The Doctor Who Walking Tours, run by the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff are back for the 2014 season.

The tours operate every Friday/Saturday/Sunday from Saturday 14th June until Sunday 20th July.

The tour was created by Doctor Who novelist Gary Russell. It lasts roughly an hour and visits over thirty-one locations featured in the filming of the show, including: the building where the Weeping Angels watched Sally Sparrow and the Police Station in the Blink episode; the American diner River Song, Amy and Rory met the Doctor inside within The Impossible Astronaut episode, and the Wales Millennium Centre, where episodes including: The Girl Who Waited, The Sound of Drums, and Vincent and the Doctor were all filmed.

Tickets for the official Doctor Who Walking Tours will be on sale from 12pm on Wednesday 11th June with further dates to be announced in the next couple of weeks.

BBC Worldwide and Fathom Events have announced a cinematic presentation of Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel as part of a two-evening celebration of David Tennant in the United States. The special, 'theatrical cut' of the story will be shown in some 620 cinema locations across the USA on Monday 16th June, with tickets also including the Tennant-narrated documentary Wings-3D the following evening.

Soumya Sriraman, EVP of Licensing and Home Entertainment for BBC Worldwide North America, said:

Dan Diamond, senior vice president of Fathom Events, said:

Tickets go on sale this morning in the United States and are available from local cinemas and the Fathom Events website.

The Lakes International Comic Art Festival is to mark 50 years of Doctor Who in comic-strip form this year as part of its line-up of events.

The festival is taking place at various venues in Kendal, Cumbria, from Friday 17th to Sunday 19th October, and with Doctor Who believed to be the longest-running licensed science fiction comic strip globally, it will be paying tribute to this format.

The first Doctor Who comic strip appeared in issue 674 of TV Comic, cover dated 14th November 1964, with the adventure The Klepton Parasites that unfolded over ten weeks (although a spoof, called Doctor What And His Time Clock and featuring a William Hartnell lookalike, appeared in Boys' World between 30th May and 3rd October 1964).

Doctor Who would go on to appear in - take a deep breath, folks! - Countdown, Countdown for TV Action!, TV Action in Countdown, TV Action + Countdown, TV Action, TV Comic Plus TV Action, TV Comic Plus Tom and Jerry Weekly, Mighty Midget Doctor Who Comic, Mighty TV Comic, and TV Comic With Target before its move to Doctor Who Weekly in 1979, with DWW eventually becoming Doctor Who Magazine. It is also in comic-strip form now in the UK in Doctor Who Adventures, which began in 2006, and has been published as a comic strip in the USA by IDW, with Titan recently picking up the licence.

Dez Skinn - the first editor of Doctor Who Weekly - will be giving an insight into the publication's evolution, including meeting with the BBC and touring the country with Tom Baker, in The First Doctor of Doctor Who at the town library on Friday 17th October at 7pm - the exact 35th anniversary of the cover date of the first edition of DWW.

Also on the festival programme is Doctor Who: 50 Years in 50 Minutes on Saturday 18th October, which is being held at the library as well. Starting at 5.30pm, this will have a panel, hosted by former DWM editor John Freeman, that will comprise artists Mike Collins and Martin Geraghty plus writers Scott Gray, Nick Abadzis and Robbie Morrison.

Others appearing at the festival who have a Doctor Who connection will be the artists Dave Gibbons, Mark Buckingham and Gary Erskine plus cartoonist Kev F Sutherland.

BAFTA has launched a competition in which somebody can win two tickets to this year's TV Awards by submitting a caption for a photo that includes a Dalek.

As reported earlier this month, An Adventure In Space and Time - the BBC Two drama by Mark Gatiss centring on the genesis of Doctor Who - is in the running for the title of Best Single Drama at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards, while the 50th-anniversary special The Day of the Doctor is up for the Radio Times Audience Award, with the winner of the latter to be decided by a public vote. The victors will be revealed on the BAFTA website, its Facebook page and Twitter feed as they are announced, while exclusive footage will be available on BAFTA's YouTube channel, with the ceremony also being shown on BBC One.

The awards are being held at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, on Sunday 18th May, and for your chance to win two tickets to the star-studded event, simply submit to BAFTA a witty and inventive caption for the picture below, which shows a Dalek behind food writer and broadcaster Mary Berry at last year's TV awards ceremony, held at the Royal Festival Hall.


