Valentine's Day (unproduced novel)

✅ Valentine's Day was a proposed BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures novel by Lawrence Miles that would have continued the "fractured biodata" plotline that began in Interference. After Justin Richards became editor of the range, Miles tried adapting it to work as a conclusion to the Eighth Doctor's "Earth arc" that began in The Burning, but the rights with the Daleks fell through, and the novel was rejected in place of Escape Velocity.

In 2000 and 2001, Lawrence Miles said that he regarded Valentine's Day as "without question, the strongest plotline I've ever come up with" and "the best thing I've ever done in Doctor Who" that "would've said everything I've ever wanted to say in a Doctor Who novel." He suggested that he could turn it into an ongoing Doctor Who Magazine comic.

Summary
The Doctor realises that due to the damage done to his timeline in Interference, if he were to regenerate again he would become something "so completely horrible that even Faction Paradox weren't ready for the consequences." To avoid the risk of regeneration, he goes into self-imposed exile.

However, with the Doctor gone, the balance of the universe is disturbed and the Daleks arise as the major power the Time Lords have always feared. This prompts the Doctor to come out of his exile to train a replacement under the combined guidance of the Time Lords, Faction Paradox, and anyone else who wanted to be involved. Their training ground is Earth's 21st century, beginning on 14 February 2000 and ending exactly 100 years later.

Behind the scenes

 * Miles planned for Valentine's Day to begin an arc that would end in a life-or-death struggle between the Doctor and his replacement. He would later reuse some elements of this pitch, such as the Doctor's conflict with a potential successor, in The Adventuress of Henrietta Street.
 * Lance Parkin's planned, ultimately-unproduced novel Enemy of the Daleks would also have explored the Daleks' involvement in the War in Heaven.