Big Finish has released the final cover design for the upcoming Seventh Doctor release, Noctorne, starring Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor, Sophie Aldred as Ace and Philip Olivier as Hex.

Also available is the cover art for the upcoming Fifth Doctor adventure Circular Time, starring Peter Davison as the Doctor and Sarah Sutton as Nyssa.

Circular Time is scheduled for release in January 2007, Nocturne in February.

The BBC has just released the first publicity photo for the upcoming Doctor Whospin-off, The Sarah Jane Adventures. Pictured left to right are Porchsha Lawrence Mavour (Kelsey), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Yasmin Paige (Maria Jackson) and Thomas Knight as The Archetype/Luke. The first installment is rumoured to be airing on January 1st.

In an earlier press release, the BBC released a synopsis of the first episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures and was previously posted here on the OG News Page (protected in a Spoiler Tag for those who don't want to know in advance).

For those of you in the US and Canada, the Tenth Doctor novel The Price of Paradise by Colin Brake will be available at your local comic book retailer this Wednesday December 6th. If they don't have a copy, ask them to order you one from Diamond Distributing (item #SEP063808).

According to Sky Showbiz (Anne Montini's Gossip 29/11/06): 'Don't expect to see former Doctor Who actress Billie Piper at any sci-fi conventions. She told me: "I loved playing Rose Tyler but I won't be going to any Doctor Who-style conventions. They're just not for me."'

In an interview with John Barrowman on SyFyPortal site (posted 26/11/06), he comments: "I will be in [season] three of Doctor Who," he said excitedly. "I will be in the last three episodes of four episodes, and the scripts are being written as we speak because I just got a text from Russell [T. Davies] telling me that he's finishing the script that Jack returns to Doctor Who."

"You will never see, you will never have Who crossing over into Torchwood," Barrowman exclaimed. "Doctor Who is for children, is a base for family viewing and children. Torchwood is not. The only person that will cross at this point will be Jack going back and forth, because Jack has a different persona in Doctor Who as he does in Torchwood, if that makes any sense. He's darker because of his circumstances and he'll change again when [he] comes in, or he might be darker when he comes back in Doctor Who. I dunno yet but, the Doctor will never come into Torchwood."

Although he said that he cannot comment on his upcoming Doctor Who episodes because they are still a work in progress, he did drop a couple of hints surrounding the rest of Torchwood.

"I'm sure at some point whether it be in Doctor Who or Torchwood you'll learn all of his back history," Barrowman said of Capt. Jack. "What I can tell you is that you will learn a lot about Jack in the next few episodes and towards the end of the [season]. And also that as you've noticed in the series thus far, everybody has a secret and you're going to find out more about their secret and how things start to unravel. And that was a hint."

After the success of their Doctor Who Monster competition last year, Blue Peter and the Doctor Who production team decided to go one better this year with a new competition for a Blue Peter viewer to actually have aspeaking role in the new series!

Launched on the 16th October with an video introduction by David Tennant and other recent series actors, the following weeks saw thousands of videos submitted, choosing from three different scripts to act out.

As well as the top prize of appearing in Doctor Who, the next three runners up have an expenses-paid trip to the exhibition in Cardiff, all ten receive a signed boxed set for Season Two, and the 250 runners up receive a Doctor Who book and action figure.

Future editions of Blue Peter saw encouragement from Doctor Who's Casting Director Andy Pryor, and Stormbreaker film star Alex Pettyfer.

The competition closed on the 10th November, and the following Wednesday's show covered some of the 8057 entries that had been received! The top nine video finalists were then announced, plus an online poll run to enable viewers to select an additional finalist from ten other entrants by the end of the week.

The ten finalists will now be attending an acting workshop, and the eventual winners will be announced on a future programme.

Competition details online can still be seen on the CBBC website, with the original competition announcement and scripts, plus the voting results.

Doctor Who author Craig Hinton, a longtime contributor to the Virgin and BBC Books novel lines and Big Finish's audio ranges, has died. He was 42.

