The cover and contents of the forthcoming two-disc special edition DVD release of The Ark In Space in the UK have been finalised.

All four episodes have been newly remastered, using advances in technology and technique, and are supported by an expanded collection of bonus features.


UPDATE: 11th FEBRUARY: The release date - originally set for 18th February - has been pushed back a week to 25th February.

The BBC have announced that the first of the eight episodes that comprise the second part of Series Seven will premiere on BBC One from Saturday 30th March - back in its 'traditional' Easter weekend slot! Though Doctor Who Magazine had already reported that the series would be on during April, this is the first time the BBC themselves have confirmed the date of a regular series of episodes so far ahead of its intended schedule - normally it is only announced a few weeks beforehand.

The time of broadcast has yet to be confirmed.

Both BBC America and SPACE (Canada) have confirmed that they, too, will launch the second part from the 30th March; no announcements have been made for the series to premiere in the other main countries as yet, though based on recent years they are likely to be close to transmission of the series in the United Kingdom.

The BFI has changed the date of its celebratory screening of The Mind of Evil.

Originally scheduled for Saturday 2nd March at 2.30pm, it will now take place on Sunday 10th March at 2pm. The new date and time supersede the details given in the BFI brochure, which had gone to print by the time things had to be changed. It is unknown as yet why the date change had to be made. Tickets for the event have not gone on sale yet so will show the new date and time, as will the BFI's website.

The story, which has been newly colour-restored, will represent the Third Doctor's era as part of the organisation's Doctor Who At 50 season, and its big-screen showing at the BFI Southbank will be its public première in its colour-restored state ahead of being released on DVD.

Episode one of the six-part story has been "colourised", as the surviving print didn't have the necessary information to make colour recovery possible. However, episodes two to six have been fully colour restored. The screening will take place just weeks after the work has been completed by the Restoration Team.

To mark the programme's 50th anniversary this year, the BFI is showing a story per Doctor as well as digitally-restored prints of the two Dalek films starring Peter Cushing, with question-and-answer panels featuring special guests at each session. In November, it will première the docudrama, commissioned for BBC Two, about the show's genesis. Entitled An Adventure In Space And Time and written by Mark Gatiss, it starts filming at Wimbledon Studios next month.

The first two events at the BFI sold out before the first one had even taken place. The second - a screening of The Tomb of the Cybermen - will be held on Saturday 9th February. The guests for it are yet to be announced.

The titles of most of the remaining stories to be shown during the season are yet to be revealed, although the Eighth Doctor's will, of course, be Paul McGann's sole TV outing as the Doctor (so far).

BFI members receive priority booking as well as discounts on ticket prices plus exemption from booking fees. There is currently a special offer with annual membership at £30 (down from £40). The offer expires at the end of February - click here for more details.

BBC America is to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who by showing one story from each of the first eleven Doctors, as part of a strand titled Doctor Who: The Doctors Revisited.

The channel will screen one story each month, starting with the 1964 story The Aztecs, starring the First Doctor, William Hartnell.

The story features the original TARDIS crew of the Doctor, his granddaughter Susan (played by Carole Ann Ford), and two of her teachers, Barbara Wright (played by Jacqueline Hill) and Ian Chesterton (played by William Russell).

The story sees the TARDIS land in 15th-century Mexico, where the crew get caught up in the local politics of blood sacrifice.

Originally shown over four weeks, the complete story will air on BBC America on Sunday, January 27 at 9pm ET.

UKTV continues its season of classic Doctor Who stories today (20 January) with the broadcast of The Dalek Invasion of Earth at 3:30pm (Australia) and 3:15pm (New Zealand). The six-part adventure is the third of four stories to be screened as part of the channel's celebration of the First Doctor this month.

It follows earlier screenings of An Unearthly Child and The Aztecs and continues with The War Machines next week, on 27 January (AU:4:30pm, NZ:4:15pm).

For New Zealand this is the fourth screening of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, and the second time that it has been broadcast to mark a milestone anniversary. It was first broadcast in November 1988 as part of the Doctor Who 'Silver Jubilee' celebration. New Zealand viewers missed out on seeing the story in the 1960s as it was judged by the NZBC censor to be unsuitable for children. It did however screen on Australian television in 1965-66.

