I’ve mused on Eight point Five before (my preferred name for him, rather than the War Doctor – if we’re gonna insert extra Doctors who mess a little with the numbering system, let’s at least give them numbers of their own,) in which I mainly wrote about how I think the limited material available for him feels contradictory and not altogether satisfying. I mostly stand by that. Feelings about inserted Doctors aside, I think there was something here and that John Hurt could have done wonderfully with it, but the story it needed just wasn’t there. Still, for better or worse, he’s part of the fold now, even if the show itself and its supplementals seem to continuously forget that, so he’s worth a write-up on his character instead of just his storytelling inconsistencies (spoilers for “The Day of the Doctor.”)
Before we start, we do have to do a little more complaining about this whole concept. Nine, Ten, and Eleven have never disputed the big fact – the Doctor ended the Time War – and the guilt stemming from that is a major facet of both Nine and Ten’s characters. Given that acceptance of culpability, why would the Doctor who actually did the deed be consigned to a secret regeneration never spoken of and declared unworthy of being called the Doctor? It feels like a retcon, and not just in the plot sense of the entire thing obviously being a retcon. Eight point Five being a secret shame smacks of an attempt to hide or deny what happened in the Time War, and that’s never what the Doctor’s been about. (Personally, if this was the route the story had to go, I would’ve had the stuff with the Moment happen almost immediately post-regeneration, with the brunt of Eight point Five’s life being spent with Ten and Eleven in “The Day of the Doctor.” Then, he would’ve forgotten everything he did with his later selves and, upon regenerating into Nine, would’ve been disoriented and assumed he came directly from Eight, fuzzy on the precise details of what had happened but knowing his aim had been to end the Time War and seeing the result of Gallifrey and the Daleks both being gone. That way, when Eleven sees Eight point Five in his timestream in “The Name of the Doctor,” he wouldn’t actually know who he is because he would’ve forgotten virtually all of it. Doesn’t that work better?)
Oi – sorry. Got off-track there. Onto Eight point Five himself. For all that the Doctor’s later incarnations reject him as being “not the Doctor,” there actually isn’t a significant difference between him and his fellow regenerations (and not just in the cheesy “you were the most Doctor of them all!” way that comes up later in the episode.) He’s more serious, more melancholy, than the Doctor usually acts, but he’s not the hard, ruthless destroyer-of-worlds they paint him as. I mean, he does take the Moment and plan to use it, obviously, so in action, that’s what he’s going for. However, when Eight is regenerating, he says, “Make me a warrior,” because he knows he won’t be able to do it as he is. That’s what the Sisterhood of Karn promises he’ll be, but that’s not quite what he gets. This is still a man who carries the Moment miles away from the TARDIS because he doesn’t want her to see what he has to it. This isn’t a man who doesn’t care; this is a man whose hearts break as he makes hard choices, and that’s what the Doctor has always been. Ending the Time War is the most devastating thing the Doctor has ever done (or it would be if he’d actually done it – “The Day of the Retcon” is a more apt title for this episode all-around,) but it’s far from the only time he’s felt his only option was to end things in fire.
It sometimes startles me how Doctory he is, particularly the way he bickers with Ten and Eleven. Even if that’s how his personality naturally tends, it seems flippant given the situation he’s just been pulled out of, the decision that must still be weighing heavily on his mind. It takes some of the gravitas away, I think, when he ribs on the other Doctors for being so young and goofy – yes, he still comes across as the more serious one, but he has much bigger fish to fry at the moment.
Maybe I’ll be able to make more sense of him when I get around to his audio adventures. Eight felt fully formed to me with only a single televised story, but Eight point Five is still something of an enigma to me (granted, he had two other Doctors to contend with, but the fact remains.) He doesn’t actively go against my tastes like Six sometimes can, but he feels half-formed, not quite cohesive. I might need more to go on before I can form a better opinion of him.
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