Entries can be tweeted to BAFTA using the hashtag #BAFTAComp or sent in via its Facebook page or via the comments section on the competition announcement page.

The deadline is midday BST on Tuesday 29th April, and all entrants must be aged 18 or above. The full terms and conditions are available here.

Meanwhile, votes for the Radio Times Audience Award can be cast via the voting page. The deadline is midday BST on Thursday 15th May. A valid e-mail address must be given for the vote to count, and only one vote per person is allowed. Duplicate votes from the same person will not be counted.

The actor, writer and comedian Toby Hadoke is to give the last performance of My Stepson Stole My Sonic Screwdriver for the foreseeable future next month, he has announced.

The show, which is as highly acclaimed as its antecedent Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf, will be staged on Monday 19th May at 7.30pm at Bollington Arts Centre, Wellington Road, Bollington, Cheshire, as part of the Bollington Festival.
Hadoke, who writes for Doctor Who Magazine and has been a moderator on classic Doctor Who DVDs, also said that work is under way on a DVD release of Moths and Stepson, both of which were filmed when he performed them as a double bill at the Garrick Theatre in the West End on 17th November last year. A release date is yet to be announced.

The University of Chichester's Department of Media will be celebrating the BBC Radiophonic Workshop with a day of interviews, lectures, talks and panels, culminating in a rare opportunity to see the Workshop perform live.

Original team members Dick Mills, Paddy Kingsland, Peter Howell and Roger Limb, as well as archivist Mark Ayres, will be extensively interviewed about their lives and work at the event which takes place on Friday 11th April.

The day session will be followed by a visual show in surround sound, featuring new material to be played only at this event. There will also be an after-show party hosted by Brighton electronica night Synthesize Me, and a special performance by rising synth-pop duo the Vile Electrodes.

Tickets costing £65 are available from the official website.

Matt Smith will be playing football for England when he takes part in this year's Soccer Aid.

And he'll be facing a former nemesis in the shape of Michael Sheen - who provided the voice of the sinister House in The Doctor's Wife - at the charity event at Old Trafford on Sunday 8th June. Doors open at 5pm and kick-off is at 8pm, with the match being broadcast live on ITV.

It is being held in aid of the global children's charity UNICEF, with Smith signed up for Robbie Williams's England team. Meanwhile, Sheen is heading the opposing Rest of the World side. Joining Smith on the England squad will be Bradley Walsh, who appeared in The Sarah Jane Adventures story The Day of the Clown.

Before he became an actor, Smith's dream was to be a professional footballer, and he played for the youth teams at Northampton Town, Nottingham Forest, and Leicester City, but the spinal condition spondylosis wrecked his sporting hopes. However, he retains links to the game through his avid support for Blackburn Rovers, and the 2010 episode The Lodger saw the actor don a number 11 football shirt as the Doctor and lead fictional pub team The King's Arms to victory.

Williams, who is UNICEF's UK ambassador, said: And UNICEF UK executive director David Bull said: In the past six years, Soccer Aid has raised more than £12m to help children around the world.

Tickets for the match cost from £20 for adults and from £5 for under-16s and over-65s, with premium seats at £40 (plus booking fees), and can be bought via the Soccer Aid site.

Sheen features briefly in his kit in the promotional video below, while The Lodger guest star James Corden can also be seen cheering:


Other celebrities on the England team are Stephen Moyer, Jamie Theakston, Mark Owen, Jack Whitehall, Damian Lewis, Paddy McGuinness, John Bishop and Olly Murs, while Sheen's celebrity players will include James McAvoy, Nicky Byrne, Adam Richman, Patrick Kielty and Gordon Ramsay. Former professional footballers joining the England side are Teddy Sheringham, Jamie Redknapp, David Seaman, Paul Ince and Jamie Carragher, with Jaap Stam and Edwin van der Sar among those playing for Rest of the World.

UPDATE - 8th JUNE: Sadly, Matt Smith was unable to take part in the game because of an injury. In a statement, he said:

The actor Olaf Pooley is 100 years old today - making him the second person to have appeared in Doctor Who to become a centenarian.

Born in the Parkstone area of Poole in Dorset to an English father and Danish mother, he studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London and painting at the Chelsea School of Art - and is still an exhibiting painter.

