Virgin New Adventures

The New Adventures published by Virgin were a series of original, full-length Doctor Who novels that continued the adventures of the Seventh Doctor (and, originally, Ace) following on from the TV story, Survival. These books were notable for having greater scope than most televised stories and as the books were geared for an older audience, included more mature themes including language, violence and sexuality. One book in the "NA" series, Shakedown was unique in that it was a novelisation of the non-BBC spin-off production, Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans, but greatly expanded to include the Doctor.

The series concluded with the Eighth Doctor novel The Dying Days. The series ended because, following the broadcast of the 1996 TV movie, BBC Books took over the licence for publishing original Doctor Who fiction, although there was an overlap of more than a year to allow Virgin to publish its contracted novels. One immediate change, however, saw the book line change its branding, relegating the Doctor Who logo to the spine and rebranding the series as "The New Adventures". Ultimately, The Dying Days contained no references to Doctor Who on the cover at all.

After The Dying Days concluded, the books continued with Bernice as the principal character in a new series of novels which were officially dubbed "The New Adventures" (with a new NA logo introduced).

Virgin launched two spin-off lines following the initial success of the NA line: the Decalogs, a series of short story collections, and the Missing Adventures, chronicling the adventures of the first six Doctors. The NA line also published one novelisation, Shakedown.

Although the continuity of the NA line was initially ignored by the BBC Books lines, this restriction was eventually relaxed and references to NA and MA adventures began to appear. As for the series' canonicity with televised Doctor Who, that is a question that falls into a grey area, especially given that one NA novel, Human Nature, was later adapted as the television episodes Human Nature and The Family of Blood.

Continuity

 * The New Adventures introduced a few new companions into the life of the Doctor: Bernice Summerfield (debuting in Love and War), Roz Forrester and Chris Cwej (debuting in Original Sin) and Wolsey the cat (who debuted in Human Nature).
 * Ace was written out in Love and War and left the Doctor for three years (in terms of Ace's timestream) before reuniting with him in Deceit. During that time she changed considerably and turned into what some fans refer to as "Space Bitch Ace". Ace left a second time, permanently, in Set Piece. Ace's character development and departure were contradicted by later media, which also contradicted each other.
 * Apart from the novels, a few of the comics and audios take place specifically in the New Adventures continuity. These feature the Seventh Doctor, Bernice and the older version of Ace.
 * Eternity Weeps portrays the death (some years in the future, from the viewpoint of readers when the book first came out) of the Third Doctor's companion, Liz Shaw.

Adaptations

 * Birthright and Just War were adapted, without the Doctor, the rights to which character they did not have permission to use at the time, as the first Bernice Summerfield productions from Big Finish Productions.
 * An adaptation of Human Nature appeared in Series 3 of Doctor Who.

Major Links to the Virgin Missing Adventures

 * A story strand originated in Blood Harvest continued into the first Missing Adventure Goth Opera in an effort to get readers to buy both books.
 * Shakedown and Lords of the Storm both featured the Sontarans in the same month.
 * The Missing Adventure Cold Fusion featured both the Fifth Doctor as his companions with the Seventh Doctor and Roz and Chris Cwej from the New Adventures.

Production Notes

 * So Vile a Sin was published out of sequence with the other books because of the delays. In story terms, however, it took place between Damaged Goods and Bad Therapy. The death of a major character in that book was meant to be a surprise, but because of the production delay, that was spoiled, and the prologue started off with the funeral for that character. The delayed publication rendered it the final Doctor Who New Adventures novel to be issued.