I never thought I would see it. I never thought I’d see the eighth Doctor on TV. He was given one appearance on TV in 1995 in an American TV movie. He never got to be in an actual episode, many fans never really considered him a “real” Doctor. The irony of the situation is that of all of the Doctors, the eighth probably had more adventures than any of the others if you include the books, comics, and audios that featured him. Of course that is why so many fans didn’t think he counted because his stories weren’t on TV. At the time, those stories were the only Doctor Who being made and all of them were done under BBC supervision so I have always considered them just as proper as any other Doctor Who story on TV.
Well, all those folks that discounted him need to reevaluate now. Not only did the eighth Doctor show up in the context of the current series, he explicitly name checked a bunch of his companions from the audios! Charley, C’Rizz, Lucie, Tamsin, and Molly have now been referenced in the TV show!
It really made me excited (as you can hear in the audio, LOL) and I hope it makes more people interested in the Big Finish stories. They are uniformly great and some of them are simply amazing. The eighth Doctor stories are enthralling. Definitely check them out if you haven’t before.
I am now also cautiously optimistic that there could be more shout outs to the classic series and/or the wilderness years. I would die if Benny came up in the show… Even if that doesn’t happen, thank you Steven Moffat for bringing back #8, he deserved that!