UKTV is showing stories every Sunday throughout the year in the lead-up to Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary in November, focusing on a Doctor a month. February is dedicated to the Second Doctor, featuring The Tomb of the Cybermen (3rd), The Dominators (10th), The Mind Robber (17th), and The Seeds of Death (24th).

All up-and-coming broadcasts from both 20th and 21st Century series of Doctor Who can be found via UKTV's Doctor Who sections for Australia and New Zealand.

The producer for Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary celebratory drama An Adventure in Space and Time has been revealed to be Matt Strevens. Initially a script editor for EastEnders and The Bill, he then became producer for the latter show until 2009, before turning his hand to the shows Raw, Skins and most recently producer of the science fiction comedy drama Misfits.

Speaking on Twitter, he also confirmed that the production, written by Mark Gatiss and based at the Wimbledon Studios in London, is expected to commence from the beginning of February.

Big Finish have revealed the top ten titles in their listener poll for 2012:

1. Love and War 2. Gods and Monsters 3. The Curse of Davros 4. The Emerald Tiger	5. Protect and Survive 5= Destination Nerva 7. Voyage to Venus	8.  The First Sontarans 8=  The Wrath of the Iceni 10. The Butcher of Brisbane

As part of a celebration of the list, Big Finish are also offering five of the top titles at 50% off this weekend. Stories on offer are Love and War, Gods and Monsters, The Last Post (Companion Chronicles), Destination Nerva (Fourth Doctor Adventures), and The First Sontarans.

The latest edition of Doctor Who Adventures is out now:

Matt Smith is to make his directorial debut on an episode of Playhouse Presents... on Sky Arts. The episode is entitled Cargese and is described as "a unique piece of poetic realism which mines the tragic seam of adolescent love and loss.". Talking about his new challenge, Smith said: "Sky Arts offers creative opportunities that many other channels don't. To collaborate with (writer) Simon Stephens in this capacity was a thrilling and rare opportunity and one we both were keen to embrace." The episode airs on Thursday 25th April. [Sky Arts]

Marc Warren has also written and directed for the series with Hey Diddly Dee, which will feature Kylie Minogue in a starring role. Warren said: "Writing and directing for Playhouse Presents... has been one of the most magical experiences of my career. To give myself the best chance I called in every favour to surround myself with a dream cast and an incredible crew. And then by some miracle, Kylie appeared, and the fate of our film was sealed." As for Minogue, she said: "When the script was sent to me, I read it and knew instinctively I wanted to be part of this project. In Hey Diddly Dee, Marc has created a beautiful and quirky story." The episode launches the season on Thursday 14th March.

Other names to feature in Playhouse Presents... this year include Frances Barber, David Harewood, Suranne Jones and Reggie Yates.

As reported last year, a new series starring Bernard Cribbins with Freema Agyeman is to feature on CBeebies. Old Jack's Boat starts its 25-episode daily weekday run on Monday 21st January at 5.40pm, and sees Cribbins as the retired, story-telling fisherman of the title, with Agyeman featuring as café-owning character Shelly Periwinkle. The story to be broadcast on Friday 25th January is written by Russell T Davies and involves the Moon. "Sitting watching Bernard Cribbins reading out some lines that you've written, I can't tell you how good it was, it was a joy," said Davies. [BBC News, 15 Jan 2013]

Agyeman also made her US debut in The Carrie Diaries this week. The Sex And The City prequel series is airing on Mondays on The CW Channel and she plays Larissa Loughlin, a style editor at Interview magazine who also acts as a mentor to the eponymous young Carrie Bradshaw.

