Regular readers will know that this blog concentrates on televised Doctor Who, so for me Paul McGann was the Doctor for one night only back in May 1996. The Eighth Doctor has gone on to enjoy a significant afterlife lasting many years - but that's all on audio or in novels and comic strips.
McGann had the opportunity to appear on screen once more when the 50th Anniversary rolled round in November 2013 - but The Night of the Doctor would prove to be a short minisode, and be released only on-line. He would have to wait another nine years to appear on BBC One, when he joined other ex-Doctors for the channel's Doctor Who centenary special.
The main 50th Anniversary was going to be featuring the War Doctor, and Steven Moffat thought it might be an idea to show just where he came from. An unknown incarnation, who had to be connected to the Time War, there was only one place he could have originated, and that was the wilderness years between 1996 and 2005.
That meant coming after McGann and before Eccleston.
The minisode opens with a spaceship in trouble, and the TARDIS materialises on board in time for the Doctor to rescue its lone pilot Cass. Trouble is, she sees the Time Lords as just as bad as the Daleks and declines his help. The Doctor has deliberately kept himself out of the conflict up to this point - helping but never fighting.
He decides to stay with Cass as the ship crashes. This just happens to be on the planet Karn.
We were introduced to this bleak world in The Brain of Morbius, where we learned that it was home to the mystic Sisterhood. They appear here, under a new leader named Ohila. The Sisterhood had passed into the leadership of the similarly named Ohica in the 13th Season story, but then the Doctor had stressed the importance of change. Ohica presumably refused to outstay her welcome as Maren had.
The group extricate the Doctor and Cass from the wreckage. She can't be helped, and he's fatally injured.
Having the action set on Karn and featuring the Sisterhood made sense for Moffat, as not only was it a nod to one of the most popular seasons ever, but it had been stated in that older story that the Sisterhood had ancient links with the Time Lords. Their Elixir of Life was sometimes used to help save them should there be problems with a regeneration and that is exactly what this minisode is designed to be - a regeneration story. It wasn't so much about closing the door on the Eighth Doctor, as showing us the birth of the War Doctor.
Cass's reaction to him provides the impetus to make him decide that he can no longer stay on the sidelines of the conflict. The Elixir in the past simply healed or prolonged life, but now it has been refines so that it can give different results. The Doctor can basically chose the nature of his next persona, and he chooses to be a soldier. McGann regenerates, but before he goes he recalls all of his companions and, of course, these are all from the spin-off material except for Grace. (A problem with spin-offs shoehorning their own companions into gaps is that you then wonder why the Doctors entirely fail to recall them in various televised flashbacks).
We then get a glimpse of the War Doctor, looking much younger than when seen at the conclusion of The Name of the Doctor. That's because they used a bit of footage of John Hurt from the BBC's 1979 adaptation of Crime and Punishment.
An in-joke is when McGann asks if the regeneration is going to hurt...
Next time: The (New) Three Doctors...
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