The BBC has released details of Doctor Who Episodes Three and Four

The series continues with Episode Two, The Ghost Monument, later today

BBC Studios and Mattel have partnered to release the first ever Doctor Who Limited Edition Barbie doll, available in Australia

Pre-sale is available via zingpopculture.com.au and ebgames.com.au and in Zing Pop Culture stores in December.

Nicole Chungue, Licensing Manager for BBC Studios ANZ, says Melissa Davey, Senior Buyer & Licensing for EB Games & Zing Pop Culture, said Tthe Doctor Who Barbie wears a rainbow-striped t-shirt, paired with cropped trousers and a trench coat. Additional, true-to-character details include Doctor Who signature braces and lace-up boots.

Pencil Tip Publishing is taking submissions for their new review book, What the Fans Think: Torchwood.

What the Fans Think is a new series of books where the fans will review and assess their favourite television series. Each volume will concentrate on a specific show and will feature original reviews and analyses of every episode of that particular series. The fans will have their say on what they think are the best, worst, and merely average, episodes of a series.

The first book in the series, What the Fans Think: Torchwood, will concentrate on the 2006-11 Doctor Who spin-off series Torchwood.

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of each book will be donated to the Vancouver branch of The British Columbia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Submission guidelines can be found on the Pencil Tip Publishing blog

Alex Kingston is set to reprise her role as the Doctor’s wife, River Song, in two more audio series of The Diary of River Song from Big Finish Productions – with River going back in time to clean up her husband’s timeline.

Another two series of The Diary of River Song can be confirmed, with Series Six arriving in August 2019 followed by Series Seven in January 2020.

After meeting five incarnations of the Doctor and four incarnations of the Doctor’s mortal enemy, the Master, while exploring time and space, River continues to travel the cosmos. However, she’ll be crashing into the Doctor’s timeline during some of the most famous Doctor Who stories of all time.

Big Finish will be confirming more details over the coming weeks, but today we can reveal that in the final story of The Diary of River Song Series Six, River will be travelling back to Victorian London, just before the classic Fourth Doctor story, The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

In The Talents of Greel, by Paul Morris, River will be playing detective, working out what is happening to the performers of London town, and her investigations take her to the Palace Theatre where she’ll meet Henry Gordon Jago, played by Christopher Benjamin.

Angus Wright (Kingdom of Heaven, The Iron Lady) plays Magnus Greel (reprising the role from an earlier audio adventure, The Butcher of Brisbane), Nicholas Goh plays Li H’Sen Chang and the villainous ventriloquist’s doll, Mr Sin, and Casey the Irishman is played by John Paul Connolly.

David Richardson, producer, tells us more Alex Kingston told us more about side-stepping into these classic stories from the Whoniverse You can pre-order series six and series seven of The Diary of River Song now, available for release in August 2019 and January 2020, priced at £25 on CD or £20 on download. Or save in a bundle together with both series six and series seven at £48 on CD or £40 on download.

A number of new publicity images to promote this week's episode of Doctor Who, The Ghost Monument Episode Two Trailer | The Ghost Monument | Doctor Who: Series 11

This series will debut on BBC One at 6.55pm.

Main Broadcast Details
United Kingdom	BBC One	Sunday 14th October	6:45pm BST
United States of America	BBC America	Sunday 14th October	8.00pm EDT
Canada	SPACE	Sunday 14th October	8.00pm EDT
Australia	ABC	Monday 15th October	6.00pm AEST

Full listings here

David Tennant and Catherine Tate are to reprise their roles in Doctor Who for three more audio adventures in time and space, in The Tenth Doctor Adventures - Volume 3.

And they’re taking the family with them...

Jacqueline King will return as Sylvia Noble, Donna’s mother and, returning to Big Finish after an eleven-year absence, Bernard Cribbins will reprise his role as Wilfred Mott, Donna’s grandfather.

The Doctor and Donna will be back in action, with three new audio adventures coming May 2019.

Due for release in May 2019, we can look forward to menacing threats lurk in 1950s London’s smog in a tale by Roy Gill, dangerous underwater worlds with the Judoon in a thriller by Jenny T Colgan, and James Goss taking the Doctor, Donna and family on their most treacherous journey yet... into the horrifying world of reality television!

