WHY is the Eighth Doctor your favourite?

Full disclosure, Eight is not my #1 favorite, but he's a big favorite. Two things I see fans repeatedly say they got right about the TV movie, even though it is somewhat divisive among fans, are that the TARDIS interior is brilliant and that Paul McGann is a great casting choice. I love many things about Eight such as his sarcastic wit that he tries to hide his optimism behind, his adventurous nature, and his unabashed enthusiasm for the wonders of the universe. What really sold me on Eight and made me love him is McGann's performance. Not many actors, even great ones, could pull off the long streams of dialog in something like Zagreus, for example, and be so fascinating to listen to. A good actor has to both fascinate me and sell me on the role and McGann always does both for me.

There are lots of reasons to like a Doctor. For me it often comes down to the tone of that era of Doctor stories, the companions he has and how he interacts with them, but probably the key factor in me liking a Doctor is not the stories or the companions or the villains he faces, it's the actor's performance and how much he fascinates me and sells me on the role.

Why is the Eighth Doctor my favourite? Well to me, he's more than just my favourite, he is my Doctor. I was born in 1985 and i have the vaguest recollection of Sylvester McCoy, which must have left enough of a residual impression to get me very excited to watch the TV Movie in 1996. At the time i was a huge Star Trek fan, among other things, so sci-fi for me was very much American oriented. As you can imagine, the TV Movie was very easy for me to get into, and i equally except that it must have been tough for older fans of the show to adapt to their way of doing things.

Watching Paul McGann in the TV Movie was such an immediate thrill, that it was tough to not want more, and even to this day i still wish he had been given a full series. Had there been toys made at the time, i probably would have wanted the lot. You simply can't beat child-like enthusiasm for a character or series, and these things often stick with you for a long time. Sometimes you look back on the things you love and wonder why you ever liked it, but that didn't happen in this case.

When i was finally introduced to the audios, the stories served to enhance my fondness for this incarnation, and when he returned in the 2013 minisode Night of the Doctor, it was frankly the most thrilling experience since the 2005 revival. I mean that with the utmost sincerity. 

I believe i own every 8th Doctor audio made since Storm Warning, up to Doom Coalition 1 and i hope to continue with the 8th Doctor until Paul McGann has decided to hang up his wig. Further to that i do hope he gets another chance to appear in the tv series.

He has obviously had some good BF stories, but also some woeful ones. He has a great voice, one I could listen to it all day, unlike McCoy and Tennant. I'd really like to see him turn up for Xmas 2016.

For me until a few years ago, the TV Movie was all i knew of McGann's Eighth Doctor and for me it was his performance and the absolute Hope and Life he put into the role. He became the quintessential Doctor for me.

Also this was the first new Who story i saw, knwoing it was Doctor Who, so he always has that spot, followed by Pertwee and then McCoy

The Night of the Doctor still to this day seems to be a BIG deal with a large majority of fans!  On one hand like everyone, I was happy with the Eighth Doctor's augmented TV acknowledgment, but on the other hand, I still feel that McGann being relegated to a mini-episode was a missed opportunity for something greater.  I'm in the camp (probably less common now) that would have preferred the Eighth Doctor to have been in The Day of the Doctor instead of the creation of the War Doctor.

I am not sure he is a favourite doctor of mine, I thought he never found his feet in the TV movie, had a fantastic start with BF but then suffered some of the worst episodes BF have ever done. Found new heights with Lucie but suffered again from poor stories towards the end of the run. Dark eyes runs out of steam, but currently having a good run but with a forgettable companion!

but after saying all that he is the steady eddie of doctors always the same and mostly predicable, and to McGann's credit never wrong foots his performance.

I would choose him over all but one of the new who doctors.

but please god, if I get one wish he needs to do at least another TV spisode before he gets too old.

Can't believe I didn't spot this thread earlier.

McGann wasn't my first Doctor by any means (NOTD was my introduction to him, and I hadn't seen the TV movie or even heard of the audios till then), but after listening to all his BF audios, and reading (about half of) the EDA's he rapidly became my favourite Doctor.


I think the Eighth Doctor combines the best elements of the classic and new who doctors, if the 7th Dr was a sad schemer playing a game of chess on a galactic level with his eye always on the bigger picture and a willingness to test his companions and his own morals, then 8 is the curious, scatterbrained younger brother with no patience for plans, a mischievous sense of humour, and a distrust of authority, he's stated to be half human and McGann does a great job of combing the otherwordly and imposing with the approachable and fallible, and as constonks said, McGann's Doctor is perhaps the most straightforwardly heroic of all the doctors, in short it's very hard not to like him.

