Timothy Dalton was rather great in as our spitting narrator. It's the whole herd of Time Lords that bothers me. (What is the collective noun for a group of Time Lords? A pomposity of Time Lords?) Your comparison to the Justice League is very apt.

Reset buttons are such a nasty thing to do to fans! Also, Eight is totally canonical; his appearance in the Doctor montage in The Next Doctor should have silenced all the haters. (We don't know which if any of his adventures can be considered canon, and they certainly seem to be ignoring his little "half-human" aside, but anyone trying to declare him totally uncanonical doesn't have a leg to stand on.)