User talk:Master of Spiders/Bottle Universe Timeline

Overview
As a kid I really loved the Target Novelisations. Having missed most of the Hartnell/Troughton era they were the only way to discover what had happened in those 405-line days. For many of us, the Target novels were actually the "real" version of events. I can remember watching stories for the first time and wondering when certain scenes had been edited. Only thing was, they weren't edited. The scenes I remembered so vividly had been in the Target books but not the original broadcast episodes. Then in 1988 Virgin Books bought out W.H. Allen the Parent Company of the Target range. The new novelisations clearly had a different tone. It has often been said that the 1988 "Target" books were the first new Adventures. The Other? In any case once VCR came along, the Target books lost their importance. And the new novelisations often contradicted what the earlier original ones said.

As a youngster I loved the comics in Doctor Who Weekly/Monthy/Magazine. The television series was on for 13 or 14 weeks of a year. The comics were all year round, and often were much better than what JNT was putting on the screen. During the long hiatus of 1985/1986(it seemed much longer than eighteen months) the Sixth Doctor had some of his best adventures in DWM. When Doctor Who went off the air after Survival in 1989 the comics remained. Then in 1991 a new range was launched. Where the comics had once been the ongoing Doctor Who narrative, suddenly they were submissive to the Virgin New Sdventures novels. This was clearly a one-way arrangement. Anything of note happened in the novels. The comics were short pointless stories designed to slot in between the books. One could follow the story just by reading the books, but anyone just reading the comics wouldn't have a clue what was happening the main narrative. Doctor Who Magazine went from being 'Doctor Who Magazine' to a professional fanzine devoted to the Virgin Novels. Then in 1993, DWM gave a handy guide showing how all the comics from Fellow Travellers could neatly fit into Virgin continuity. The first Graphic Novel compiling comics(and a short story) from DWM was published by Virgin(The Mark of Mandragora). Many people were upset.

The Virgin Books were themselves controversial. They contained foul language, graphic sex scenes, alcoholism and all sorts of Gods. But worse for many of us was the flagrant disregard for established continuity. They started by dismissing the continuity of the Target books and the FASA Modules. Next DWM's comic continuity pre-Fellow Travellers was thrown out the window. The TV Comics all apparently took place in The Land Of Fiction. It wasn't long until Virgin were blatantly contradicting the continuity of the original television series(1963-1989). And the Comics followed along like a good little pet. Then after Dimensions in Time(shown on BBC television, watched by 13.8 million people, and part of the BBC's own Official Doctor Who Episode Guide), DIT was dismissed as just a nightmare the Doctor once had. Not came The Discontinuity Guide, laying out Virgin's "canon". Sadly many believed the distorted and twisted "facts". The Discontinuity Guide even told you which stories wre good(eg. The Happiness Patrol) and which were rubbish(eg. nearly the entire Pertwee Era).

And then there were the Virgin Missing Adventures. We found out that time Lords are woven from Looms. Mike Yates and Steven Taylor were both homosexual.The Web of Fear was set in 1966, and The Invasion through to The Hand of Fear set from 1969-1973. The female Prime Minister mentioned in Terror of the Zygons was actually Shirley Williams. Doctor Who isn't its own story, but rather a small insignificant part of Lovecraft's Ctulhu mythos. And the Sixth Doctor was rubbish.

I loved the Sixth Doctor. His first planned story arc was ruined by the 18-month hiatus. His second planned story arc was ruined by Michael Grade firing Colin Baker for personal reasons. Colin and JNT had planned a multi-season arc for the Sixth Doctor, which would show him mellowing, and revealing various secrets about the Doctor. All of that was lost. Virgin jumped in and told us that Six was completely useless, and Seven had actually manifested himself to rid the world of the Worst Doctor Ever, Six was "compost for Seven's blooming". Six's companions were the Worst Companions Ever. And any Missing Adventire with Six ahd to show him to be a useless idiot who got his companions killed. In Revelation of the Daleks the Doctor was 900. In Time and the Rabni he was 953. This gave us about 50 years to develop Six. Instead, the Virgin Books shot that down.