The simplest way of summing it up may be to simply say 7 was Time's champion, 8 is Life's champion.

Alot of people say 8 is the romantic one, and I think it's true but more in the classical sense-he starts out as young and innocent, very much wearing his hearts on his sleeve, more emotional and open than his predecessors, the early 8th Doctor combines a clear sense of awe and wonder at the universe, with vast reserves of hope, and deep attachment to his companions, you get the sense that he explores and fights evil for the sheer joy of discovery, in later years ever more haunted by loss and heartbreak he gradually develops into a more burdened and deadpan snarky pragmatist, but still retains this Romanticism and sense of optimism that even in the worst moments of the present there's still the hope of a better tomorrow, I think it's very fitting and very tragic that it is his somewhat naive sense of moral idealism that ultimately leads to his death when finally broken, he essentially commits suicide trying to save a complete stranger.

I've always loved this fan art of 8:

orig04.deviantart.net/da43/f/2013/223/5/9/59be9f7c9df801073436ad4f52c6ff34-d6hpaje.jpg

I've made my views on NOTD clear before (and I certainly prefer Hurt than 8 as the War Doctor), but suffice to say it remains 7 of the best minutes of New Who so far, and in that short time McGann did more to convince me as the Doctor than several of his predecessors did with whole series, I was sold immediately that this was an actor and Doctor who knew his stuff, and a few months later I decided to buy a few audios...

As some have mentioned above, the barebones potrayal in the TV Movie was in some ways a blessing, i.m.o it enabled the writers of the books, audios etc to take 8 in many different directions beyond which the TV movie could, but whether fighting Faction Paradox, traversing the divergent universe, fostering Miranda or showing Molly around his 'tardy box', it's always identifiable as the 8th Doctor as portrayed by McGann- a fascinating mix of byronic wanderer and Edwardian Uncle wrapped, we may have seen only his very beginning and ending on TV, but McGann did more than enough in those minutes to cement himself as a great doctor.

I haven't read or heard all of the 8 material by any means, but he has tonnes of great stories (Seeing I, Dark Eyes, Father Time, Scherzo, Vampire Science, Lucy Miller/To the Death, Alien Bodies, The Scarlet Empress, The Chimes Of Midnight, Caerdroia, Orbis spring to mind) which helps, and a huge variety of companions (the Fitz-8 partnership is definitely one of my favorites).


When I think of 8, these scenes sum him up for me:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtesEeqRsy4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVxCGG79qt0

McGann was easily the best thing about the TV Movie, he's a excellent, intelligent actor and he shines in the audios with a voice that makes even the weaker scripts enjoyable to listen to, moreover he's also clearly a very nice bloke and a wonderful ambassador for the franchise, after the supposed failure of the TV Movie McGann could have washed his hands of Dr Who, but he didn't, he gave permission for his likeness to be used for novels and comics, attended conventions and lent his voice to over 100 full cast audio stories and counting, although I'm not sure I would have enjoyed the stories if TV Movie had lead to a series, I think it remains a massive shame he never got a chance to really explore the role on TV, and I really hope (as Daphne Ashbrook supposedly let slip at a convention a few months ago) the rights issues with Grace and Chang (maybe even the Eric Roberts Master) are sorted out someday so McGann could get a chance to maybe do the type of stories he never got a chance to 20 years ago...

I'm certainly hoping he makes another appearance on screen at some point, preferably with my 2nd favorite (living) Doctor-Capaldi, *hint hint BF people who might read this and are connected to the TV series*

And how they could watch that performance and not offer him his own 8th Doctor TV run, to go in the spring? Ugh. He took his few minutes and knocked it clear out of the park. They were picking up pieces of bat for a week. Cancel some other show and make room if you have any sense at all, BBC.


(But since I'm such a huge fan of BF, I should be glad for my own sake that he's here rather than there; I greatly prefer BF's style to the alternative)

I'm slowing coming around to this way of acceptance.

A moot point now, but I will still maintain that the show's TV maintainers could have given Hurt an equally compelling character other than a Doctor.  John Hurt is obviously a significant presence in all of his entertainment projects.