Hinton first became known for his articles about various sci-fi television programmes, including Doctor Who and Star Trek. He was also for a time editor of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society's journal Celestial Toyroom. This work brought him to the attention of the editor of Doctor Who Magazine, who offered him the role of reviewing merchandise for the magazine's Shelf Life section. It was whilst writing for the magazine that Hinton had his first novel, The Crystal Bucephalus, published as part of Virgin Publishing's Missing Adventures range. The book - which Hinton often referred to as "The Crystal Bucket" - was originally submitted for Virgin's New Adventures, and 50,000 words of this version were written before the change was made.

This novel was followed by a further Missing Adventure, Millennial Rites in 1995, and then by Hinton's only New Adventure in 1996, GodEngine, which featured the Ice Warriors as well as oblique appearances by the Daleks.

Following Virgin's loss of their licence to produce Doctor Who novels, Hinton began submitting proposals to BBC Booksand in 2001 they published his novel The Quantum Archangel as part of their Past Doctor Adventures range. This was followed in 2004 by the novel Synthespians, which again had started life as a proposal for the current incumbent Doctor before being altered to feature a previous Doctor. Synthespians also came into difficulties when an image of the television show Dynasty was used on the cover: the cover's creators had arranged for permission to use the copyrighted image, but had neglected to arrange permission to alter it, and so at the last minute a replacement cover had to be produced. It is this that appeared on the cover of the novel.

Hinton also wrote for Big Finish, with the Doctor Who audio play Excelis Decays being produced in 2002 and theTomorrow People play The Lords of Forever in 2005. He also contributed short stories to a variety of Big Finish's short fiction collections.

Hinton spoke often of having coined the term "fanwank" in some of his past reviews to refer to novels or stories that relied heavily on past continuity. Ironically, the term would often be applied to Hinton's own work, which frequently incorporated a great deal of Doctor Who history; Hinton himself embraced the label.

His most recent published work consisted of reviews of the 2006 Doctor Who episodes, published in Second Flight: Back to the Vortex II by Outpost Gallifrey's editor Shaun Lyon. Hinton formed part of the international panel of reviewers giving their thoughts on each episode for the book, which was released less than a fortnight before his death. At the time of his death, Hinton was working with co-writer Chris McKeon on a project called Time's Champion, a novel based on a former BBC Books submission of his which would have explained the circumstances surrounding the Sixth Doctor's regeneration. Hinton intended to publish the completed project online, and McKeon intends to complete the work in memory of Hinton and make it available to fans.

Hinton, an active and popular member of the Doctor Who fan community since the 1980s, was a regular poster on the Outpost Gallifrey forum since its inception in 2001. A memorial thread has been opened on the forum to leave tributes and share memories.

Outpost Gallifrey would like to offer its sincere condolences to all of Hinton's family and friends.

(Some details sourced from Wikipedia; additional reporting by Paul Hayes & Arnold T. Blumberg. Photograph is of Craig from the Gallifrey 2005 convention.)

John Barrowman has had a busy November promoting Torchwood (and himself!) on various shows. 10th November saw him as first guest on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, during which he mentioned that the Torchwoodwrap party had been the evening before. He then appeared on morning magazine Something for the Weekend the following Sunday, and BBC'sBreakfast interviewed him on Wednesday 22nd. Most recently he made his fourth appearance as "friend of the show" on ITV1's Loose Women last Wednesday (29th Nov) - where he ended up presiding over a 'canine wedding'!

Meanwhile, he has also guested on panel shows, with Doctor Who's anniversary seeing him on Bill Bailey's team for satirical panel show Never Mind the Buzzcocks, and on Sean Lock's team during last Friday's (2nd Dec) Channel 4 tongue-in-cheek news panel show 8 out of 10 Cats.

Spanish public broadcaster TVE Clan began airing Series 1 of Doctor Who on its kids oriented digital terrestrial channel TVE Clan on 24 November. Episodes are airing weeknights at 8:15PM Central European Time, with repeats on the weekend.

A clip of the The Runaway Bride, this year's Christmas special, has been leaked onto the internet. Four minutes of the show have appeared on the video sharing site YouTube, which lets people put video online for others to watch. BBC Newsround suggests that the clip might come from "a special concert for Children in Need in Cardiff, where parts of the show were screened." Be aware that the Newsround link provided here also reveals spoilers about what the clip contains.