His first full-time job was with Pinewood Film Studios' design department, and he then became a member of the BBC Radio Drama Repertory Company, with his prolific acting career also seeing him appearing in the West End, on film and on TV. He is one of just a handful of actors to have appeared in both the Doctor Who and Star Trek franchises.

Pooley had two roles in Doctor Who, both of them in the 1970 story Inferno, portraying Professor Stahlman and his parallel-Earth counterpart Director Stahlman in the seven-parter.

During his career, he wrote and appeared in the film The Corpse - entitled Crucible of Horror in the USA - which starred Michael Gough, and wrote, directed and appeared in The Johnstown Monster. He also wrote the screenplay for a film version of Bernard Taylor's The Godsend, which was directed by his future second wife Gabrielle Beaumont. Pooley's other writing credits include the 1982 TV film Falcon's Gold, while he was an uncredited writer on the 1985 sci-fi horror movie Lifeforce.

His TV guest appearances since the 1950s included roles in Dixon of Dock Green, Paul Temple, Jason King and MacGyver, as well as playing Lars Torvik in the first episode of The Sandbaggers.

In 1958, Pooley took part in the BBC radio play Ambrose In Paris, and he played Sebastian in a 1956 film production of The Tempest. Pooley had a major career in West End theatre, appearing in notable productions such as Noël Coward's Peace In Our Time as well as The Tempest and Othello, and he counted Sir Alec Guinness among his close friends.

He emigrated to the United States in 1986, where he continued his acting, also becoming a respected artist both there and abroad. In an interview, he said: "It is a privilege to be an artist and I am fortunate in this respect."

An avid reader, he keeps fit by taking a daily walk and doing calisthenics and makes sure that he eats healthily.

Examples of Pooley's artwork can be seen on the InHarmony Yoga website, and he will be displaying his paintings at an "open house" event at the Santa Monica Art Studios at 3026 Airport Avenue, Santa Monica, on Saturday 15th March between midday and 6pm.

The BBC is offering fans the chance to take part in a special masterclass in Cardiff with Neill Gorton, director of Millennium FX and the man behind the creation of many of the monsters and aliens on Doctor Who.

The event is part of BBC Radio 4 Character Invasion, a project that will let people spend the day with the nation's best-loved characters. On Saturday 29 March 2014 writers' creations will take over the airwaves, invading Radio 4's programmes throughout the day, beginning with Tweet of the Day and through Any Answers? and Loose Ends. There will be public events at all BBC sites producing radio drama.

The Cardiff masterclass with Gorton will offer an insight into how some of some of television's best-loved monsters and aliens from Doctor Who and Wizards vs Aliens are created using cutting-edge prosthetics, animatronics and special make-up FX.

Tickets will be allocated through a random draw. To be in with a chance you need to register your interest on the BBC website by 4pm on Thursday 13 March. You can apply for a maximum of four tickets per household. It should be noted, though, that as this is a free event, the allocation of tickets does not guarantee entry.

Additional Character Invasion events are taking place in Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, London and Salford.

A free Doctor Who exhibition is to open in Wellington this week as New Zealand prepares to welcome the Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular.

The Spectacular, hosted by Peter Davison, will see the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra perform music from the series during three shows at the TSB Bank Arena in Wellington over Friday 21st and Saturday 22nd February, with a big screen showing clips from the series while monsters roam the aisles and stage.

And to complement the musical event, an exhibition will be held at Capital E Central in the city. Opening on Friday, Doctor Who: Celebrating 50 Years of Adventures in Space and Time will have a display of original and replica props from the show's history, including the Fourth Doctor's scarf, the First Doctor's cane and a TARDIS. Visitors will also be able to go face to face with a Dalek and knit a section of an extra-long Fourth Doctor-esque scarf that will be created by fans throughout the duration of the display, which is staying in Wellington until Saturday 12th April.

The exhibition is a joint presentation by the New Zealand Festival and BBC Worldwide Australia and New Zealand, and Capital E director Stuart Grant said: Following performances in Melbourne and Brisbane in January and February - as well as in Sydney in 2012 - it is the first time the Symphonic Spectacular has been staged in New Zealand, and Helen Pendlebury, the head of live entertainment at BBC Worldwide Australia and New Zealand, said: A video promoting the Symphonic Spectacular is available to view: