In the wake of the wildly successful television revival of Doctor Who in 2005 came this sister publication to the long-running Doctor Who Magazine in 2006, courtesy of Immediate Media.
Doctor Who Adventures is firmly aimed at the show's significant fanbase of children, and its format is similar to that of both DWM's earliest years and its Christmas annual. Rather than behind-the-scenes articles, reviews, and the like, most of its articles — retrospectives of popular characters and monsters, craft projects, games, quizzes, etc. — are ostensibly written in-universe by the show's characters, i.e. the humorous letter from the current incarnation of the Doctor to the reader that opens each issue. There are also episode recaps, posters, short stories (featuring the further adventures of the Paternoster Gang since 2015), and a mail page where readers send in their artwork, encounters with the show's performers, cosplay, etc. The centerpiece of each issue is an original comic strip story starring the Doctor. Newsstand issues include bonus gifts such as stickers, craft kits, etc.
Was No Export for You until 2015, whereupon it was acquired by Panini Comics, DWM's publishers, relaunched at issue number one, and made available to North American readers, albeit without the bonus gifts.
It "paused" publication after the June 2017 issue; for reference, this was shortly before Series 10 wrapped up its run on television. A one-off special was published in January 2019 to mark the arrival of the Thirteenth Doctor.
This magazine includes examples of:
- Alliterative Title: The Paternoster Gang Investigates stories usually have titles like this: "The Confounding Case of the Planetary Prankster", "The Pernicious Plots of the Big Game Hunter", etc. (Said titles also overlap with The X of Y.)
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: "Big in Japan" has the Twelfth Doctor arrive in Tokyo to find a Humongous Mecha and Kaiju slugging it out. "Typical!" They turn out to be the unfortunate side effect of the test run of a video game system made with alien technology — kids hooked up to it are imagining the fight, not realizing that the resultant creatures aren't just virtual. The Doctor hooks himself up to the system, whereupon his mind overrides it. The combatants disappear...and a giant, harmless Twelfth Doctor avatar appears downtown as he sorts things out from afar. ("OK, I know this probably looks a bit weird...but honestly, I Can Explain everything! Though maybe you could put the guns down first?")
- Cliffhanger: Each issue's comic is presented in two parts that are broken up by other articles, with the first half always ending on a tense moment.
- Cool Horse: Jata, an alien horse who is capable of speech and even, when necessary, flight. He encounters the Twelfth Doctor, traveling solo at the time, in the Wild West and goes on to serve as his companion for several issues' worth of stories published over 2016-17.
- The Corruption: The Twelfth Doctor and a Watson-of-the-week are infected by Plant Aliens who have a Hive Mind in "Petals", and begin to mutate into plant creatures as a result.
- Ghost Pirates / Ghost Ship: Initially appears to be the menace in "Ghosts of the Seas", but they turn out to be examples of Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot instead (see below).
- Historical Domain Character: A young King George V in "Ghosts of the Seas"; about every other Paternoster Gang Investigates story features one of these in a supporting or minor role (Oscar Wilde, P.T. Barnum, etc.).
- I Surrender, Suckers: The Twelfth Doctor in "Petals" seems to be giving in to the Hive Mind's demands to be spread across time and space via the TARDIS...but it turns out that The Corruption takes longer on him than it would on most humanoids. In order to fully invoke Loss of Identity and make him its slave, it has to erase all thirteen of his identities. This gives him time to carry himself and the Watson-of-the-week to the TARDIS's darkroom — whereupon he collapses and the plant-based corruption dies for lack of light after a few hours, restoring both of them to normal.
- Kid Sidekick: The comics published during the longer-than-usual gap between Series 9 (which saw Clara depart for good) and Series 10 (which introduced Bill) initially featured the Twelfth Doctor travelling solo. So that there's still someone to serve as The Watson, several stories brought in one-off teenaged characters who travel with him for a day (relatively speaking): Prince George V in "Ghosts of the Seas", a girl searching for her lost brother in "Shock Horror", etc., before Jata the Cool Horse was introduced as a regular.
- Lighter and Softer: Firmly on the sunny side of the Whoniverse. The comic stories deal only in happy endings, and there is a great deal of tongue-in-cheek humor derived from such conceits as the show's villainous and Wild Card characters presenting craft projects and Strax discussing the various monsters the Doctor has faced of late in his own unique way.
- Mad Artist: The villain in "Shock Horror" is an evil author (an alien masquerading as a human) who kidnaps a young boy and strands him on the monster-filled planet Antagonista. The author's new book series is actually a record of the boy's struggle to survive.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: In "Ghosts of the Seas", the crew of the fabled Flying Dutchman turns out to be stranded, alien robots who came to believe they were the human crew of the Dutchman when their vessel crashed into it and they tried to reconstruct it. The resultant hybrid ship is unstuck in time. The Twelfth Doctor comments "Robot pirate ghosts? Why not be vampires as well — tick all the boxes?" upon first realizing what they are.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: The Mad Artist is imprisoned in "a kind of stasis jail cell"note of the Doctor's invention, which is left to drift in space, at the end of "Shock Horror". (The Doctor tends to be tougher on those who Would Hurt a Child.)
- Television Tie-In Magazines: It's formatted as if the show's characters wrote articles In-Universe and those were collected in a magazine. There are also episode recaps, posters, short stories, and a mail page to which to send Fan Art.
- The X of Y: Most of the Paternoster Gang's stories are titled in this manner, as are some of the comics.
