BBC Worldwide has announced that first three minutes of the animated Power of the Daleks will be premiered live on twitter via Periscope this Saturday.

The original transmission of the episode took place on BBC 1 at 5.50pm on Saturday 5th November 1966. The animated reconstruction will be live streamed exactly 50 years after that first broadcast at 5.50pm on Saturday 5th November 2016. The twitter feed will be available globally.

Fans in the UK will then be able to access the entire first episode on BBC Store from 5.50pm on Saturday, with the remaining five episodes being released 1 per day over the following five days. The DVD will be released in the UK on Monday 21st November.

Jonathan Green, Director of BBC Store says
Rhidian Bragg Head of Sales, Consumer Products, BBC Worldwide added
Georgina Parnell, Head of Entertainment Partnerships, Twitter said
The Power of the Daleks has been lost since its one broadcast on BBC One. The animated reconstruction has been masterminded by Charles Norton, working with Martin Geraghly and Adrian Salmon who did the character designs. The team was responsible for the successful animation of a lost Dad's Army episode A Stripe for Frazer, which was released on BBC Store earlier this year.

The work has been intense for Norton, with work on the final two episodes completed earlier this week. The project was helped by the existence of a complete set of Studio camera scripts, which detail the exact framing for each shot used in the original recording. He described the project as challenging, with instructions such as The Doctor does a little jig, being very difficult to recreate in animation, particularly with a character wearing checked trousers. For sequences pre-filmed at Ealing studios there was no camera script available and the animation team had to improvise far more.

The sound has been restored by Mark Ayres, who had access to the original music sessions and sound effect recordings which still exist on quarter inch tape, and was able to create both a stereo and a 5.1 mix for the animated version.

One of the stars of the story, Anneke Wills who played Polly, saw the first two episodes for the first time at a press screening on Thursday. Although Wills has recorded a commentary for the story, it was done viewing an incomplete print. On viewing the completed episodes she declared herself thrilled with the result. She particularly relished Patrick Troughton's vocal performance which she said shines through from the very start.

The BBC have also announced that a colour version of the story will be available on BBC Store in the UK from 31st December 2016 and also on a Special Edition Bluray available from 6th February 2017.

Although the BBC Store is not available in the US, the story will be screened weekly on BBC America starting on November 19. This is in addition to a number of movie theatre screenings on November 14. BBC America will make the colour version available exclusively on their digital platforms towards the end of November. and from January 24, 2017 the story will be available on DVD exclusively at Barnes & Noble, this includes the colour version.

The story will also be screened at selected theatres in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

BBC Worldwide said today that there are no current plans to animate any other missing Doctor Who stories, but, if Power of the Daleks sells well, it is an option they would certanly consider.

The BBC have announced that a colour version of the animated story The Power of the Daleks is to be released at the end of the year.

The Black and White version is being released this weekend on BBC Store, with a DVD release coming on 21 November. It is now confirmed that a colour version will be released on BBC Store on 31st December followed by a Special Edition Bluray, containing both the Black and White and Colour versions, from 6th February 2017.

BBC America is screening the Black and White version weekly from November 19, and will make the colour version available exclusively on their digital platforms towards the end of November. From January 24, 2017 both versions of the story will be available on a Region 1 DVD, exclusively at Barnes & Noble.

As in previous years, the BBC's annual charity fundraising evening for Children in Need will feature an item relating to the forthcoming Doctor Who Christmas Special.

This year this will take the form of an exclusive clip from The Return of Doctor Mysterio:

This year's Children in Need takes place in the evening of Friday 18th November.

Doctor Who historian David J Howe has launched a project to raise money for the establishment of a Doctor Who Merchandise Museum.

Since the seventies, David J Howe has been collecting merchandise, magazines, original costumes, artwork and props and now arguably holds the biggest collection of 'Doctor Who' merchandise and memorabilia in the world. His dream is to launch a museum in which to display and share his collection.

