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 The Virgin New Adventures (NAs) were a series of novels from Virgin Publishing based on the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who. They continued the story of the Doctor from the point at which the television programme was cancelled (in 1989). From 1991 to 1997 all books (except the final one) involved the Seventh Doctor, played on television by Sylvester McCoy; in further books published between 1997 and 1999, the New Adventures series focused on the character Bernice Summerfield and the Doctor did not appear. Like all spin-off media, their canonicity in relation to the television series is open to interpretation.
[edit] Publication history[edit] Doctor WhoVirgin had purchased the successful children's imprint Target Books in 1989, with Virgin's new fiction editor Peter Darvill-Evans taking over the range. Target's major output was novelisations of televised Doctor Who stories, and Darvill-Evans realised that there were few stories left to be novelised. He approached the BBC for permission to commission original stories written directly for print, but such a licence was initially refused. However, after the television series was cancelled at the end of 1989, Virgin were granted the licence to produce full-length original novels continuing the story from the point at which the series had concluded. The range, titled the New Adventures, was launched in 1991 with a series of four linked novels, beginning with Timewyrm: Genesys by John Peel, who had previously contributed to Target's successful range of novelisations. Of the other three initial authors, Terrance Dicks had been both a regular contributor to the television series itself and the major contributor to Target's book range; Nigel Robinson had been Darvill-Evans' predecessor as editor of the Target books; and Paul Cornell, although new to professional publishing, had been an active contributor to the Doctor Who fanzine scene and was beginning a career as a television scriptwriter. The initial four Timewyrm books were successful, and the range quickly became a regular bi-monthly series. Eventually, the novels became popular enough that not only did Virgin switch to a monthly publication schedule, it also put out another range, the Missing Adventures, which told stories of previous incarnations of the Doctor. However, following the Doctor Who television movie in 1996 the BBC chose not to renew Virgin's licence to produce Doctor Who novels, choosing instead to publish their own line of original Doctor Who fiction. After 61 New Adventures and 33 Missing Adventures, Doctor Who fiction came to an end at Virgin with The Dying Days, their only Eighth Doctor novel. However the final Doctor Who book published by Virgin was actually So Vile a Sin featuring the Seventh Doctor; it had been scheduled for release several months before The Dying Days but was delayed due to difficulties with the manuscript. [edit] Bernice SummerfieldThe New Adventures series continued with Bernice Summerfield, one of the new companions introduced for the New Adventures as the lead character, starting with her taking up a job as professor of archaeology at the St Oscar's University on the planet of Dellah. The new line was written by many of the writers that had written for the New Adventures and continued to feature elements of both the Doctor Who New Adventures and, to a lesser extent, television continuity. Indeed, its concluding arc — the so-called "Gods arc", which sees an alien race with god-like powers devastating Dellah — ties in with concurrent events in the BBC Eighth Doctor Who line. The links between the NA Dead Romance (a standalone volume in which Bernice Summerfield does not actually appear) and the two-volume Eighth Doctor novel Interference (all written by Lawrence Miles) are particularly close. [edit] StorytellingThe New Adventures were self-described as being "stories too broad and deep for the small screen," and to take Doctor Who into "previously unexplored realms of time and space". What this meant, in practice, was a shift towards more adult-oriented science fiction writing, and using the literary form to be able to play around with the standard conventions of the series. From the beginning, the novels were controversial for their use of sex, violence and bad language, although this was never as frequent or as extreme as most people seemed to believe, and over time, fans began to accept the new direction as the series found its audience. Among the developments were a "hardening" of Ace, with a story arc that had her leave the Doctor for three years (from her perspective) and returning as an older and more cynical character, more morally ambiguous endings and the introduction of new companions, such as