The BBC has announced that Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams is to star in a guest role in the next series of Doctor Who.

Williams is renowned for her role as Arya Stark in the international fantasy drama series. She also starred in the one-off docu-drama Cyberbully and was cast as one of the leads of Carol Morley’s drama The Falling. As well as being a three-time Screen Actors Guild Awards nominee, in February of this year she was awarded with a Shooting Star Award at the Berlin Film Festival.

On her first day on set, Maisie Williams said:Steven Moffat, lead writer and Executive Producer, added:Two more story details have been released by the BBC. The first is The Girl Who Died which is written by Jamie Mathieson and Steven Moffat. Mathieson wrote the aclaimed Series Eight stories Mummy On The Orient and Flatline. Also announced is The Woman Who Lived by Catherine Tregenna. Tregenna wrote four episodes of Torchwood: Out of Time, Meat, Adam and Captain Jack Harkness, which was nominated for the 2008 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.

The two stories will be directed by Ed Bazalgette, currently earning rave reviews for working on the BBC One 18th-century drama Poldark.

Comedian and actor Rufus Hound, who recently appeared in the series Cucumber, also joins the guest cast alongside BBC Three’s Siblings and CBBC’s Horrible Histories star Tom Stourton, Ariyon Bakare, Simon Lipkin, Ian Conningham, Murray McArthur, Barnaby Kay, John Voce, and Struan Rodger.

The series returns this Autumn.

Doctor Who has won two awards at the Cardiff Life awards.

The Cardiff Life Awards celebrate the very best businesses in the Welsh capital, as chosen by a panel of independent Judges. Any company in Cardiff can nominate its business for free, and the entrants are judged by an independent panel of Cardiff experts.

The Doctor Who Experience has been awarded Best in Leisure & Tourism at the event, beating the other nominees St David’s Hotel & Spa, Celtic Manor Resort, Radisson Blu Hotel and The Cardiff Story. The Doctor Who Experience opened in the city in 2012 and was updated last Autumn in include the Twelfth Doctor.

Meanwhile Real SFX has been awarded the prize as best Creative in the city. Real SFX is the company set up Danny Hargreaves, who has been providing Special Effects for Doctor Who since 2006. The company beat Ongl Design+Make, Hello Starling, Antti Karppinen, Design Management Partnership, Little Cake Cupboard, S3 Advertising and InspireMe, to take the award.

Twelfth Doctor in Five TARDIS Console Rooms. - The Doctor Who Experience - Doctor Who - BBC:
TARDIS ALERT! Check out the Twelfth Doctor in five TARDIS console rooms in the brand new adventure at the Doctor Who Experience, this Easter.

Mark Gatiss has confirmed he has just finished writing an episode for Season 35 of Doctor Who.

The actor and writer told The Daily Telegraph, the script had been difficult to finish.The script will be Gatiss's eighth story for the series, his most recent one being last year's Robot of Sherwood

Season 35 - Series 9 Guide

The BBC have revealed that Michelle Gomez will be reprising her role as Missy in the two-part premiere of the next series of Doctor Who, entitled The Magician's Apprentice, and The Witch's Familiar.

Writer Steven Moffat commented:

Michelle Gomez said:
The BBC website have also presented a video message from the actress:



The premiere will also see the return of Jemma Redgrave as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, who appears alongside UNIT in the current block directed by Hettie MacDonald. The episodes will also feature Kelly Hunter (who previously played the Shadow Architect in The Stolen Earth), Clare Higgins (Ohila in The Night of the Doctor) and Jaye Griffiths (perhaps best remembered by sci-fi fans as Ros Henderson in Bugs).

Other guest stars appearing in the series include Daniel Hoffmann-Gill, Jami Reid-Quarrell, Aaron Neil, India Ria Amarteifio, Joey Price, Dasharn Anderson, Harki Bhambra, and Demi Papaminas.

Issue 15 of the fanzine Fish Fingers and Custard is out now.

Included in the magazine

• Reviews of the 50th Anniversary
• A 50th Anniversary Diary
• Goodbye Matt Smith
• 'Thrifty Fives'
• Where's The Money Gone

The Issue can be purchased from fishcustardfanzine.co.uk for £2 (UK) and £4.50 (Rest of The World).

The Doctor Who Appreciation Society have created a new Doctor Who themed Christmas card for 2014. The cards are A5-sized and can be purchased worldwide - full details can be found via their website.

Profits from the sale of the cards are to be donated to the Tiggywinkles Wildlife Hospital Trust, whose vice president is sixth Doctor and the Society's own honorary president, Colin Baker.

