Talk:Virgin Bernice Summerfield New Adventures

Canonicity?

Do the 23 books from Oh No It Isn't! (novel) to Twilight of the Gods (BNA novel) count under Tardis Data Core rules? Under Valid source it states: Those things which don't have the permission of all relevant copyright holders...are excluded., A story that isn't commercially licensed by all of the relevant copyright holders doesn't count., As a general rule, if something is an approximation of something else in the DWU, then we don't fool with it. The classic example is the independently-published Faction Paradox stories that are not a part of the BBC Books range. Because writer Lawrence Miles does not have a license to DWU elements other than the Faction Paradox organisation itself, he must resort to using "code names" for Gallifrey, the Doctor, TARDISes, the Master and any number of the basic building blocks of the universe. So, essentially, even though the Faction Paradox stories are based around the fully licensed Faction Paradox(who appear in several official DWU stories) AND the Faction Paradox use other fully licensed, non Faction Paradox, characters from the DWU, the stories don't count because they use BBC characters they don't have the rights to(using code names for them). On the Faction Paradox Wiki it states on the Main Page: The trickiest thing to understand about the series, is that even though it's a spin off of Doctor Who it is not a part of the DWU. Creator Lawrence Miles had no access to concepts like "the Doctor", "the Master", "the TARDIS", "the Time Lords" — any of the things that make Doctor Who what it is. So you won't find direct mentions of these people and concepts.

Sound familiar? A series of books based around an officially licensed DWU character, that uses other official, licensed DWU characters? But that has to resort to using code words for things like Time Lords, TARDISes etc. "the building blocks of the DWU"?– The preceding unsigned comment was added by 41.132.229.5 (talk).

So you don't think the Bernice Summerfield New Adventures should be valid sources on the wiki? Shambala108 ☎ 18:46, October 29, 2013 (UTC)

It's not what I think. Accoring to this wiki's own rules, they shouldn't be. Also, from the Valid Sources page(and it's got its own box): A rose by any other name is not as sweet. If the story consistently uses alternate names for DWU characters, places and situations, it's probably not allowed. So, using this wiki's own rules, the Bernice Summerfield New Adventures are not a Valid Source.– The preceding unsigned comment was added by 41.132.229.5 (talk).

Merger with Virgin New Adventures

Is there any real reason for why this page exists separately from Virgin New Adventures? These novels were the seamless continuation of the New Adventures series, and they've never been officially branded as "Bernice Summerfield New Adventures" or anything close. Before I changed it to be more accurate a few months ago, the main VNA page justified this distinction by saying, "The series concluded with the Eighth Doctor novel The Dying Days" and "the books continued with Bernice as the principal character in a new series of novels which were officially dubbed 'The New Adventures'". Both of these statements are completely untrue. Not only had the novels been officially dubbed "The New Adventures" since Happy Endings – if we were basing the change off of branding, we'd really have three pages, for Virgin New Doctor Who Adventures, Virgin Doctor Who New Adventures, and Virgin New Adventures – almost nothing changed behind-the-scenes after The Dying Days besides the loss of the Doctor Who license: Peter Darvill-Evans stayed as editor, the cast of writers was virtually unchanged, and the preponderance of personnel treated it as one continuous series (eg Lawrence Miles saying in the forward of Dead Romance that "when Dead Romance was first published in 1999, the New Adventures range had been going for eight years").

Undoubtedly, the series changed in several ways in 1997, and I'm not going to even try to minimize that. In Oh No It Isn't! a new "NA" logo appeared on the front cover, under the "The New Adventure" banner that had been there since Happy Endings. The focus of the series also shifted from stories about the Doctor and his companions to stories about said companions.

However, in 2010, Doctor Who went through a significantly more dramatic shift. Not only did it change its main character and get a new logo, just like the New Adventures did, Doctor Who got an entirely new production crew and did an almost clean break from the previous series: with the exception of River Song, no character from series 1-4 appeared in a major role in post-2009 Who until the Saxon Master in the finale of Moffat's last series. In stark contrast, the post-Dying Days New Adventures retained editor Peter Darvill-Evans, and they featured not only Bernice Summerfield but tons of other characters from the pre-1997 VNAs in major recurring roles: Jason Kane, Chris Cwej, Irving Braxiatel, Clarence, and Roz Forrester, just to start!

We don't split NuWho into BBC Doctor Who and BBC Eleventh Doctor Doctor Who – hell, we don't even split NuWho from Classic! – so why on Earth should we split New Adventures into Virgin New Adventures and Virgin Bernice Summerfield New Adventures? I've thrown together an example of what a merged page would look like at over at User:NateBumber/Sandbox4, and I think it'd be a definite improvement for both pages. Comments, critiques, etc? – N8 ☎ 17:28, September 4, 2017 (UTC)

Funny story: Someone on Discord just expressed frustration that Virgin Bernice Summerfield New Adventures doesn't include all New Adventures novels that Bernice appeared in, eg Love and War. That is what the name would imply, isn't it?

On a side note, happy almost-one-year anniversary of this proposal! – N8 ☎ 14:29, August 10, 2018 (UTC)

Well, happy anniversary indeed. Now that I learned about it, I can actually think on it. Meanwhile, I noticed that the proposed mock-up puts The Dying Days as the first novel of the Benny era. I think Paul Cornell, the creator of Benny, thought of Oh No It Isn't! as being her solo beginning. Amorkuz ☎ 18:48, September 16, 2018 (UTC)

Cheers to that! And yes, that's how I had it, since while The Dying Days is indeed the last VNA with the Doctor Who license, it's also the first to have Benny as the explicit main character. But you're right, and I'll change the mock-up to reflect that. (I should also add User:OncomingStorm12th's delightful edits.) – N8 ☎ 00:06, September 17, 2018 (UTC)

Here is another list following the suggestion: [1] Amorkuz ☎ 19:19, September 16, 2018 (UTC)

Worth noting that Wikipedia also does the same at its page for the VNAs. – N8 ☎ 00:06, September 17, 2018 (UTC)

There are also multiple quotes in the Bernice Summerfield: The Inside Story that points towards the range being one continuous whole instead of 2 separate ranges - User:Liria10 00:29, September 17, 2018 (UTC)

I don't know much about the range, but based on the arguments presented I am compelled to agree with the merger. --Borisashton ☎ 18:47, September 18, 2018 (UTC)

Ok, so I ordered a copy of the first BS book. Let's see what it has inside. Amorkuz ☎ 08:43, September 19, 2018 (UTC)