IMO--isn't just an upward arrow, or a dip followed by a reconciliation, or anything simple and predictable. Right up to Interference(after which things change dramatically, for reasons explained below), they still haven't become particularly close or comfortable with each other, but every now and then there are moments of connection that leap off the page. Their relationship is *alive,* in this phase of the plot, and I could really spend hours dissecting it. (But fortunately will not.) And this new vibrant presence helps a great deal in providing friction and footholds for Sam to actually develop a character, and unsettles the dyad, which is ALWAYS good.
As far as the plot arc, it culminates in Interference and is explained there, but it doesn't really start to come together into an arc until Unnatural History; the books before that are more standalone(although interestingly, starting with Revolution Man the books lead directly into one another--there's a gap of only minutes between RM and Dominion, which quite startled me). Interference is ALL ARC, extending backwards and forwards--the repercussions of the events in the book last nearly to the end of the series, in one shape or another. I don't want to spoil any of that plot--as opposed to what happens to Fitz, which I will spoil in a moment, because you'll almost certainly run across a reference before you can get ahold of the books, and it's a fairly minor part of Interference proper--but basically, Interference is weird. Parts of it are confusing as hell, especially if you're not a really hardcore old-school fan, but I LOVE it. It's one of those stories that you could only tell about a fannish property, something old and communal and resonant and generational; not just referencing old stuff or responding to it but transforming it. And the sheer scope of what it does to the EDA storyline and characters impresses the hell out of me. It really is a fictional universe where people and relationships aren't "safe"--obviously the Doctor isn't going to die, but you absolutely can't count on a happy ending or even an ending at all.
So what happens in Interference that's important to know when reading books after it is, 1.) Sam leaves, and the Doctor and Fitz start traveling with Compassion, more on that below, and 2.) Fitz develops a very, very strange timeline, with the result being that at the end of Interference II, he's "remembered" by the TARDIS's telepathic circuits into a clone of his body, and the entire series from that point on is Fitz 2.0. There are no obvious differences at first, but the repercussions to the character are explored at length and with great success in the following books.
#27 (The Blue Angel) through #36 (The Ancestor Cell): The Compassion books, so cleverly called because she's the other companion in them. Compassion is a fascinating character, and while a lot of authors mishandled her terribly, there are also some books that do AMAZING things with her. She has a great arc with an immensely satisfying ending in Ancestor Cell, and a truly unbelievable amount of disturbing sexual politics that the writers/editors seem only vaguely aware of. I keep meaning to write a paper on it. There is an overarching (heh) arc going on during these books besides Compassion's story, but I frankly don't understand it, and find her much more interesting. This 'season' is also the first big shift in the Doctor and Fitz's relationship, prompted both by the departure of Sam--meaning that Fitz becomes the partner, instead of the outsider--and by their dynamics with Compassion. (And by some interesting and unsettling questions about Fitz 2.0, I add obliquely. *g*)
Ancestor Cell confused me even more than Interference, because it's written more or less normally, so I kept trying to actually understand it. However, the character moments and emotional stuff are fantastic, and I always tend to regard plot as mainly there in order to enable that stuff anyway. Another big spoiler, because I think I found this out within a day of getting interested in the EDAs, and it's pretty impossible to talk about the later books without mentioning it: at the end of AC, the Doctor has to destroy Gallifrey to save the universe, which forms a large part of my argument that the EDAs did everything the new series does
So the Doctor removes Gallifrey from existence and is so damaged by this himself that he develops total amnesia. Compassion sends him to the late nineteenth century, on Earth, with the seed of what will regrow into his TARDIS, before taking off herself. And thus we reach...
#37 (The Burning) through #41 (Father Time): The Earth arc! All of these books feature only the Doctor--no regular companions, except the guest stars--and he has no idea who, or what, he is. Some people find this annoying, but I love it. The amnesia is used to particularly brilliant effect in The Turing Test, which is told by three other characters and gives us a Doctor so incredibly enigmatic(npi) and elusive yet captures something essential about him. He actually never recovers his memory through the rest of the books--again, some people find this frustrating, but I think the authors generally do an amazing job of making him clearly the Doctor while using the amnesia to explore aspects of the character that wouldn't be available otherwise.