The stop motion animated fan series, Doctor Puppet is seeking funding via Indiegogo to make their next Christmas Special episode. The previous specials, "How the Doctor Puppet Saved Christmas" and "Doctor Puppet - A Timelord Christmas" have more than 180k views each. The campaign was started on 29 September and will finish on 29 October 2014. The perks for donating money range from a simple thank you card at $5 to having a custom puppet created plus all the other perks which will cost $5,000. The goal for the project is set at $15,000 with over 52% already raised. The production was recently featured on BBC America's Earth Conquest documentary where Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman provided voices for their puppets. The documentary will be available in full on the Series 8 DVD.

Issue Eighteen of the Fanzine Inferno Fiction is now available online featuring:

• THREAT OF THE CYBERMEN
by Nathan Mullins PART TWO: The Cybermen have control of the TARDIS, but will the Doctor help his friends stop the threat from a Cyberman invasion?
• THE LAST VICTIM
by Michael Baxter Dr Who arrives in 1559 Derbyshire to possibly witness the last burning, of the last victim, Alice Marsh at the hands of the Bishop Snaith. Can the Doctor persuade the Bishop to spare her life?
• IN HER ABSENCE
by Julie Kay PART TWO: Vastra tells of her meeting with the stranger known as The Doctor and her journey through time and space to the Ryūkyū Kingdom at a disconcerting time in the Kingdom's history...
• MISTER STARMAN
by J. Arthur Rodgers "A spaceman came travelling on his ship from afar, 'Twas light years of time since his mission did start, And over a village he halted his craft, And it hung in the sky like a star, just like a star"
• OH MY GIDDY AUNT!
by Sean Bassett ACT II: The Musical Extravaganza continues in ACT II as The Doctor's lives are told through song and verse...
• GRIMLIGHT
by Thomas Ahearn Upon visiting his friends at 13 Paternoster Row, the Doctor is invited along to investigate the strange occupants of 22 Charing Cross Road...
• THE FEAR OF ALL SUMS
by Samuel Marks PART FOUR: The Doctor and Romana must stop the Zeronaughts and put Time back on track but at what cost?

with artwork by Colin John

In "Flatline," we saw the TARDIS grow and shrink over the course of 45 minutes. Lee Dubois can relate.

Earlier this year, the owner of Silverado Skies Corner Garden, a business in Calgary, Alberta, specializing in products like birdhouses and other outdoor items, started stocking birdfeeders in the shape of a miniature TARDIS (roughly the same size as the one Clara had stuffed in her handbag). Unfamiliar with Doctor Who, he was caught by surprise at how popular they were.

“One of my suppliers for my birdhouses sent me this [TARDIS] birdfeeder six months ago; I had no idea what I’d got,” Dubois says in an interview with Doctor Who News. “I had about eight of them and they were gone the first weekend, lots of fans coming in. I ordered more and, boom, they were gone, too. So someone said I should make one of those full-size.”

Visitors to Dubois’ stall at the weekend Crossroads Market can see the result: a full-size wooden TARDIS, measuring more than nine feet tall, with tempered glass spelling out the iconic “POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX” sign. A fellow market vendor supplied the “PULL TO OPEN” and St. John Ambulance labels; another provided a vintage telephone perfect for recreating “that phone call” in "Deep Breath."

“On the Internet, nobody is really free with giving out all the dimensions, so I went between three different sets of drawings, and [used] educated guesses,” says Dubois, who spent 200 hours of his spare time over more than four months building it.

Dubois is raffling his TARDIS (which weighs 450 lbs, but dismantles for transport and is on coasters, which the Doctor would have found hand-y in "Flatline") for $5 a ticket, with all funds supporting Kids Help Phone, a national non-profit helpline for youth in crisis. Only 2,000 tickets will be sold, with the draw expected in February (“or whenever I run out of tickets,” he says). Dubois says whoever wins will have the option of donating the TARDIS back to be raffled again.

Meanwhile, there are lots of pictures being taken at Crossroads, and Dubois says excited fans can borrow the key to peek inside (no blackboards, but the ceiling features the Union Jack). And, of course, he still has TARDIS birdfeeders for sale.

“It’s really iconic, and it’s part of not only BBC history, but world history,” says Dubois. “I met a guy here a few weeks ago, and he was in his 80s, and he said, ‘Back in the ‘60s, I was thrown in one of those by the cops because I was drunk and disorderly!’” (No word whether the old fellow found himself nursing a hangover while being chased by Zarbi.)

For information about Kids Help Phone, visit kidshelpphone.ca.

The latest edition of the fanzine Planet of the Ming Mongs is now available as a free download.