I finished The Eight Doctors.
This is the worst thing Terrance Dicks ever wrote. Bar none. I'll review it quickly on two terms: Writing, and presentation.
Writing: I was always aware Dicks hated the TV Movie... but not this much. I didn't know that he ditched the TV Movie console room for the conventional one from the 60's/70's, a pretty bizzare thing to do in its own right. But to basically neuter the Eighth Doctor in his first adventure with this nonsensical fan-service thing is outrageous. Imagine being excited about this new Doctor after a story that didn't really showcase him for half of it, and instead getting retreads and sequels to OldWho stories you're not given any refresh to remember what they're about. In particular, the longest sections involve a sequel section to The Sea Devils (with a dash of The Daemons thrown in for good measure), a sequel to State of Decay, a sequel to The Five Doctors (!!!), and a very long sequel to The Ultimate Foe with a Faux Sixth Doctor to boot! Now, you might think the Doctor-to-Doctor interactions would save it, but they don't. The only multi-Doctor scene with any charm in between the First and the Eighth, the rest feel penfunctionary and unsatisfying to the max. Oh, and SAMANTHA JONES, NEW COMPANION is as obligatory as you would expect. The plot is shit though, so even that novelty (the intro of a new companion) just feels like an afterthought. Really, if the Doctor has to regain his memories by meeting his incarnations, all he has to do is visit his last one, who has all the memories of the previous Doctors. Its so stupid but you're not supposed to notice. Really, Terrance?
Really, there's very few things to like in this. One of them, though, is the Master ingesting the Deathworm Morphant, explaining why and how was able to transform into a snake-like entity after being exploded by the Daleks. The movie never explains this and its an enormous error in my mind (among many) but that one at least has some ambition and competent characters in it, not to mention a story that moved forward, compared to this. If Terrance Dicks was commisioned to give this for TV, I highly doubt his ethics would have allowed for this to be produced. THAT BEING SAID, I guess I enjoyed the Third Doctor lost story with Delgado's Master (cause that's how it feels like) and even the FIfth Doctor bit was sorta decent, in their own rights.
Presentation: I'm watching Shit Levine's Gallifrey at the moment, and among other things, its sound design is somewhat competent and lots of talented actors are involved in the voice acting. Here, though... I dunno what to say. The sound design (because that's what one would count on, as the images are, as I'll mention later, far too bad to ignite any imagination at all) is amateur hour, at best. It feels like this was put together at the last minute. Supremely badly paced and put together, and I say this kindly. And I understand the book is long, but that's no excuse to make it into 12 episodes. There's whole stretches of episodes where the Eighth Doctor doesn't even appear! That's criminally insane, isn't this supposed to be Eight's big post-regeneration story? Instead, its The Movie 2.0 where he just wanders into old Who episodes for actually no good reason. The material simply doesn't support such a structure, and the story is not a leisury pace kinda thing. Its a really, really long story because Shit Levine is obviously a fan of long, boring, padded-out stories. And Shit Levine is using recons as a way to produce the story, but... I barely understand what is happening, if anything. There's a musical section in the first episode that, actually, does nothing. At first, I thought it was an editing error, or the uploaded simply removed the voices and put music in...no, that's how its actually edited by Levine's team. Did this man actually really believe this thing could be made available by the BBC for PURCHASE?! How can anyone actually think thsi could have happened?
On the plus, there are a few good impersonations (as none of the Doctors are returning Doctors, not even poor Sylv), chiefly the First Doctor, the Fourth, and especially the Fifth, who sounds exactly like Peter Davision from the '80's. Its a remarkable impersonation, extremely impressive (I know he does the First too, and I think Eight, but his Fifth is good). And whoever is doing Ainley is pretty good, too. But, that's about it, really.
Since this exists, I'm more than inclined to call this the Worst Eighth Doctor story out there. And its a shame because his era didn't start with a bang either (it ended on that same night, too). If this was produced for TV, it would have to basically be rewritten from scratch. Its just bad, and a stain in Terrance Dicks' tremendous and important legacy.
