10 Doctor Who Storylines That Fans Pretend Never Happened

6. The Eighth Doctor's Amnesia

The whole "Doctor as the Other/Time Lords are loomed" business wasn't the only time the books created ongoing story arcs that a section of fandom loathed and summarily dismissed out of hand. When the mission of steering the course of the Eighth Doctor Adventures (EDA) range fell to Justin Richards, he decided to clear the continuity-strewn decks of the book series by jettisoning not only the occasional references to a future war between Gallifrey and an unknown Enemy but everything else the Doctor (and the fans) had ever known, including Gallifrey itself. Starting in his own book, The Burning, published in 2000, Richards followed up the totally unnecessary annihilation of Gallifrey by also wiping the Doctor's memory clean. Even the TARDIS was lost to the Doctor for several books. This new direction was intended to be a bold attempt to take Who back to the basics but only really succeeded in annoying the hell out of the few people who actually read the novels. Fortunately, most of the novels in the EDA range were written by fans-turned-writers and these fan writers generally decided to undercut the bold new direction by ignoring the Doctor's amnesia when needed. On countless occasions, the Doctor conveniently found that he could remember an old foe or some trivial piece of continuity from a 1960s episode despite his supposed memory loss, simply because the writer thought the amnesia idea was flat-out stupid. Once readers realised they too could safely ignore the amnesia for the majority of the books, business resumed as usual. Richards refused to reconsider his decision, regardless of the fact that the writers were churning out exactly the same books they would have written without the stale, antiquated plot device. Incredibly, the amnesia remained in place right up to the last EDA, with only a vague promise made that it would be undone at some indeterminate point after that story ended and before the revived series began. Many readers felt cheated after spending so many years dutifully following the range.