Virgin Missing Adventures

A line of Doctor Who spin-off novels produced by Virgin Publishing between 1994 and 1997. The Missing Adventures novels were set between episodes of the TV series (as opposed to its sister line, the Virgin New Adventures, which picked up where the TV series had left off in 1989).

The Missing Adventures were succeeded by the Past Doctor Adventures, published by BBC Books.

Tropes used in Virgin Missing Adventures include:
  • BBC Quarry: Lampshaded in The Shadow of Weng-Chiang, in which the Doctor finds himself in an actual quarry and remarks that it reminds him of several alien planets he's visited.
  • Canon Foreigner: Taking advantage of the ill-defined gap between Peri's departure and Mel's arrival, the Missing Adventures gave the Doctor an extra companion during that period, Grant Markham.
  • Captain Ersatz: Burning Heart by Dave Stone, a regular writer for Judge Dredd comics, had the Doctor joining forces with a super-strict future cop with a face-concealing helmet on a futuristic motorcycle who goes by the nickname Stoneface. This was supposed to be an official Dredd crossover, but when they couldn't get the rights he just filed the serial numbers off enough to get around copyright laws.
    • Conveniently, the Guild of Adjudicators established in the Virgin New Adventures was already pretty much the Mega-City One Justice Department.
  • Comic Book Fantasy Casting: Similar to his method of "casting" Ian Richardson in pretty much all of his Doctor Who novels, Lance Parkin goes even further in Cold Fusion. The characters Provost-General Tertullian Medford and Chief Scientist Whitfield are meant to be "played" by Terry Scott and June Whitfield, stars of 1980s sitcom Terry and June!
  • Compound Interest Time Travel Gambit: The Crystal Bucephalus reveals that this is where the Doctor gets his money from.
  • Crossover: With the Virgin New Adventures in Cold Fusion. It featured the Fifth Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan, along with the then current New Adventures team of the Seventh Doctor, Roz Forrester and Chris Cwej.
  • Cross Through: Blood Harvest/Goth Opera (see below)
  • Genteel Interbellum Setting: The English Way of Death
  • Historical Domain Character:
  • Landmarking the Hidden Base: Millennial Rites reveals the sinister truth behind the construction of the Canary Wharf Tower.[2]
  • My Significance Sense Is Tingling: In Millennial Rites, the transformation of half of London into a Low Fantasy Cosmic Horror Story setting is detected by a blond haired man in a dirty trenchcoat in a Dublin pub and a thoughtful man levitating in a voluminous blue cloak in a New York brownstone.
  • Origins Episode / Start of Darkness: The Dark Path, for the Master.
  • Path of Inspiration: The Lazarus Intent in The Crystal Bucephalus was set up by a criminal who ripped off Christanity wholesale to create a religion which, rather than teaching the Messiah was resurrected and would return, taught that it was up to believers to invent time travel, and rescue their saviour from the moment of his death. The Doctor notes that while the church may be a fraud set up by a egomaniac (Lazarus isn't even a Dark Messiah, just a conman who thinks big), devout Lazarites tend to be good people.
  • Petting Zoo People: Invasion of the Cat People
  • Required Spinoff Crossover: As a promotional tie-in the first Missing Adventure, Goth Opera, was a sequel to Blood Harvest, the New Adventure released in the same month. (That is, for the Doctor Goth Opera happened first, but for several other characters who appeared in both books Blood Harvest happened first. Ah, time travel.)
  • Significant Anagram: There are several Significant Anagrams in the novel Managra, starting with that one.
  • Stock Unsolved Mysteries: The Lost Colony of Roanoke in Empire of Glass.
  • Tele Frag: Referenced by name in The Dark Path, as a semi-standard military tactic used to cripple starships (e.g., by teleporting someone or something into the location where a ship's pilot is sitting) without actually damaging the ship itself.
  • Two Rights Make a Wrong: In Cold Fusion, the Doctor does this to himself. There are some galaxy shattering grenades that can be disarmed by reversing the polarity of the neutron flow, which he does so he can fake out the villain by pretending that they've won when they send the duds to the target. Then his past self finds the grenades and re-reverses the polarity, thinking he's the one disarming them. Which means the bombs are live when sent to their target.
  1. ↑ And, because this is a theme park and not a museum, the Three Musketeers, in bodies cloned from the cast of the 1973 movie.
  2. ↑ Which is not the same as the sinister truth behind the construction of the Canary Wharf Tower which was revealed in the later TV series episode "Army of Ghosts".
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