The BBC America series celebrating each of the actors to have played the Doctor will be shown on Watch, the channel's schedule has revealed.

The Doctors Revisited will be broadcast at weekends, with the premiere of The First Doctor to be shown on Saturday 12th October at 2:00pm, followed by the accompanying story The Aztecs; Sunday will then see The Second Doctor at the same time, accompanied by The Tomb of The Cybermen. The following weekend then sees The Third Doctor on the Saturday alongside Spearhead From Space, and The Fourth Doctor alongside Pyramids of Mars on Sunday.

The documentaries were orginally broadcast monthly by BBC America, and were shown in Australia and New Zealand during August by BBC Worldwide's UKTV.

Other programming to accompany the launch of Doctor Who Revisited on the 12th October includes the documentaries The Companions at 4:30pm and Doctor Who Explained at 5:30pm, both of which are repeated before The Second Doctor on the Sunday.


Watch's schedules don't currently extend beyond the 20th October, but based on the pattern above the Fifth and Sixth Doctors are expected for 26th/27th October, Seventh and Eighth on 2nd/3rd November, Ninth and Tenth on 9th/10th November, and the Eleventh on the 16th - completing the series one week before the 50th Anniversary itself!

BBC Worldwide have announced details for the forthcoming release of The Tenth Planet on DVD. The two-disc set has been provisionally scheduled for release on 18th November August 2013 for R2, 19th November for R1, and 20th November for R4.


Next month sees two DVDs released: 16th September will see the 2003 animated adventure Scream of the Shalka, featuring the 'forgotten' Ninth Doctor as played by Richard E Grant; then on 30th September the final complete Doctor Who story arrives on the shelves with Fourth Doctor adventure Terror of the Zygons. Internationally, Shalka is released in R1 on 17th September, and Zygons in R1 on 8th October.

The Moonbase:

It has now been confirmed that the Second Doctor adventure The Moonbase will be released in 2014, enabling animation work to be completed. The animation is once again being undertaken by Planet 55, who rendered the missing episodes for both First Doctor adventures The Reign of Terror and The Tenth Planet; Pup Ltd have released two headshot images to illustrate how the principal characters will look:

DVD Artwork:

The DVD Artwork for recent and new releases have been published by Tea Lady Design via their Facebook Page:

AudioGo's ongoing celebration of 50 Years of Doctor Who reaches the Ninth Doctor in September, with he, Rose and Jack entering the Night of the Whisper in the Destiny of the Doctor series. Meanwhile, the Sixth Doctor finds himself on trial for his lives in The Trial of a Time Lord in the latest Target novelisation adaptations, whilst the soundtrack of six adventures with the First Doctor are released in a collected edition.

It's the Radio Times cover that could have been but never happened - publicising the first episode of Doctor Who back in November 1963.

A special two-page feature in the new edition of the listings magazine - out today and covering 3rd to 9th August 2013 - takes a look at how Doctor Who missed out on the prime Radio Times spot at its birth, including a modern-day mock-up of how the cover of that edition may have looked, and thanks to Immediate Media Co, which now publishes the magazine, Doctor Who News is delighted to bring you a clean version of that dummy front cover.

The Cover Story: Radio Times At 90 exhibition, which opens at the Museum of London at 150 London Wall this coming Friday to mark the publication's 90th birthday, has turned the spotlight on a document from the BBC archive that reveals the corporation's doubts about the programme that has subsequently appeared on the front of the magazine more times than any other show.

Back in 1963, Radio Times existed to publicise only the BBC's output, and an internal memo by Donald Wilson, head of the BBC's serials department, to Douglas Williams, then editor of the magazine, complained that the forthcoming launch of the programme on 23rd November 1963 was not being supported by Radio Times with a cover feature. Dated 5th November 1963, it read: However, Wilson's pleas for a reprieve as regards front-page publicity for the show's first episode fell on deaf ears and the cover star for the issue ended up being Kenneth Horne, publicising his popular Light Programme radio comedy Beyond Our Ken, although the new sci-fi series was granted a short mention in a side panel on the front, highlighting an article on page 7 of the magazine. Doctor Who would ultimately have to wait another three months and for the start of its fourth serial - the epic historical adventure Marco Polo - before landing a coveted front cover.

Radio Times wasn't alone in having doubts about the show, though. Many within the BBC were also uncertain what to make of this odd-seeming new drama, as the show's first director Waris Hussein - who also directed Marco Polo - explains in the new edition of the magazine: Meanwhile, current showrunner Steven Moffat comments on whether he would have pleaded for a cover if he were running things back in 1963: The full feature appears in the new edition of Radio Times.

A postcard set of 101 classic Radio Times covers - including six from Doctor Who - will be on sale at the exhibition, which will have a special display devoted to the magazine's long association with the programme. The Doctor Who covers in the set will be the 5th-11th November 1966 one for the start of The Power of the Daleks and the beginning of the Second Doctor's era, the 1st-7th January 1972 one for the Season 9 opener Day of the Daleks, the 26th March-1st April 2005 one heralding the show's return with Rose, the award-winning 30th April-6th May 2005 "Vote Dalek!" one for the episode Dalek, and the 8th-14th July 2006 Daleks and Cybermen ones for the Series 2 finale Doomsday (and World Cup final!).

The exhibition, which is free, opens on Friday 2nd August and runs until Sunday 3rd November.