David Morrissey isn't averse to a return to Doctor Who, should he be asked. "I would absolutely love to do it again. I had such a ball doing it," he said. "Mark Gatiss says, you know, there's nothing more blissful for him to write than 'Interior TARDIS: Day' or whatever on the top of one of his scripts, it's living the dream. And for me, when I went down and worked on it, I thought 'This is great', it's a really well-run show, people take it very seriously but you have fun on it. And l loved that character, I really loved Jackson Lake, I thought he was a really interesting man, he was in some sort of trauma himself and the Doctor liberates him from that..." [Den of Geek, 17 Jan 2013]

A play starring Billie Piper and Tom Goodman-Hill has won a gong in the Critics' Circle Theatre Awards. The Effect, by Lucy Prebble, was named Best Play. Billed as a clinical romance, it is at the National Theatre until Saturday 23rd February, although all performances are sold out except for day tickets and possible returns. [BBC News, 15 Jan 2013]

Mark Williams - currently starring as the eponymous crime-solving priest Father Brown in the BBC One daytime drama - has spoken of his fondness for GK Chesterton's clerical detective. "He has a huge appetite for the detail of life and for humanity, and he cares very much about people's souls. That's the most interesting thing about him as a sleuth: it's not him solving a conundrum or a crossword, he's dealing with what he sees as people's eternal damnation. And when he works it out, the sky turns black and is full of harpies; he's desperately committed to his morality." [Radio Times, 13 Jan 2013]

Olivia Colman joins Tim Pigott-Smith and Shaun Dingwall in the cast of the ITV drama The Suspicions of Mr Whicher II: The Murder In Angel Lane. She will play Susan Spencer, who employs Whicher as a private inquiry agent to investigate the murder of her niece. Pigott-Smith reprises his role as Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Richard Mayne, while Dingwall will play Inspector George Lock. The two-hour story is being filmed in Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire, and central London over the next four weeks. [ITV Press Centre, 11 Jan 2013]

James Moran talks about the temptations of writing darker stories: "It's when people decide to make something dark for the sake of it, and then work out the story and force it, that never ends well. Children of Earth was just a story idea that gradually turned dark all by itself, so I think it worked. But I've certainly seen it hurt other shows and movies, where they decide to make it grim just to be edgy, without it flowing naturally from the story. And sometimes, blimey, you just want to have a laugh when you sit down for a bit of telly in the evening" [Den of Geek, 10 Jan 2013]

Amy Manson has been short-listed for the title role in the new series of Wonder Woman that goes into production this year for the CW Network. [STV, 16 Jan 2013]

Mark Benton is to star in an advertising campaign for electronic cigarettes that could prove to be a landmark case, as there is currently a ban in the UK on promoting tobacco-related products. [Radio Times, 15 Jan 2013]

After the campaign last year, David Tennant, Sir Richard Branson and Usain Bolt are back to promote Virgin Media in a second series of adverts for the cable broadcaster's TiVo service.

Karen Gillan was a victim of hacking earlier in the week on Twitter when she apparently became a heavy promoter of weight-loss pills! The actress has since regained control of her account.

BBC Books authors Gary Russell, Jacqueline Rayner and Steve Cole are to be guests for Dr Who: Past, Present and Future, an event in Chelmsford on Sunday 24th March that forms part of the Essex Book Festival. [Essex Book Festival]

Eoin Colfer was revealed last week as the author of the first Puffin book for Doctor Who's 50th anniversary. The author said: "When I was asked to write one of the 11 e-shorts for the Doctor's 50th anniversary it was like being whisked away by my own Tardis back to the 1970s when Kevin, my brother Paul and I were three science-fictioneers immersing ourselves in the lore of Doctor Who in the sunny south-east of Ireland. I chose the First Doctor because I always imagined him to be a crank who was jaded by the Universe's cruelty rather than amazed by its wonders. There was no naivety about him whatsoever. He had seen far more in his life than he ever wanted to, and his fight against evil‑doers was dogged and not punctuated by repartee. The First Doctor's companion was his granddaughter Susan and her love for her granddad was perhaps the purest thing in his world, and something he was prepared to protect fiercely." [Guardian, 12 Jan 2013]

Colfer also discusses the e-book in a video released by BBC Worldwide as part of the promotion for A Big Hand For The Doctor.

Big Finish have released details on the latest adventures for the Doctor and his companions in January.