Jacqueline King who plays Donna’s mother, the incomparable Sylvia Noble, told us about returning to the role: Producer David Richardson says Doctor Who – The Tenth Doctor Adventures Volume Three (Limited Edition) is available now for pre-order. A five-disc collector’s edition – limited to 5,000 copies – is available on CD in deluxe bookset packaging for a pre-release price of £35, with the download version for £25.

Included with the limited edition CD release, Doctor Who and Blake’s 7 costume designer June Hudson has created costume designs for the creatures and aliens, and writer and SFX specialist Mike Tucker has created storyboards for the new stories. With behind-the-scenes interviews from some of the cast and crew as well, this limited edition makes for an unmissable audio package.

The three episodes, No Place, One Mile Down and The Creeping Death can also be bought individually for £8.99 on download and £10.99 on CD. Or you can buy all three individually but together in a bundle for £22 on download and £25 on CD.

The Doctor Who Appreciation Society is making a final push to raise money to fund a blue heritage plaque honouring first Doctor William Hartnell at Ealing Studios.

With the planned unveiling date edging nearer, two more items available at the Society's eBay store, to help raise the money needed.

Cosmic Masque Issue 1 - 1977

Many people have written Doctor Who fan fiction over the years. Some have gone on to be professional writers working on the show itself.

An early example of fans publishing their own fiction is Doctor Who Appreciation Society's Cosmic Masque, from 1977. John Peel and Steven Evans wrote stories covering the eras of all four Doctors.

Over forty years later, DWAS is republishing this title to raise funds for the William Hartnell Heritage Plaque. This version is largely faithful to the original, with the addition of a full colour rear cover by 'Fletch' and a new foreword by John Peel (author of Virgin and BBC novels as well as a reference work with Terry Nation).

The title is bound with a glossy colour front and rear cover and runs to 40 pages total. Despatch will commence week commencing 15th October 2018.

Magazines cost £7-99 including free Uk delivery.

Unveiling Tickets

Ealing Studios is a working facility and as such, the unveiling is open to a small number of invited guests only. However there is still an opportunity for fans to attend.

On Friday a competition will be launched for anyone who is either a DWAS member or who has helped raise funds for the plaque by buying items from the ebay store, to win a free ticket.

Before then, there are two places at the unveiling up for auction. The winning bidder will receive two tickets and will need to be available on Sunday 14th October 2018 in the Ealing area, between 2-30pm and 4-00pm. the winner and their friend will be able to attend the unveiling and then a reception at a local venue along with the other guests. Please be aware that as this is not a convention, it is a condition of entry that autographs are not sought from other guests.

Online Auction Site

Doctor Who: The Woman Who Fell to Earth was watched by 8.2 million viewers, a share of 40.1% of the total TV audience, according to unofficial overnight figures.

The audience grew throughout the episode, peaking at 8.52 million for the final fifteen minutes.

The rating makes Doctor Who the third highest rating of the week, just behind two editions of Strictly Come Dancing.

It is the highest overnight rating for the series for a regular episode for over ten years. The debut episode of the Twelfth Doctor, Deep Breath, had an overnight rating of 6.8 million viewers, while the debut episode of The Eleventh Doctor, The Eleventh Hour, had 7.7 million, with 0.3 million also watching on BBC HD, making a total of 8.0 million. The last regular episode to top this figure was Journey's End in 2008, with an overnight figure of 9.4 million.

The highest rating for Sunday was for the results show of Strictly Come Dancing with an average of 9.04 million watching.

ITV's highest-rated programme was The X Factor, with 4.69 million watching. Against Doctor Who, 5 Gold Rings had 2.71 million watching.

Official figures, which will be released next Monday, will include those to recorded the episode and watched it later. They are expected to be considerably higher than the initial figures.

