The New Adventures were a series of original, full-length novels published by Virgin Books. They continued the adventures of the Seventh Doctor following on from the TV story, Survival. As the books were geared for an older audience, they included mature themes, strong language, violence and sexual elements. One book in the series, Shakedown, was unique, being a novelisation of the Reeltime Pictures production Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans, greatly expanded to include the Doctor.
Following the broadcast of the 1996TV movie, BBC Books took over the license for publishing original Doctor Who fiction, but there was an overlap of more than a year to allow Virgin to publish its contracted novels. As a result, the book line changed its branding, moving the Doctor Who logo off the front cover to the spine beginning with the publication of Bad Therapy.
Virgin launched two spin-off lines following the initial success of the New Adventures line: the Decalogs, a series of five short story collections, and the Missing Adventures, chronicling the adventures of the first six Doctors. Big Finish Productions later obtained the licence for the later New Adventures characters for their own line of audios, novels, and short stories featuring Summerfield and her supporting cast.
From 1999 onward, Big Finish adapted several novels for audio by Big Finish, either directly or altered to omit the Doctor and focus on Summerfield. In 2007, the New Adventures novel Human Nature was adapted as the television episodes Human Nature and The Family of Blood.
Although the continuity of the Virgin books were initially ignored by the BBC Books lines, this was eventually relaxed and references to New and Missing Adventures began to appear. In DWM 482, Steven Moffat described the New Adventures as "a separate (and equally valid) continuity" to the BBC Wales television series.
Ace was written out in Love and War and left the Doctor before reuniting with him in Deceit. During the intervening three years, she changed considerably. Ace left a second time, permanently, in Set Piece. Ace's character development and departure were contradicted by later media.
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.
Several novels of the New Adventures featured old foes from the TV series, including:
The Missing Adventure Cold Fusion featured both the Fifth Doctor and his companions with the Seventh Doctor and Roz and Chris Cwej from the New Adventures.
Production notes
So Vile a Sin was the final book to be published featuring the Doctor, but it was published out of narrative sequence due to delays preventing its completion. The death of a major character in that book was meant to be a surprise, but because of the production delay this was no longer possible, and the novel was adapted accordingly: its prologue began with the funeral for the character, and the event was made an intrinsic part of the narrative, rather than a shock conclusion.