The escalation of internet speculation over the potential discovery/recovery of Doctor Who episodes currently missing from the BBC archive has led the corporation to issue a statement about it.

Philip Fleming, the Head of Communications, Brands, Content & Digital at BBC Worldwide, said: He was responding to reports of a large number of episodes having been found in Africa.

Radio Times subsequently queried what exactly the BBC meant by saying that it could not confirm any new finds, to which a BBC spokeswoman said: "We can't confirm because it's not true as far as I'm aware." Pressed further about whether or not the BBC was in talks with people about episodes, she said: "I don’t think so", while to the question "So there are no episodes?" she responded: "Not as far as we know."

Following the discoveries of the Galaxy 4 episode Air Lock and The Underwater Menace episode 2 in 2011, hopes have been high in fandom that more missing episodes are out there. However, Doctor Who News will continue its policy of reporting only on official statements.

UPDATE - THURSDAY 20th JUNE: Following the BBC's response, a company that had featured in the rumours issued the following statement on Facebook today:

The DVD release of The Ice Warriors is to include the original in-character trailer, with brand new animation. Producer Chris Chapman explained on Twitter:
As mentioned, the audio quality of the trailer utilised for the project is in very bad quality, and Chris has asked if anybody owns a copy that they believe is of a good standard that could be used on the DVD to please contact him asap.

The original trailer was broadcast after the final episode of The Abominable Snowmen on 4th November 1967, and featured Peter Barkworth as Clent and Peter Sallis as Penley introducing the situation facing Brittanicus Base.

BBFC Updates:

The BBFC have recently classified various aspects of the DVD release, including the existing four episodes and their commentaries, plus special features (which confirms their running times):

00:10:03:06 BLUE PETER (DOCTOR WHO - THE ICE WARRIORS - 
            DVD EXTRAS - BLUE PETER DESIGN-A-MONSTER)
00:03:51:24 THE ICE WARRIORS - PHOTO GALLERY (DVD EXTRA)
00:13:46:08 DOCTOR WHO STORIES - FRAZER HINES (DVD EXTRA)
00:19:17:23 (DOCTOR WHO - THE ICE WARRIORS - DVD EXTRAS - VHS LINKS)
00:24:28:18 COLD FUSION - MAKING THE ICE WARRIORS (DVD EXTRA)

The newly animated version of The Tenth Planet: Episode 4 has also been passed (running time 24m 35s), as has the trailer for Scream of the Shalka.

BBC Worldwide/Warner Home Entertainment have released details on a forthcoming DVD release, The Doctors Revisited (1-4), a four-disc boxed set being released as part of BBC America's 50th Anniversary celebration of Doctor Who.

This set features the first four special documentaries broadcast by the channel for William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker, each accompanied by the story that illustrated them (The Aztecs, The Tomb of the Cybermen, Spearhead from Space and Pyramids of Mars). As a bonus, each story will also feature an introduction by the show's current lead writer and executive producer, Steven Moffat.

Amazon have made the story available for pre-order, with a release date of 11th June 2013.

The Revisited trailers can be viewed online for the First, Second and Third Doctors.

The Moonbase:

As well as the release above, Amazon have also listed The Moonbase for pre-order! The site describes the release thus:
No other information is known about this item or its features at present, though last year special sound composer Brian Hodgson indicated that he had recorded a commentary for the story.

AudioGo have provided details for April's classic novelisation release, The Rescue; it is read by Maureen O'Brien who played Vicki, the Doctor's companion who was introduced in this story on television.

Competitions:

We are pleased to announce that we have three copies of The Rescue to give away in a competition, courtesy of AudioGo. In order to win, please answer the following question:
Send your answers to this email address with the subject "Rescuing Vicki!", along with your name and address. The competition is open worldwide, and the closing date is the 31st March 2013.

---

We are also pleased to be able to offer the next instalment of Destiny of The Doctor, the Fourth Doctor tale Babblesphere featuring Lalla Ward as Romana as a separate competition. In order to win this please answer the following question:
Send your answers to this email address with the subject "Who is this God Person Anyway?", along with your name and address. The competition is again open worldwide, with the closing date of 31st March 2013.

BBC Worldwide have released a new clip from the forthcoming animation for episode for of The Tenth Planet, which features the original change of lead actor from William Hartnell to Patrick Troughton:

Talking about the sequence, lead animator Chris Chapman said:



The DVD is due to be released in late 2013.

BBC Worldwide have announced that The Tenth Planet is to be released on DVD in late 2013 and, like last month's The Reign of Terror, will have its missing episode four animated by Planet 55 Studios.

Range producer Dan Hall said:
The story was originally released on VHS in 2000 and featured a reconstruction of the missing episode using existing telesnaps from the episode; it is expected that this version will also be included on the DVD as an extra.

The missing episode marked the end of the First Doctor's adventures, and introduced the revolutionary concept of the appearance of the Doctor changing - a key element of the series mythos that has enabled the series to now celebrate its fiftieth year! Though the 'regeneration' itself survived, along with a few clips, the story itself has been 'lost' from the BBC archives since the 1970s.


A selection of stills of the new animation in progress can be seen via a gallery on BBC Worldwide's official Doctor Who 50th Anniversay website. There is also a showreel available to watch on the Planet 55 website featuring a number of their concepts - including the First Doctor stalked in the snow, a scene inspired by The Tenth Planet.