Bernice and the Adjudicators Chris Cwej and Roz Forrester. Bernice, in particular, proved so popular that in addition to appearing in her own novels, she has gone on to star in her own audio plays as well. The novels were guided by the so-called Cartmel Masterplan, which was the backstory that Doctor Who story editor Andrew Cartmel had constructed for the television series when it was cancelled and never brought to fruition. Hints were therefore dropped about the "true" nature of the Seventh Doctor, which culminated in the penultimate novel in the Virgin series, Lungbarrow, written by Marc Platt. One novel in the series, Shakedown, was in fact a novelisation of an independent video production that had featured the Sontarans. Unlicensed productions of this sort are tolerated by the BBC as long as the Doctor and other BBC-copyrighted elements are not featured. The novelisation of Shakedown, however, was expanded to include the Doctor. (Similarly, the NA's sister series, the Missing Adventures, included a novelisation of the spin-off production, Downtime.) [edit] WritersAs well as introducing new characters, the range also provided a showcase for new writing talent. Notable was Paul Cornell who wrote five of the novels, including the single most popular one (according to the Doctor Who Magazine poll), Human Nature. Cornell went on to write for the 2005 revival of the television series ("Father's Day" and "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood", the latter a two-part adaptation of said novel). Others who later worked on the revived television series include Mark Gatiss, Gareth Roberts, Matt Jones, Simon Winstone and Gary Russell. Even Russell T. Davies, the man in charge of the new series, contributed to the range with his novel Damaged Goods. Gatiss and Roberts both did their first ever professional fiction writing for the line, as did others who later found success elsewhere, including Daniel Blythe and Lance Parkin. Several writers from the classic television series also got their chance to contribute — one of the better received novels was The Also People by Ben Aaronovitch. Terrance Dicks, the author of many Target episode novelizations and a writer and script editor for the TV series going back to the 1960s, contributed a number of novels (defying critics who had accused him of being a "cookie-cutter" novelist for his brief and generally colourless novelizations). Barry Letts, former producer of the series during the Jon Pertwee era, contributed to the Missing Adventures line. Despite moving to the BBC line of novels, the writers (many who cut their teeth with the Virgin series) attempted to maintain continuity with the Virgin range and many elements from this series appeared in later Doctor Who stories. With Big Finish Productions acquiring the licence to produce both Doctor Who and Bernice Summerfield audio plays and short fiction, they have been able to set audio plays within the universe of the Virgin novel line, as is the case with The Shadow of the Scourge and The Dark Flame, for example. Although the continuity of the audio plays and the BBC's Eighth Doctor Adventures diverge sharply from each other, they both broadly appear to maintain continuity with the Virgin series, although Big Finish's early Bernice Summerfield works did not. [edit] E-booksBy 2002, copyright in some of the books had reverted to the individual authors, and BBCi decided to take advantage of this by negotiating to make some of the most popular and sought-after of the now long out-of-print series available to read for free online as part of their Doctor Who website. These e-book versions have in some cases been slightly re-written by the original writers, and include such bonuses as illustrations and DVD commentary-style chapter-by-chapter notes by the authors. [edit] AdaptationsPaul Cornell's 1995 novel, Human Nature, as noted above, formed the basis of a two-part episode of the television series broadcast in 2007. This was the first time a full-length original Doctor Who had been adapted for television, although Cornell (who also wrote the teleplay) had to make substantial changes to transform his Seventh Doctor novel into a story featuring the Tenth Doctor. Big Finish Productions produced audio drama adaptations of the novels Birthright and Just War, altering them to remove the Doctor and focus on the character of Benny Summerfield. [edit] List of Virgin New Adventures[edit] Featuring the Doctor
