The Phenomenon of "Eight Erasure"
Ask your average Whovian about the Eighth Doctor (or mention that you're a fan of said happy little cinnamon roll), and most likely you'll either be greeted with confused silence or a comment along the lines of "But he was only in one movie and I thought it wasn't canon/I heard it was terrible!" This, dear readers, is what I like to refer to as "Eight Erasure."
But this confusion and lack of knowledge is not just common among New Whovians, nor is it just a fandom problem; it's endemic to Doctor Who itself.
Why Eight Gets Ignored
Because the Eighth Doctor appeared in the mid-'90s, in the wilderness years between "official" Classic Who being cancelled in 1989 and "official" New Who beginning in 2005, not even the showmakers seem to know how to categorize Eight in Doctor Who lore, let alone market him properly to fans. Add to that the terrible stigma wrapped around the TV Movie, which admittedly has its problems but isn't actually that terrible, and you get the perfect storm of ignorance and dismissal that has shrouded the Eighth Doctor fandom for years.
This saddens and disappoints me for many reasons, not the least of which is that so many Whovians do not know about this brilliantly complex chapter in the Doctor's long history. Not to mention that if it hadn't been for the TV Movie and Paul McGann's stellar performance as the Doctor, we wouldn't have even HAD a revival of Doctor Who in 2005. (Think about it: would a TV show that has been cancelled for SIXTEEN YEARS usually get revived? Given how the BBC seemed to think Doctor Who was ratings poison by the time they pulled the plug in 1989, I'm inclined to believe the show would have stayed dead without at least something to resuscitate it along the way.)
Eight Kept the Torch Burning!
Many Whovians want to give Chris Eccleston (AKA the Ninth Doctor) and Russell T. Davies (the director for Doctor Who in 2005) all the credit for "reviving" Doctor Who, and it's true, they both did "fantastic!" (See what I did there? xD) But I firmly believe if it had not been for Paul McGann and the TV Movie, there would have been little to no basis for Davies to even want to continue Doctor Who, nor much incentive for Eccleston to accept the role and develop it further as he did. I believe McGann's clever, poetic take on the Doctor, glimmering like a diamond in the rough of the TV Movie, intrigued the languishing fandom enough that they were still interested in seeing the series come back to television, and the powers that be saw this continued interest and finally acted on it in the early 2000s.
This is one big reason I have made this site: to introduce Whovians both old and new to a Doctor whose adventures exist mostly in audiodramas, books, and comics, a Doctor who gets largely ignored/dismissed by the fandom but shouldn't be. Eight was the Doctor who transformed me into a Whovian after ten years of trying and failing to get into the fandom, which is a pretty huge feat in and of itself! But more than that, McGann's characterization and portrayal of the Eighth Doctor over the last decade and a half has been so powerfully moving that it's a travesty how little-known the Eighth Doctor's adventures still are.