The BBC Press Office has released a video preview of the forthcoming new season of children's programme for the autumn and winter. The third series of Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures is one of the productions heavily featured, with several clips from the new run of episodes, which begin on BBC One next month. The drama, starring Elisabeth Sladen as former companion Sarah Jane Smith, will feature a guest appearance from David Tennant in one two-part story. This was the final work Tennant completed as the Tenth Doctor, produced after he had finished his final run of Doctor Who specials.

The BBC Trust has launched a review of BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Four and the Red Button.

This forms part of the Trust’s regular series of reviews and will be the largest and most significant service review the Trust has undertaken. BBC One and BBC Two are the two most popular services that the BBC operates. It will be the first time that the Trust has looked at these services. BBC One is the parent channel of Doctor Who and its spin-off series Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, and the programme has also frequently made use of the interactive digital Red Button services.

Diane Coyle, BBC Trustee, who is leading the review said:

"The Trust is the BBC’s governing body and we need to ensure these services are meeting audiences’ expectations. This is why we have launched this significant piece of work that will help us understand how well the BBC’s most popular services are operating. These services have a key role in helping the BBC deliver its public service mission. We’ll be looking at how they are performing against their service licences and whether they are offering value for money.

"Our research tells us that audiences want and expect more fresh and new ideas on the BBC television. This review will help us understand how best the BBC can provide distinctive programming that audiences love.

"We now want to encourage viewers to get in touch with us to let us know what they think of these BBC services."

Viewers can participate in the survey online.

The BBC has confirmed that Series Three of The Sarah Jane Adventures will start on BBC1 at 4.35pm on Thursday 15th October. Part Two will follow on the Friday afternoon.


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Doctor Who Adventures 134 takes a look at all the mini adventures the Doctor has experienced over the years, from the Attack of the Graske to Time Crash.

The Doctor has travelled to many places on his adventures. This week’s Top 10 is all about the best planets he’s visited, but which will be number one? The countdown includes Gallifrey, the Ood Sphere and Midnight.

Find out how well you know the Weeping Angels in this week’s quiz.

This week’s favourite scene takes us back to the first time Rose steps inside the TARDIS.

Outgoing Doctor David Tennant is to guest host the Absolute Radio breakfast show for a week in November. Tennant will join his friend and regular host Christian O'Connell, who revealed the partnership on his Twitter page: "All done deal - David Tennant will be co-hosting the Absolute Radio Breakfast Show with me for a week in November! And i mean in from 6-10am!" Tony Moorey, Absolute's programme manager, said "It's hard to think of a celebrity more loved by the British public. When you combine that with David's sense of humour and the on-air relationship he's formed with Christian O'Connell in recent interviews, it's clear that these shows will be must-listen makes. Seriously, who wouldn't give Doctor Who a show?" Absolute Radio was was previously called Virgin Radio.

Jonathan Ross will be joined on his BBC Radio 2 show by John Simm on Saturday 26th September. The programme is available on FM in the United Kingdom and on the internet globally.

Doctor Who has won the first British Fantasy Award for Television, announced at FantasyCon on September 19. Rob Shearman, convention guest and writer of the episode Dalek, collected the award on behalf of Russell T. Davies. Paying tribute to the achievement of Russell Davies and Julie Gardner in making the new series so successful, Shearman mentioned that when people had originally heard he was to work on a new series of Doctor Who, some had laughed at the very idea of resurrecting that tired old show.

At the same awards, Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale lost out in the non-fiction category to the autobiography Basil Copper: a Life in Books, but Torchwood novelist Sarah Pinborough won the short story category for "Do You See?"

The final part of the Darksmith Legacy series, The End of Time by Justin Richards, is coming out this week. To celebrate, there is an exclusive Darksmith Collected Party for fans who have collected all 10 books and completed the quests online. All players who complete the final quest will automatically be entered into a free prize draw to win tickets to this event where they can meet the authors, come face to face with some monsters and get an exclusive sneak-preview of things to come.

James Moran has just announced a new web project starring Gareth David-Lloyd and Tracy-Ann Oberman. Girl Number 9 is a dark thriller created exclusively for the internet.

Thanks to Faiz Rehman, Robert Davis, Stephen Theaker

This weeks Doctor Who Adventures runs down the top 10 shape-changers, and asks who will come top?

There is a flash back to the 1920s for a monster murder mystery with this week’s story guide: The Unicorn and the Wasp, with a murder investigation, a beastly bug and best-selling author Agatha Christie.

This week’s Doctor Data is Sarah Jane Adventures’ Mr Smith, find out where he came from and how he once helped a shape-changing Slitheen and Doomfinger features in this week’s favourite scene as the magazine looks back to 1599 London and The Shakespeare Code.
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Posters on the Gallifrey Base discussion forum report that it was announced at this weekend's "Regenerations" fan convention in Swansea that the 1971 Third Doctor adventure The Mind of Evil has been restored to colour for a forthcoming DVD release. Like a number of stories starring Jon Pertwee as the Doctor, the colour master videotapes for this six-part story were junked by the BBC in the 1970s. This left only black and white film recording copies of the episodes, made for overseas sale, in the archives. A small handful of colour clips survived on a domestic videotape recording of a transmission of the story in the United States, and were used to restore colour to scenes as a bonus feature at the end of the 1998 VHS release.

No detail has yet emerged of whether the full story has been recolourised for this DVD edition, nor for when the disc is scheduled for release. It is also not currently known whether the episodes were restored to colour using the chroma dot technique employed on the similarly-afflicted third episode of Planet of the Daleks in the forthcoming Dalek War box-set, or whether they were restored from scratch with artificial colour.

Actor Nicholas Courtney, who appears in the story as the Doctor's ally Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, is also reported to have participated in an audio commentary for the release.

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The BBC Press Office's release of information regarding programmes on Tuesday the 6th of October contains a small snippet of interest to Doctor Who fans. The BBC's long-running children's magazine programme Blue Peter - which has enjoyed a close relationship with Doctor Who since the 1960s - will be launching "a Doctor Who competition, which will see one lucky viewer design a Tardis console that will feature in the new series."

It is not known in what context this "Tardis console" will be used in Doctor Who, nor when it may appear. Previous Blue Peter competitions have seen young fans design a monster (the Abzorbaloff from Love and Monsters in series two) and appear in the series (Utopia, in series three).

North American release dates for two more DVDs have been announced.

Both the First Doctor story The Keys of Marinus and the Sixth Doctor story The Twin Dilemma will be released on 5th January 2010.



The Coming Next trailer included on the UK release of The Dalek War boxset is for The Kings Demons/Planet of Fire, indicating this boxset will be released in the UK in January.

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine confirms that series three of The Sarah Jane Adventures will premier in the UK on Thursday 15 October.

In a change to previous years the programme will air on BBC1 twice weekly, with the series being shown on Thursdays and Fridays for its six week run.

Final schedules have yet to be confirmed by the BBC and are subject to change.

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