¹Due to Aaronovitch's difficulty in completing the novel solo to deadline, it was delayed and co-written by Orman, eventually being published after The Dying Days. It is listed here in the position it occupies in the series' ongoing narrative continuity. [edit] Featuring Bernice SummerfieldThe adventures of Bernice Summerfield continued in a series of novels and short story anthologies published by Big Finish Productions from 2000. [edit] Plot overview[edit] Recurring elementsThe New Adventures significantly expanded the Doctor Who universe. The character of the Doctor was recast as Time's Champion, which was sometimes interpreted figuratively and sometimes literally — Time, Death and Pain are occasionally seen as personified beings (possibly Eternals), who were worshipped as gods in Ancient Gallifrey. The Doctor was also shown to have a link to the Other, a figure from the time of Rassilon and Omega; the nature of this link was most explicitly shown in Lungbarrow. Many new parts of the TARDIS were seen in the New Adventures, including a tertiary console room made of stone. The Doctor was also seen to have a house in Kent which he used as a base of operations at different points in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; this "House on Allen Road" first appeared in Cat's Cradle: Warhead. Also appearing in Warhead and its sequels, Warlock and Warchild (all by Andrew Cartmel) are the ecological activist Justine and psychic Vincent Wheaton. Alien races created for the New Adventures include the Chelonians (who first appear in The Highest Science) and the Pakhars (who first appear in Legacy). Another group of adversaries who appear in several New and Missing Adventures are the Great Old Ones, derived from H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. In the New Adventures, these beings are survivors of the universe before this one, who therefore exist in accordance with a different set of physical laws. A being calling itself Azathoth in All-Consuming Fire turns out to be an impostor, but the novel identifies several other Doctor Who monsters with Lovecraftian entities: the Great Intelligence is Yog-Sothoth, the Animus is Lloigor, Fenric is Hastur the Unspeakable, and an Old One encountered in White Darkness is Cthulhu. The early New Adventures were explicitly linked in story arcs, indicated in the books' titles. Later novels in the series were often, but not always, linked in looser story arcs, which were noted in publicity materials but not in the titles. [edit] Timewyrm
[edit] Cat's Cradle
[edit] Future History Cycle
The Doctor continues to stage manage events like a chess master playing on multiple boards. At one point he even deposits Benny and Ace in 1909 and the distant future, respectively, to defeat an alien invasion on their own (Birthright), while he uses the TARDIS's "Jade Pagoda" and defeats a Cyberman plot in 2006 (Iceberg). [edit] Alternate History Cycle
After a visit to Peladon (Legacy), Benny briefly leaves the Doctor and Ace to join an Ice Warrior archaeological team on Phaester Osiris. She rejoins them in time for the trio to become involved in a complex scheme by Irving Braxiatel to defeat a civilization of theatre-obsessed conquerors who had been threatening the Braxiatel Collection. (Theatre of War). In 1887, the trio join forces with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson and encounter the Giant Rat of Sumatra before eventually traveling to Bombay and the planet Ry'leh to foil an alien impersonating the Great Old One Azathoth (All-Consuming Fire). After spending several months running a speakeasy in 1920s Chicago, the Doctor returns to E-Space to face a renewed Vampire threat, and is reunited with Romana, who returns with him to Gallifrey (Blood Harvest). At an Air Force base in 1957 New Mexico, the Doctor, Benny and Ace encounter the Master, who has used nanotechnology provided by a race known as the Tzun to restore and regenerate his body (First Frontier). Later, the three travelers meet one of the oldest beings in the universe, a "grey man" who tries to weaken the good-and-evil dualism which his people had instilled in the universe's structure (Falls the Shadow). On Earth in the twenty-first century, the Doctor, Benny and Ace investigate a new drug called "warlock" which has the power to enable the user to transfer his or her mind to another place or body; they discover that drug is actually an alien gestalt intelligence, and help it to leave the Earth (Warlock). A series of rifts in time and space (created by a crude time machine used by Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart) sends Ace to Ancient Egypt, Benny to France in 1798, and the Doctor to the Paris Commune of 1871; the three are eventually reunited, but Ace decides to stay behind in Paris, keeping one of Kadiatu's time hoppers. She takes the title of Time's Vigilante (Set Piece). After Ace's departure, Benny has a series of painful losses. First, her friend Darius Cheynor (a 24th century officer first encountered in The Dimension Riders) survives an encounter with powerful Sensopaths from the end