The Eight Doctors ( novel ) The Eight Doctors was the first novel in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures series . It was written by Terrance Dicks . It explored the amnesia theme of the " Doctor Who " TV movie by having the Eighth Doctor encounter his predecessors . Publisher ' s summary . Recuperating after the trauma of his recent regeneration , the Eighth Doctor falls foul of a final booby trap set by his arch - enemy , the Master . When he recovers , the disorientated Doctor looks in a mirror and sees the face of a stranger . He knows only that he is called the Doctor - nothing more . But something deep inside tells him to trust the TARDIS , and his hands move over the controls of their own accord . The TARDIS takes him to a strangely familiar junkyard in late - nineties London , where he is flung into a confrontation between local drug - dealers and Samantha Jones , a rebellious teenager from Coal Hill School . But the Doctor soon finds the TARDIS transporting him to various other places in order to recover all his memories - and that involves seeing seven strangely - familiar faces . . . Plot . After an encounter with in 1999 San Francisco , the Eighth Doctor finishes reading " The Time Machine " ( a book written by his old friend H . G . Wells ) . After he checks the Eye of Harmony in his TARDIS , he falls prey to a final trap set by his old enemy , the Master , which erases all of his memory . The only fact he knows for certain is that he is called " the Doctor " - but Doctor who ? His instincts tell him to " trust the TARDIS " , which immediately lands . He has landed at a scrapyard at 76 Totter ' s Lane , London in 1997 , where he encounters a young lady by the name of Sam Jones , who is being accused by local drug dealers , led by Baz Bailey , of " grassing " them over to the police . Having saved Sam from these insidious characters , who were intending to force Sam into taking drugs to get her addicted , the Doctor falls foul of the local police who promptly charge him with possession and selling the cocaine he has confiscated from the thugs . Sam tells her two teachers , who have noticed her lateness , and takes them back to the junkyard to verify the story . The Doctor escapes in the confusion of Bailey ' s desperate attack on the local police station . He runs back into the TARDIS and it dematerialises - taking the cocaine with him to dispose of it safely . This leaves Sam alone , defenceless against the knife - wielding druggies . . . The TARDIS lands in the year 100 , 000 BC , and he meets his first incarnation in the jungle and they psychically link ( giving the Eighth Doctor his memories up to that point in his life ) . The Eighth Doctor stops his other self from killing a caveman who was slowing their party down . The First Doctor explains that he must get away before the " time bubble " his eighth self is in bursts and starts to damage the timeline . The Eighth Doctor then leaves . The TARDIS then lands during the events of the War Games , where he helps his second incarnation , Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot with their important mission to contact the Time Lords . Having regained his second life ' s memories , he leaves happily . He next meets the Third Doctor , who himself has just fought the Master and the Sea Devils and has saved humanity by blowing up a Sea Devil base . He , blaming his eighth self for his exile to Earth and for the Master ' s concurrent escape , threatens him with the Master ' s Tissue Compression Eliminator . But he tosses the weapon to him instead . The Master has again escaped to fight another day , and the Eighth Doctor leaves . Having landed on the planet of the Three Who Rule , the Eighth Doctor gives the Fourth Doctor an emergency blood transfusion after his younger self is attacked and nearly fatally drained by another group of vampires , and leaves with yet more memories ( to the astonishment of companion Romana ) . Meanwhile , back on Gallifrey , Lady President Flavia has noticed the Doctor crossing his timelines and demands that he be carefully watched . A Time Lord called Ryoth demands the Doctor be executed : the resulting paradoxes could be irreversible . Flavia denies this . Ryoth alerts the Celestial Intervention Agency to the situation , and the Agency give him access to the fabled Timescoop technology , perfectly preserved since the Death Zone incident . He uses it to send a Raston Warrior Robot to the Fifth Doctor and his companions , Tegan Jovanka and Vislor Turlough . Luckily , the Eighth Doctor then arrives at the aftermath of the incident in the Death Zone , where he saves his fifth incarnation and his companions from the Raston Warrior Robot and a passing platoon of Sontaran s by tricking the two into fighting each other . The Doctors create a feedback system , so when Ryoth sends a Drashig to kill them , it instead materialises in the same room as Ryoth and eats him and the Timescoop . It is then caught and transmatted to the Death Zone by guards in the Capitol in the hopes that it will take care of the other horrors there . Soon he arrives in the middle of his second trial by the Time Lords , which his sixth self seems to be losing ( especially as the insidious Valeyard has just accused him of a mass genocide attack against the Vervoids ) . After giving him advice and encouragement , as well as helping to begin an investigation into his past self ' s trial on Gallifrey , he leaves , his memories almost completely intact . He finally arrives on the planet Metebelis Three , where the alone and depressed Seventh Doctor is trapped by a giant spider . After rescuing his former self ( by killing the arachnid with the TCE ) , he remembers leaving Sam , and immediately dashes back into the TARDIS to her rescue . Once saved by the Doctor , Sam decides to join him on his travels .