Exit Strategy (The War Doctor Begins: Enemy Mine)

Audio  As the title suggests, The War Doctor Begins is Big Finish's prequel to their earlier The War Doctor series with Jonathan Carney in as the younger John Hurt.  The Eighth Doctor appears in the final episode.  I'm a stranger in a strange narrative here, turning up for the finale of a series which has spanned across six boxed sets.  There's just enough exposition to explain the story; War's former companion Case has been captured by the Dalek Strategist and become an experimental hybrid agent and whatever atrocities she commits, the War Doctor's determined to save her.  The Eighth Doctor is key to his plans.  It's impossible to talk about this without spoilers so there'll be spoilers ahead.

Enemy Mine

Eighth appears in the final episode of the three, Exit Strategy.  War's tried everything he can to get through to Case but the Dalek hold on her is too strong.  His former incarnation first appears in a flashback as he considers the person he used to be, helping a medic in the middle of warzone who himself has been injured.  It's from the period when Eighth was travelling with Bliss which is interesting considering in Previously, Next Time (from the Cass box), he'd forgotten who she was and now he's able to recall her existence enough for her to appear silently, bringing help from the TARDIS.  On hearing that I feared I'd bought this whole boxset for little more than a cameo.  No.

Later in the story, Eighth appears again and this is where it becomes complicated and I give away the twist.  When he first appears its with his catchphrase, "I'm the Doctor just not the one ..." but is interrupted when he realises he's stepped into the middle of a horrific situation with Case on edge and the medic he treated earlier also in the Dalek's thrall.  He doesn't know how he got there but immediately steps into action, the triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism to use the Dalek's own strategies against them, saving Case in the process.  He interacts with the War Doctor on occasion but as expected, apparently for continuity sake, doesn't really know who he is.

But it's only in the final moments we discover the gift and curse at the heart of this adventure.  The Eighth Doctor is effectively an AI, injected by the War Doctor into Case's matrices to dislodge the Dalek influence but unlike the simulation in which she survives and becomes the Eighth Doctor's new companion, in the "real world" it's caused her to tumble towards death and War has her on unending life support with the digital version of his earlier self giving her a tour of the universe in her dreams.  In a final poignant exchange, we discover this Eighth is self-aware, knows why he exists and agrees to take care of Case for the time she has left.

Here's the clever bit.  The reason Eighth began with his catchphrase is because he's been snatched from War's memories at the moment when he was still at his purest, in the opening moments of Night of the Doctor before Cass took against him and events conspired to turn him into the warrior.  It's an acknowledgement of how much he's changed or had to change in order to fight in the war and to present him with the goal of ending the war so that he can get back to being the person he once was, something which as we've already seen won't happen until this incarnation is much older or without the help of some future selves.

Placement: The flashback should perhaps go between The Time War boxes, the first and second but because the virtual Eighth Doctor's at the forefront, "Alternative Eighth Doctors" it is.