Virgin New Adventures

So you've got things like The Left-Handed Hummingbird, which is sort of delving into Aztec history in a way that is maybe a bit more detailed than you can do in a 90-minute TV drama.

Um, and yeah, I think that, that's definitely one of those kind of, the settings of the books, I think when you look at the new adventures and the, and the, um, the BBC books, often they were going to different places in the world and exploring maybe like unfamiliar parts of history, which you can't do sort of within a 20, 20-mile radius of, uh, London or, uh, Cardiff.

Yeah.

Bunker Soldiers is another one, isn't it? Bunker Soldiers.

That's true.

Yeah, and I mean, for me it's, is the setting interesting? Does it re- does it justify the story being set there? You, you have to have a story that either fits or contrasts with it.

What, I think what I'm saying as well about New Adventures, what Andrew's saying is absolutely right, it's something that Hartnell era did.

'Cause if you look at those Hartnell stories, the historical ones aren't the actual UK historical stories.

Charter.

For Virgin New Adventures, I think that's like one of the most...

Two of those are Bernice, but yeah.

Yeah, that's one of the most written books in that range.

And I like the fact that they were able to extend beyond the the standard montage cover.

My only issue with them, and I think there are some great New Avengers covers, is some of those likenesses.

I mean, some of them, there's one where McCoy looks like he's doing the poo in a quarry.

It's very unfortunate.

Right.

So that's like 10 years after the Virgin New Adventures started.

So you're kind of...

You've had a decade of Doctor Who's main...

The fact that it wasn't that was a bigger twist than it had it been that.

There's a bit of New Adventures-style kind of tension with Hex questioning the Doctor and his honesty in particular.

I'm not sure that quite works because I'm not sure...

Well, we see that Hex has had a traumatic experience, I guess, so he's questioning everything.

What was he say? Talent borrows genius steel.

New adventures authors get off the back of a lorry.

If I remember right.

oh it's so

You won't put it on the same level in a literary sense, obviously.

But the highest science...

I always, I never quite gelled with kind of Gareth Rocks when he's doing his new adventures.

I don't think any of them particularly good because this one, it's literally just, he's going to land a bunch of characters on a planet and that's it.

The main selling point here is probably its new adventurousness, but really all that means is that Bernice is here, with an honorable mention to her robot pal, Joseph Benny is wittily written, and Lisa Bowman is wonderful as per.

If I'm annoyed that she gets mind controlled for most of it, maybe we can write it off as a New Adventures reference.

Sophie Aldred seems to be pitching Ace a little bit older, unless I'm imagining it.

Sylvester McCoy, on the other hand, has had more confident ground to work on than this.

There's a lot of, "Was that really necessary?" grandstanding and technobabble, with a lot of the selling of the threat sitting on his shoulders.

It's not, for what it's worth, a very New Adventures portrayal, although I'm only half sure what that means.

The Dark Flame isn't dreadful.

It goes through the evil villain motions and has a couple of decent shocks.