But then came Gary Gillatt. The new(in 1995) Editor of Doctor Who Magazine apologised to readers and in a bold move effectively disowned five years worth of comics and short stories from DWM. Ground Zero saw a young Ace killed. While the short story Rescue led directly into Dimensions in Time.

The TV Movie also effectively stated that the Virgin Books don't count.

Gary Rusell(who had been Editor of DWM from 1992-1995) novelised The TV Movie. He attempted to add various references to the Virgin continuity. These were all removed by BBC Books Editors.

Following on from The TV Movie the DWM comics embraced their proud past, as characters like Maxwell Edison, Kroton, Frobisher and Shayde returned.

The Virgin Novels ahd always only employed authors who followed their ideas of what Doctor Who should be, and even after The TV Movie they continued to push their ideas with novels such as Happy Endings, The Dark Path and Lungbarrow. Their first, and only, Eighth Doctor novel The Dying Days seemed to be a middle finger to The TV Movie.

But in 1997 the Virgin licence expired. The BBC created their own range of novels. Of note, the very first BBC novel The Eight Doctor(by Terrance Dicks) contradicted several Virgin novels, most notably and obviously the VNA Blood Harvest(by Terrance Dicks). and the short story Storm in A Tikka(from the BBC short story collection Short Trips and Side Steps) followed on directly from Dimensions in Time. The BBC also showed a positive Sixth Doctor in their Past Doctor Adventures line.

The Virgin New Adventures continued on with Bernice Summerfield as the central character until 1999.

Both the DWM Comics(with a new lease on life) and the BBC Books effectively disregarded the Virgin continuity, while at the same time acknowledging each other. In the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventure The Scarlet Empress Iris Wildthyme mentions Kroton, a character from the DWM Comics. Then in the DWM short story Bafflement and Devotion the Eighth Doctor runs into iris, referring to the events of The Scarlet Empress.

The solution was set forth by Lawrence Miles in his BBC Novels Interference Book One and Interference Book Two, and in his Virgin Novel Dead Romance, the Virgin continuity takes place inside a Bottle Universe. The Foreword to Dead Romance explicitly states that all the Virgin novels take place in the same continuity and that this is absolutely not the same continuity as any other novel Mils has ever written(ie. the BBC Novels). The fact that the Virgin publishers allowed this to go into print means they agreed with it. Otherwise they could have simply removed it.

While many people moaned and complained, the fact is that discontinuity rears its ugly head whenever anyone attempts to place the Virgin continuity into the Main Continuity. It simply doesn't fit. At all. It would be far easier attempting to insert the Peter Cushing continuity into the Main Continuity.

Following on from the cancellation of the Virgin New Adventures Line, Big Finish Productions(who had already adapted six Bernice Summerfield books for audio) continued making Bernice Sumemrfield novels, short stories and audios. As they still do to this day.

Big Finish have also made adventures featuring the VNA team of Seven, Ace and Benny. These are explicitly said to be Side Steps that do not take place in the Main Continuity.

Big Finish's Main Range features the Doctors played by their television actors. There is no hint of the Seventh Doctor or Ace of the VNA in these audios, And BFA"s Sixth Doctor got to have his 50-year evolution and development, with exiciting enw companions like Evelyn Smythe, Flip Jackson and Charley Pollard. A far cry from the blundering buffoon of the Virgin continuity.

n 2000 the BBC novel The Ancestor Cell saw the destruction of the Bottle Universe. It was later stated that some Virgin Continutiy seeped through into the Main Continuity. The good bits can eb kept, the rest can be discarded.

The new Series has explicitly shown that Time Lords are born, not loomed. And Human Nature(VNA novel) was remade as Human Nature/The Family of Blood(TV story), with no hint that this ever happened before.

In The TV Movie the Doctor was 1009. According to The Book of The War he was 1151 as of The Ancestor Cell. Thus the ongoing Benny Adventures have 142 years to play with.

Thus the Virgin Continuity, with its Looms, Gods, sex, swearing, alcoholism and Prime Minsiter Shirley Williams is a separate and self-contained continuity, separate from other books, from audios, from comics, and even from the television show it claimed to be the official continuation of. However, both Doctor Who Magazine and Big Finish have made stories that take place in the Virgin Continuity. In the Bottle Universe.