The latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine features exclusive previews of the new season, due to launch on New Year's Day.

Every issue of the festive Doctor Who Magazine includes:

• A Giant Double-sided Poster
• A Thirteenth Doctor Art Card

Other highlights include:

• An exclusive, in-depth interview with showrunner Chris Chibnall, plus his latest Production Notes.
• The directors of Series 12 speak exclusively to DWM.
• Exclusive previews of the first new-series episodes: Spyfall Parts One and Two.
• Tosin Cole (who plays Ryan Sinclair) answers questions from the TARDIS Tin.
• An Advent in Space and Time: six decades of festive TV and radio highlights.
• DWM revisits the Doctor Who pantomimes of the 1980s.
• The final part of a candid interview with former script editor Andrew Cartmel.
• Broadcaster Ian Collins recalls playing a Haemovore in 1989’s The Curse of Fenric.
• An exclusive preview of the Season 26 Blu-ray box set.
• The Fact of Fiction explores the 2012 Christmas Special The Snowmen.
• DWM’s fiendishly tricky Christmas Quiz.
• Part Four of Mistress of Chaos, a new comic-strip adventure featuring the Thirteenth Doctor and her friends.
• Audio and book reviews, previews, news, prize-winning competitions and much, much more!

On sale from Thursday 12 December 2019 £6.99 (UK)

The actress Wendy Williams has died at the age of 84.

Wendy Williams played Vira in the highly acclaimed 1975 story The Ark In Space. Her performance as the revived human, struggling to adjust to the reality of the Wrin invasion. was a tour de force, developing real chemistry with the newly regenerated Fourth Doctor played by Tom Baker.

Wendy Williams was born in Cheam in Surrey, just south of London. Her first television appearance was in the 1954 play A Party for Christmas.

Over the next forty years, she became a regular on British Television, appearing in many popular series. Her first main role was as Lady Lizzie Eustace in the 1959 series The Eustace Diamonds. she played Frances Graham in Knight Errant Limited and Margaret Hale in North and South. Roles followed in The Further Adventures of the Musketeers, Thirty-Minute Theatre, The Regiment, Crossroads, Z-Cars, Dominic, When the Boat Comes In and Angels.

In 1976 she played Barbara in the Terry Nation series Survivors and later appeared in Poldark as Lady Basset. in 1981 she joined the cast of Tenko as Vicky Armstrong. The following year she played Lady Brandon in the Barry Letts production of Beau Geste.

Wendy Williams was married to Doctor Who director Hugh David until his death in 1987.

BBC Books is expanding the Doctor Who Target range with seven new titles in Summer 2020 – some that fans have probably been expecting, and a few that should be a pleasant surprise.

After the successful hardback publication of Eric Saward’s long-awaited novelisations, Resurrection of the Daleks and Revelation of the Daleks, fans will finally be able to complete their Target collections with paperback editions. These will be accompanied by a Target edition of The Pirate Planet by James Goss, the first time this Douglas Adams story has been published in the Target range, and a reissue of the Gary Russell’s novelisation of The TV Movie.

To complete the set, BBC Books will be publishing 3 new-era novelisations: The Witchfinders by Joy Wilkinson – the first Thirteenth Doctor adventure to be published on the Target list – Dalek by Robert Shearman, and The Crimson Horror by Mark Gatiss.

For Doctor Who fans, the range of novelisations published by Target Books in the 1970s and 1980s hold a special place. There was a novel published for almost every Doctor Who serial between 1963 and 1989, with a very few (five, actually) notable exceptions, and BBC Books has been successfully reissuing a number of these classic paperbacks since 2012. In 2017, BBC Books expanded the range by publishing the first all-new batch of Target novels, filling in one of those classic-era gaps (City of Death), along with new-era novelisations from Russell T Davies, Steven Moffat, Paul Cornell and Jenny T Colgan – all five of them instant classics.

Joy Wilkinson said: Robert Shearman said:Mark Gatiss said:BBC Books will publish all seven Targets on 23rd July 2020, each with newly commissioned cover artwork by Anthony Dry

A new immersive adventure, Doctor Who Time Fracture, in in development by the BBC and will be launched in late 2020 in London.

The show, developed by BBC Studios and Immersive Everywhere, will give fans a chance to experience the Doctor’s adventures.

From the team behind The Great Gatsby, the UK’s longest-running immersive show, Doctor Who Time Fracture will premiere in late 2020 at a London location to be announced.

This immersive adventure promises to put you at the heart of the story, plunged into a journey across space and time. Featuring amazingly realised worlds - the universe as we know it is at stake. Audiences will discover a great challenge lies ahead and that it’s time to be a hero, step up, and save the planet!

Audiences can purchase Gallifreyan Coin tokens prior to general on-sale. Each token purchased equates to one ticket and will provide priority access to book for the date and time of your preferred performance when announced in February 2020.

You will receive a code for each token purchased which can then be redeemed for your ticket(s), as well as an exclusive pin badge given to you at the venue on the date of your chosen performance.

Tokens are available online

The Sisterhood of Karn, the Long-running social group for LGBT Doctor Who fans, has named Katy Manning a true gay Icon of Doctor Who.

On Saturday the group, founded in 1994, held a special celebratory gathering to mark 25 years celebrating Doctor Who.

They were joined by actress Katy Manning, who played companion Jo Grant opposite Jon Pertwee’s Doctor in the 1970s, and were thrilled to present her with an award recognising her status as ‘A TRUE GAY ICON OF DOCTOR WHO’.

Organiser Richard Unwin said: The Sisterhood of Karn hold regular meet-ups on the third Thursday of every month, in the upstairs bar of The Kings Arms pub in Soho, London. Newcomers are always welcome. For more information and event listings, follow them on Facebook and Twitter

The next edition of the Radio Times (7th-13th December) is the latest to feature Doctor Who on the front cover, anticipating the return of the series to television on New Years Day.

The magazine features a preview of the series, with an interview with head writer Chris Chibnall, who discusses how the show has been is life-changing, occupying all his waking hours. Admitting the pressure on his first series was huge, he said the new series will be a step up, with more scale, fun and some new and old monsters:

The Radio Times is out now.

The BBC have now confirmed Doctor Who will return on New Years Day with the first part of the new series, Spyfall.


Update 3rd Dec: time of broadcast is confirmed as 6:55pm on BBC One. A new, longer trailer for the premiere has now been released:

This Christmas, Candy Jar Books are offering readers in the UK a chance to win a surprise bundle of books from their collection, to arrive specially wrapped for the festive day itself!

To be in with a chance to win the bundle, simply answer this question:


Please send your answer along with your name, address and where you heard about the competition (news site, news app, other website, etc.) to comp-candyjar@doctorwhonews.net with the subject "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Christmas". Open to readers within the United Kingdom only. Only one entry per household will be accepted. Closing date: Monday 16 December 2019.