The actress Anne Ridler has died.

Anne Ridler played Gemma Corwyn the second-in-command of Space Station W3 in the 1968 Doctor Who story The Wheel in Space. After appearing in five episodes of the story she sacrificed her life to help the Second Doctor defeat the Cybermen.

Anne Ridler had a long and distinguished career first appearing on television in 1955 and going on to work on over 5 movies and 29 TV serials. Her first screen role was on TV with a regular spot alongside Francis Matthews in the Francis Durbridge series My Friend Charles. Her breakthrough came as a regular in Dixon of Dock Green, appearing as WP Sgt. Chris Freeman from 1962 to 1964. She had guest roles in Moonbase 3 in 1973 and The Tomorrow People in 1975 abd in the 1980' s she played voice of Kate Kestrel, Cy-Star and It-Star in Gerry Anderson's puppet-animated Terrahawks series.

She had small roles in the Hammer film Camp on Yangtse Incident (1957), the Michael Anderson-directed Blood Island (1958) and 633 Squadron (1963).

She played Jacqueline Shaffer in the Big Finish story Master.

The actor Noel Collins has died at the age of 74.

Noel Collins appeared in 3 episodes of the 1989 Doctor Who story Battlefield where he played Pat Rowlinson, the landlord of the hotel in which the Seventh Doctor and Ace stayed while investigating an inter-dimensional distress call.

Collins was best known for his role in the long running BBC police series Juliet Bravo, where he played Sergeant George Parrish throughout the six year run of the show. He also appeared in Play for Today, When the Boat Comes in and the comedy series Bread.

Collins retired at the age of 60 after being diagnosed with lung cancer and undergoing an operation which involved removing a lung. In the 1990's he joined 52 other claimants in a £17million lawsuit against cigarette giants Gallaher and Imperial Tobacco arguing that the companies had been negligent in not reducing the tar content in their cigarettes between 1957 and 1971 once it became obvious that smoking caused lung cancer.

Although the case was dropped in March 1999 Collins retained his anti smoking stance until his death. His widow Helen Collins paid tribute to her husband's bravery in the face of his illness. "He was content in his life but also stoic during the bad times. He became very anti-smoking but he lived through his illness as best he could. Even in his last week he was still getting Juliet Bravo fan mail which he found amusing. He loved the theatre and really enjoyed his career, but without being pretentious or boastful."

Noel Collins died on 15 August after losing his long battle with cancer.

The BBC has released a new video in the lead-up to the premiere of Let's Kill Hitler this coming Saturday; here, Arthur Darvill, Karen Gillan, producer Marcus Wilson and director Richard Senior discuss the premise behind the episode:


A number of publicity photos to tie in with the episode have also been released:

Some news on possible future DVD releases emerged at the Fantom Films conventions held over the weekend:

Back in 1964, the story Planet of Giants had originally been filmed as a four-part story, but had the latter two episodes combined into one in order to tighten the plot for a better paced series opener. Though the original recording no longer exists, actress Carole Ann Ford, who played the Doctor's grand-daughter Susan, mentioned at the Dalek Invasion Earth convention that she had recently recorded an audio version of the original script for that fourth episode, The Urge to Live, which she believed is to be for a DVD release of the story.

Further 'lost' material also seems likely to see the light of day. Back in 1979 the final story of Season 17, Shada, had to be abandoned due to BBC strikes with only parts of the studio sessions completed; appearing at the Timelord Tales convention, both Victoria Burgoyne (Clare) and Daniel Hill (Chris) reported that they'd been involved in a new audio recording of the script for the unfilmed material, in which other original cast members participated including Lalla Ward (Romana). They also discussed the missing scenes being recreated in animation, and believed this could form part of a DVD release of the story in the future. (Producer Ian Levine has confirmed that the actors were talking about his production, but that the cast hope for an 'official' release.)

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A recent fire at the Sony warehouse facilities in Enfield led to loss of much of the DVD and CD stock held there, including Doctor Who DVDs due to be distributed by 2|Entertain. However, the company has reported that this will not affect the release of Day of the Daleks, due out on the 12th September (available to pre-order).

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The Restoration Team have recently revived their website that delves into the technical issues involved in restoring the classic Doctor Who stories for DVD release - the site had been in mothballs since The Space Museum/The Chase back in January 2010. The site is in the process of being brought up to date, and new articles have now been added for the first Revisitations boxed set and for Mannequin Mania.

