Rebirth - Introduction (By The Genie)
SYNOPSIS:
As her plan advances, Autumn seeks out more information about the Doctor: what other lives has he lived? This takes her to the Brigadier and the Black Archive, which is recovering from a break-in. Nothing major was taken, so they say. Nothing which could cause any damage... Soon it becomes clear that UNIT underestimated the risk, as the Doctor and his companions become part of a twisted plan for the survival of a terrible creature, and Autumn discovers more than she'd bargained for... |
PREVIEW:
“Does trouble follow you wherever you land?” “Apparently so.” The Doctor rushed off. Autumn became confused. “Where are you going?” “To see if I can help,” the Doctor called back as he continued to run towards danger. Autumn simply stood there and looked on. “Every time.” |
From the start, the shadow of The Eighth Doctor Chronicles has hung over The Eighth Doctor Adventures: not just the fact that I was one of the writers of the original series, but that this was actually in part inspired by what never was, including characters and elements from my own original drafts.
So it’s an absolute privilege to have John Hussey, head writer of The Eighth Doctor Chronicles, provide a one-off special for The Eighth Doctor Adventures. Being the classic fan he is, John provides a delight of a script with such obvious inspirations in the classic series. It has the feel of a Letts episode told on the scale of a Hinchcliffe one, and one of the main reasons for its evocative quality is the fact that it explicitly digs up the past in the form of the Brigadier, whose every line is spot-on and so much better than any effort I could have made with the character.
Rebirth is so thematically-conscious. It’s about the tensions between living in the present and looking to the future, whilst trying desperately to recapture the glory days of the past, and could only be an Eighth Doctor story, an era already trapped between the two main eras of the show.
All of this together provides the last flicker of light from The Eighth Doctor Chronicles – a memory not just of the show’s history, but of a story never told. But in this strange form, Chronicles do finally get told, and this feels, bizarrely, like the farewell and credit they deserved since the very beginning, and a reminder of why, ultimately, The Eighth Doctor Adventures is fundamentally a different series.
Teasers
- The Doctor proves his identity the… usual way.
- The Brigadier gets to do something he never had the chance to do back in his day.
- “You’re an idiot. Worse, a military idiot.”
- And they’re not working for the Daleks this time.
- Well, you weren’t expecting to hear those words come out the Doctor’s mouth.
- “No wonder they keep bringing you back.”
- Autumn’s quiet, but very on-the-ball.
- John Cena? No match for the Brigadier.
- “I always love it when you look at me like that.”
- Regeneration is addressed, at length.
- A conversation with the Brigadier changes the way the Doctor sees everything.
- “Has your hatred of me clouded that old friendship?”
- The one thing that distinguishes the Doctor from his enemies…
- Autumn’s demands could be summed up in… ooh, one word.
- Goodbye.