of time, only to be killed in a conflict with the cybernetic Phractons (Infinite Requiem). Shortly thereafter, Bernice falls in love with the 13th century Knight Templar Guy de Carnac, who apparently dies defending a Cathar village in the Albigensian Crusade (Sanctuary). Unable to understand Benny's grief on a human level, the Doctor purchases a device which alters his biodata, transforming him into a human named Dr. John Smith. Smith lives as a history teacher at an English public school, and falls in love with a fellow teacher named Joan. However, when alien Aubertides, hoping to acquire Time Lord abilities, attack the school, Smith sacrifices himself and becomes the Doctor once more; as the Time Lord, he is unable to love Joan in the way the human John Smith did. Joan gives the Doctor her cat Wolsey (Human Nature). Investigating a mysterious warning about Earth in the 30th century, the Doctor and Benny meet Adjudicators Roz Forrester and Chris Cwej. The four discover extensive corruption in the Earth Empire, and a trail which leads them to the Doctor's old enemy Tobias Vaughn, who had survived his betrayal by the Cybermen and worked for centuries behind the scenes to ensure that Earth was victorious over alien foes. Vaughn is a driving force behind the Earth Empire, but is defeated by the Doctor. Roz and Chris cannot return to the corrupt Adjudicator force, and join the Doctor and Benny in the TARDIS (Original Sin). The four travellers have several adventures in quick succession, from a journey to the strange pocket dimension known as the System (Sky Pirates!), to an encounter with Chelonians on a distant planet (Zamper). They also stop the abduction of children from 1919 Earth to fight in an unending war on the planet Q'ell (Toy Soldiers). The Land of Fiction and its new Writer, Jason, trouble the Doctor again, this time creating a fictional "Dr. Who" whose two-dimensional morality contrasts with the complex manipulations of Time's Champion. In this adventure, the Doctor is temporarily reunited with both Ace and his former companion Mel, who is dismayed at the changes the Doctor has undergone since she knew him (Head Games). The Land of Fiction's energy had escaped into the real world as a side-effect of Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart's time travel, so the Doctor finds Kadiatu and takes her to the Dyson Sphere inhabited by the culture known as the People, who are so highly advanced that they have a non-aggression treaty with the Time Lords. While the Doctor, Roz and Chris investigate a possible murder, Benny helps Kadiatu overcome the programming which had turned her into a killing machine (The Also People). Following this, the crews of both the TARDIS and the solar yacht Tiger Moth become involved in the ongoing Sontaran/Rutan conflict (Shakedown). In 1941, Benny spends several months incognito in Nazi-occupied Guernsey, investigating a German weapon which has the potential to change the course of the Second World War — a weapon inspired by a passing remark made by the Doctor to a German scientist in 1936 (Just War). [edit] Psi-Powers Cycle
While recovering from Roz's death in 1958 London, the Doctor and Chris encounter Moriah, an alien king who has been creating artificial life-forms in an effort to bring back his dead wife, and the Doctor's former companion Peri, who has been trapped in a loveless marriage to King Yrcanos since she and the Doctor parted (Bad Therapy). In 2003, when Benny and Jason join two archaeological teams searching for Noah's Ark, a ruthless Iranian soldier accidentally causes a deadly biological agent to be released in the Earth's atmosphere, killing hundreds of millions, including Liz Shaw. Benny and Jason agree to divorce (Eternity Weeps). In sixteenth-century Japan, the Doctor meets Victorian time-traveller Penelope Gate (whom later BBC novels suggest may be his mother) and comes to terms with his recent losses and impending regeneration (of which he is aware). Chris also begins to heal and discover his own form of heroism (The Room With No Doors). Finally, the Doctor returns to his family home on Gallifrey, where long-buried secrets are revealed. Chris decides to remain on Gallifrey and Romana, now Lady President, sends the Doctor to Skaro to retrieve the Master's remains (Lungbarrow). This leads into the events of the television movie. The Eighth Doctor meets Benny at the house on Allen Road in 1997, and the two of them (alongside the Brigadier) defeat an Ice Warrior invasion. At the story's end, the Doctor takes Benny to her new job in the 26th century, a position at St. Oscar's University on the planet Dellah (The Dying Days). [edit] See also[edit] External links
[edit] Virgin New Adventures e-books |
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