When Compassion drops the Doctor back in time, she leaves a note in his pocket telling him to meet Fitz--which name, of course, the Doctor doesn't recognize--in 2001. This note becomes extremely significant to the Doctor over the next century, and--well, let's move on to the next section:
#42 (Escape Velocity) through #50 (Grimm Reality): I have a special adoration for this part of the storyline, as it was where I first started reading, and has some of my all-time favorite books. Unfortunately, it starts with what may well be the worst Doctor Who book ever--somehow, they managed to find the world's most horrible writer, and assign him to one of the most pivotal and emotionally resonant installments. Or rather, it should be pivotal and emotionally resonant; in actuality you would be far, far better served by reading a synopsis and picking up the important stuff from the next few books. MOVING ON--this section is actually arc-less, or more accurately, it has only emotional arcs. There's the Doctor's abrupt discovery of the answers to all his hundred-year-old questions about himself and readjustment to having an identity; there's Fitz's reaction to the total role reversal in his relationship with the Doctor and the sudden intimacy between them; there's the introduction of Anji Kapoor and some really amazing development of her character and relationships with the other two. Anji is so brilliantly complex and real, and much like Fitz, her position aboard the TARDIS and her relationship with the Doctor is deeply fraught and difficult for a long time. It would be very easy, given her circumstances, for authors to portray her as 'the shrew', a killjoy, someone who unfairly and cruelly doubts the Doctor--but they never do, and in fact there are several fascinating explorations of just how justified those doubts are.
I heartily recommend every single one of these books except the first, as noted above, and the last--I haven't actually read GR, but every time I go to look it up on Amazon I remember that it's the only EDA I've ever seen get nothing but horrible reviews, which dissuades me. (Edit: I have been corrected by
doyle_sb4, whose taste I trust, so consider the anti-rec rescinded. *g*) (Edit2: Okay, now I've read it, and I quite liked it, so apparently Amazon is just dumb.) Everything in the middle, though, is at least very good(Vanishing Point, Eater of Wasps, Dark Progeny) and often downright astounding(EarthWorld, The Year of Intelligent Tigers, The Slow Empire, The City of the Dead).#51 (The Adventuress of Henrietta Street) through #59 (Camera Obscura): Here's where it gets plot-arcy again, and how. The arc that starts in Henrietta Street actually continues through 67, but there's a definite transition point at CO in several ways, not least of which is coherence. This first half of the arc makes sense, generally, and I find it compelling--after CO it starts to get tangled up in itself rather dreadfully. ANYHOW. The plot of HS centers around the repercussions of the destruction in Ancestor Cell, so it's all very enormous and cosmic, but the story in HS itself was aptly summarized thus by
doyle_sb4: "it's the one where the Doctor plans to save the world from killer apes from another dimension by marrying a 13-year-old prostitute." And so it is! It takes place over the course of a year, and I absolutely love how in the following books, you can really feel the difference in the characters' relationships--Fitz and Anji, in particular, feel like their friendship has deepened a lot, and Anji's grown much more integrated into the whole weird little family. Basically the story arc is our heroes running around after the villain introduced in HS, who has Grand Cosmic Plans involving time. What this means is that we actually get quite a few stories about time travel, which is comparatively rare in the EDAs, considering. Some of these plots (History 101) are more successful than others(Anachrophobia), but all of the books in this period (with the exception of Hope, possibly--I couldn't get past the first few pages, but I should retry it) are great. (Trading Futures also involves invading space rhinoceroses, so you can imagine the delight I felt watching Smith & Jones and racking up yet more validation for my pet theory.)There are a handful of excellent books after Camera Obscura--Time Zero, although it's completely impossible to find; The Infinity Race, with some delightful Anji narration; Halflife, where Fitz and the Doctor SOULBOND, SERIOUSLY, LIKE IN FANFIC--but in my opinion CO is really the peak of the series' genius, and while the ones after are certainly worth reading if you grow to love the characters, they're not books I'd pimp with.
Downloads
(e-mail me for download link)
First off, there's the TV movie--okay, there's a lot to suffer through, but Paul McGann's Doctor really is great, and it helps immensely when reading the books.
As noted above, many of the EDAs have been scanned by wonderful people from the internet, and quite a few of those happen to be stories that are both relatively standalone and very good. I've included one book from the Sam-Fitz-Doctor period, three from the period right after the Earth Arc, and three from the post-Henrietta Street arc. (Sadly there don't appear to be any Compassion books available scanned, so you'll have to take my word on those. *g*) You might actually want to start with what I've numbered as 43a, Fear Itself, because it was written to be part of the series of standalone books featuring all the different Doctors, and so it doesn't assume its audience is familiar with the backstory--in my opinion it does a good job of being graceful with the necessary exposition, and seems like a good place to jump on, not least because it features some fantastically slashy and/or emotionally significant moments between Fitz and the Doctor. It fits in the series timeline soon after the end of the Earth Arc.
edit: actually I've just said hell with it and uploaded a .rar of all the books I have that aren't awful. *g*
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