Writers
As 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 the 38th New Adventure. 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 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, Justin Richards, Andy Lane 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. 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; Big Finish's early Bernice Summerfield works did not.
Read more about this topic: Virgin New Adventures
Famous quotes containing the word writers:
“Good writers have two things in common: they would rather be understood than admired, and they do not write for hairsplitting and hypercritical readers.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Great writers are the saints for the godless.”
—Anita Brookner (b. 1938)
“All you can be sure about in a political-minded writer is that if his work should last you will have to skip the politics when you read it. Many of the so-called politically enlisted writers change their politics frequently.... Perhaps it can be respected as a form of the pursuit of happiness.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)