Recently I decided to embark upon a return journey through the Eighth Doctor Adventures published by BBC Books during that horrible period of time when there was no Doctor Who on television, and the only way that we could experience The Doctor's adventures was through (to many) the non-canonical novels and audio dramas. I decided to start this journey with Lawrence Miles' Alien Bodies (mostly because I am a not so closet fan of his Faction Paradox concept). The parallels between this novel and the season finale are interesting (and I am pretty sure coincidental).
I should warn that there might be spoilers in this, but I think that spoilers have a statute of limitations...and 16 years is more than enough time for everyone to catch up on the book. If you don't want to see any spoilers of the novel, don't go past the jump.
Let me just start by saying that I don't think that The Name of the Doctor was trying to appropriate anything from Alien Bodies. Stories of heroes are strengthened sometimes by having an end point because I think that it is the struggle in the face of possible mortality that makes one a hero. Knowing that you can die, and you do it anyway, makes a fight worth fighting to me moreso than having a plot immunity. The BBC may not like it, but one day The Doctor will fall (figuratively or otherwise) and the story will come to an end. That nearly happened when first the original British show was cancelled during Sylvester McCoy's run, and then again when the American version of the show never moved past the pilot stage.
We know that when The Doctor dies, it won't be from sickness or old age. It will be because he was in the center of a struggle. One of the story arcs throughout these Eighth Doctor Adventures was a Time War, mostly between the Time Lords and some powerful, unseen Enemy, but ultimately between all of the time-active cultures in the universe. It is during this Time War that the Doctor falls (although the details are a bit hazy on when and where).
The Doctor's body, after his death, comes into the possession of an alien named Quixotl through a convoluted series of events. Quixotl, being a bit of a greedy bastard, decides that the best thing that he can do is put the body up for auction to the highest bidder. The Time Lords want to weaponize the Doctor's body, because the Time War is not going well for them. Other races want the body for different reasons, some petty and others not so much. At the heart, most of the reasons aren't all that different from those of the Time Lords.
The Doctor, being The Doctor, stumbles into this without realizing what the auction is about or any of the people knowing who he is. The plot is driven by the various groups trying to turn things to their own advantage so that they can claim the Relic (as everyone calls the body). The Doctor discovers what the Relic is and everything goes down the tubes quickly.
A lot of time is spent looking at the members of the various groups involved in the auction, who they are and why they are at the auction. This is important because the end goals of the various groups really aren't all that different, so seeing the personalities and histories laid out does actually put slightly different spins on things. This is also why the Doctor Who novels can be interesting, they can often put more of an emphasis on the motivations behind antagonists than the show can. In the show antagonists are there mainly to be a roadblock for The Doctor and little else. For me, besides the introduction of Faction Paradox, the main thing of interest in this book is to see how the Time Lords have been ground down by the Time War. The Time Lords aren't used to losing, and it shows how they are really not adapting well to fighting against something that is, at the very least, their equal (if not perhaps more powerful than they are). They aren't used to having equals in the universe.
In the end, the body ends up back in The Doctor's hands, who sees that it gets a proper burial before he destroys it (so that it cannot end up in the hands of people who would want to use his body as a weapon).
I do recommend tracking down and reading this novel, if you can find a copy at a library or if you can find a reasonably priced copy for sale. It is interesting to see the Eighth Doctor developed, since we never were able to see him live his incarnation on the screen. I am sure that things would have gone much differently if the show had continued, but this is what we have to work with.
This novel is also interesting fodder for someone who wishes to run a time-travel type of role-playing game, in the Doctor Who universe or out. The ideas on how time travel impacts the genetic structure of the time traveler (also talked about in The Name of the Doctor, although at nowhere near as great a level of detail) is an interesting one. I think the idea of the intertwining of the physical and psychological aspects of traveling through time is an interesting one and it is something that does not often get addressed.