Press reaction to the new season of Doctor Who is overwhelmingly positive with Jodie Whittaker winning many plaudits for her first full episode as the Thirteenth Doctor

The Independent led the praise for the lead actress's performance. " After all the hype, hyperbole and inevitable internet hate, she acquits herself wonderfully in her full-length debut. Whittaker is a force of breezy nature – rambunctious, quirky but with a reassuringly familiar aura of Gallifreyan uncanniness."

The Guardian loved the interaction between the main characters. "The new Doctor and her team – 19-year-old Ryan, his old schoolmate turned police probationer Yasmin, and Ryan’s step-grandfather Graham (Tosin Cole, Mandip Gill and Bradley Walsh respectively) – have heart and soul, and are set against a comforting background of West Yorkshire women – especially Ryan’s nan – talking common sense as alien life and electrical pulses erupt around them."

Whittaker was also praised by the Telegraph who said the actress shined in a flawed but fun Doctor Who debut. "There has been a depressingly predictable knee-jerk backlash to a time-travelling, body-regenerating extraterrestrial with two hearts having the temerity to be female but this debut adventure barrelled straight past such quibbles. After mere minutes of the Doctor’s arrival – crashing through the roof of a train in Sheffield, having fallen from the Tardis at the climax of the Christmas special – you stopped noticing"

Digital Spy was sure Jodie Whittaker's Doctor is going to be everybody's new hero, and noted how her sex is irrelevant. "For all the buzz, positive and negative, that surrounded Whittaker's casting as the first female Doctor, what her first few scenes make abundantly clear is how unimportant the character's gender really is. It's completely and utterly incidental, a point which 'The Woman Who Fell to Earth' makes not through words – the transition from old to new is discussed no more here than it has been in previous Doctor's debuts – but through actions."

Den of Geek says series 11 premiere finds Doctor Who in rude health. "Whittaker certainly makes an impact in her opening scene - quite literally, as she falls through the roof of the train and meets her new companions. The script cleverly wastes no time in having her do some proper ‘Doctor business’ - fending off an alien, casually dismissing a death in favour of the mystery at hand and persuading police officer Yas not to call for reinforcements. Whittaker shines pretty quickly in these scenes, and has every bit of the quiet intensity of her predecessors."

Variety felt the episode fulfilled a difficult brief. "Striking the right balance has been a tall order for any new Doctor and showrunner to take on, as several pairs have done over the last decade, but the level of difficulty this particular team had to master is arguably the highest yet. That’s why it’s so impressive that “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” is, for the most part, an extremely typical episode of “Doctor Who."

NPR loved the characterisation of The Doctor "With her rich Northern accent (the actress was born in Yorkshire), Whittaker's Doctor isn't posh or effete — no bow ties or fezzes for her. Instead, she radiates pragmatism (if pragmatism is a thing that can radiate) and a decidedly middle-class, we're-all-in-this-together enthusiasm."

Finally, the Los Angeles Times says Doctor Who returns in thrilling fashion. "The new Doctor has both authority and energy; she is playful yet mature, a little mad but not manic, funny and agile and perhaps will turn out a shade less judgmental than some of her predecessors. Chibnall has given Whittaker a lighter brief: “I’m the Doctor,” she declares, “sorting out fair play throughout the universe.” And later, in that soft Yorkshire accent, “Sometimes I see things that need fixin’ and do what I can.”

The Doctor Who News review can be found on our reviews site.

Obverse books have released the latest in their series of Black Archive books, looking in detail at the making of the Doctor Who story The Time Warrior

Matthew Kilburn looks at the Third Doctor story, the first of Jon Pertwee's final season and the story that introduced both the character of Sarah Jane Smith and the Sontarans.

Making extensive use of a rarely seen rehearsal script for The Time Warrior, this Black Archive looks at how the US involvement in Vietnam combined with author Robert Holmes’s experience of the Second World War in Burma and consciousness of Britain’s imperial decline to create Doctor Who’s first Sontaran, Linx.

It also explores how the serial’s medievalism invoked a shared cultural memory of Gothic and Romantic literature and cinema to launch not only one of the series’ most enduring alien races but also one of its best-loved heroines, Sarah Jane Smith.

Black Archive #24: The Time Warrior can be ordered from Obverse books as a paperback or an Electronic book.