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Further snippets for DVD production have been tweeted by the Restoration Team; this includes an appeal by Chris Chapman for anybody who could provide contact details for Peter Walker (the young boy in The Reign of Terror) - if you can help please let him know.

The new edition of the Radio Times (27th August - 2nd September) celebrates the return of Doctor Who to our screens this coming Saturday, with the Doctor once again gracing the front cover for the season opener, Let's Kill Hitler.


The magazine features an exclusive episode guide by head writer Steven Moffat, which finally reveals the titles for the concluding two episodes of the series, Closing Time and The Wedding of River Song.

There are also interviews with Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Alex Kingston. Here, Matt and Karen talk about the downside of fame:

You can read a sample from the episode guide on the Radio Times website.


The website also offers a review of last week's preview for Let's Kill Hitler, and an interview with Mark Gatiss on the following week's episode, Night Terrors.

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The Radio Times have also made a spoof video tie-in for Let's Kill Hitler, based upon the popular Downfall meme :

Episode Five of Torchwood: Miracle Day, The Categories of Life, had a final official rating of 5.17 million viewers according to figures released by BARB.

The programme was the 19th highest rated on BBC One for the week. While the rating was similar to previous weeks the chart placing was much lower because of the exceptionally high ratings achieved by news programmes during the periods of civil disturbance in several English cities which occurred at the start of the week

The final result includes those who recorded the programme and watched it within 7 days. It does not include those watching on iPlayer.

Episode Six, The Middle Men, had an AI score of 85.

Doctor Who has won a HUGO award for the 2010 series conclusion The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang.

Written by showrunner Steven Moffat and directed by Toby Haynes, the story was shown last June when it wrapped up the events of Matt Smith's first series as The Doctor.

The story beat two other Doctor Who stories, A Christmas Carol and Vincent and the Doctor as well as The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan and **** Me, Ray Bradbury by Rachel Bloom, to win the award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form).

The award is the fourth for Steven Moffat, having previously won for The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, The Girl in the Fireplace and Blink. Last year the award was won by The Waters of Mars written by Russell T Davies and Phil Ford.

The award for Best Related Work was given to Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It, edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Tara O’Shea and published by Mad Norwegian.

The book is a series of essays which delve into the extraordinary aspects of being a female “Doctor Who” enthusiast. Essays include Carole Barrowman discussing what it was like to grow up with her brother John, columnist Jackie Jenkins providing a Bridget Jones’ Diary-style memoir of working on “Doctor Who Magazine,” and novelist Lloyd Rose analyzing Rose’s changes between the ninth and tenth Doctors.

The Hugo Awards are given every year for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories.

Hugo Awards have been presented every year since 1955. The 2011 winners were announced on Saturday evening, at Renovation, the 69th World Science Fiction convention held in Reno, Nevada.

The return of Doctor Who next weekend of course means the return of the behind-the-scenes series Doctor Who Confidential! The BBC have released two videos to tie in with the forthcoming episode, Let's Kill Hitler.

Doctor Who Confidential will be on BBC3/BBCHD on Saturday 27th August, from 8:00pm.

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The BBC also operate an official Doctor Who Confidential fan page on Facebook, which you can "like" here.

Episode six of Torchwood, The Middle Men, suffered at the hands of Big Brother, seeing its overnight ratings drop to 3.4 million, the lowest in the series so far.

The Celebrity edition of the reality show launched on Channel 5 with an average of 5.1 million watching the likes of House of Commons Speaker's wife Sally Bercow, David Hasselhoff's ex wife Pamela Bach-Hasselhoff and Jedwood, enter the infamous house, giving the Channel one of its biggest audiences ever.

Torchwood, had a share of 14% of the total television audience. It had 3.7 million viewers for the first quarter, dropping to 3.2 million for the last quarter. On ITV1, Single Handed had 3.2 million watching, roughly the same as last week.

The final ratings will be released in 10 days and will include those who record the programme and watch it within seven days.

Monday's late night repeat of episode five, The Categories of Life was watched by 0.4 million.

The BBC have released details for Week 36, which includes the synopsis of ninth episode of the current series of Doctor Who, Night Terrors; this is due to be broadcast on BBC One/BBC One HD on Saturday 3rd September, with the broadcast time yet to be confirmed. The episode is written by Mark Gatiss and directed by Richard Clark.


Alongside Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill, it features Daniel Mays, Andrew Tiernan, Leila Hoffman, Emma Cunniffe, Jamie Oram and Sophie Cosson.