Howe already has premises just outside Sleaford in Lincolnshire, but now needs to raise money via an Indiegogo fundraiser to equip and display the items in the museum. Howe aims to be able to launch the Museum in the summer of 2018. As part of the fundraising there are a number of perks which people can buy, which include: exclusive invitations to the Launch Day, private dinners with Howe and his wife, the novelist Sam Stone; dinner with Doctor Who actor Frazer Hines; and lunch with Star Trek's Chase Masterson in LA. Other perks include special signed proof pages from one of Howe's books and bundles of goodies donated by Doctor Who Author Richard Dinnick. The Indiegogo runs until the end of the year, and full details can be found online

David Tennant is to return to the London stage, appearing in a production of Patrick Marber’s play Don Juan in Soho.

The play, an updated version of the classic Molière comedy, will be staged at London's Wyndham’s theatre next spring.

Tennant's previous outing in the West End was also at Wyndham’s theatre when he starred in the 2011 production of Much Ado About Nothing, alongside Catherine Tate.

Don Juan in Soho originally premiered at the Donmar Warehouse theatre in London in 2006, when it starred Rhys Ifans as the lordly Don Juan.

Panini have announced the latest in their ongoing Doctor Who Essentials series of special magazines:


The Essential Doctor Who: Invasions of Earth is on sale now at WH Smith and all good newsagents.

The BBC have released a new set of pictures from the fourth episode of Class, Co-Owner Of A Lonely Heart.

The episode is released on BBC Three next Saturday, after which it will be released around the world. Full Details

It was fifty years ago today, on Saturday 29th October 1966, that we bid farewell to the First Doctor.

At exactly 50 minutes and 47 seconds past five, 7.5 million viewers tuned into BBC 1 to hear the theme music ring out and the last William Hartnell episode begin. 24 minutes later it was all over. We had a new Doctor.

William Hartnell had appeared in 127 episodes of Doctor Who, appearing in 29 stories. He would return to the series in 1972, in four episodes of The Three Doctors. To date only one actor, Tom Baker, has appeared in more Doctor Who episodes than Hartnell, whose episodes, if played sequentially, would last for 2 days. 8 hours and 1 minute.

Fifty years on, William Hartnell's influence is still felt in the series, and in the character he created. His final episode has been lost, but one sequence survives. It is perhaps the most important sequence in the series history. The regeneration. With that one scene, the programme's future was guaranteed. The series could outlive its creators. Its immortality was assured.

BBC Worldwide has confirmed the additional material that will be included on the release of the animated version of The Power of the Daleks.

This highly anticipated adventure will be released on BBC Store on Saturday 5th November, exactly 50 years to the minute after it was first transmitted on BBC One at 5.50pm. The UK release of the DVD will follow on Monday 21st November. A wealth of extra material will be available with both the BBC Store and DVD releases.

Extra treats fans can look forward to include commentaries and surviving footage, together with a documentary feature which stars the original cast and crew. Other bonus features include a gallery of artwork from the animation, and original shooting script. There’s even a rare chance to hear the original Dalek recordings from the show.

Power of the Daleks is one of the Doctor’s most celebrated adventures and yet no complete film recordings of The Power of the Daleks are known to have survived. The master negatives were destroyed in an archive purge in 1974.

The six 25 minute episodes feature the regeneration, or as it was then called ‘renewal’, of First Doctor William Hartnell into Second Doctor Patrick Troughton, as the Time Lord and his companions Polly (Anneke Wills) and Ben (Michael Craze) do battle with the Daleks on the planet Vulcan.

Animator Charles Norton says: Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks will be priced at £9.99 SD and £12.99 HD from bbcstore.com from 5th November where each episode will air on consecutive days.

The DVD will be released in the UK on 21st November priced at £20.42

A full list of extras is here, and will be available on BBC Store from 14th November and on the DVD on the 21st;

• Alternate soundtracks – DVD only
The option to listen to the story with a series of completely new digital re-masters of the original soundtrack – a stereo mix; a 5.1 surround sound mix and version of the original 1966 mono sound mix.
• Animation Test Footage
A compilation of animation tests, created during the production of the new animated series.
• Audio Commentaries on all 6 episodes – DVD only
Members of the original cast and crew are joined by members of the new animation unit to discuss the production of the story and its new animated reconstruction. Moderated by Toby Hadoke. Includes archive audio.
• Booklet with Production Notes – DVD only
An extensively researched set of production notes, written by the noted television historian Andrew Pixley, covering the behind the scenes story of how the original production was made.
• Original Camera Scripts – DVD only
Selected items of original production paperwork and a complete set of original camera scripts
• Original Title Sequence - new restoration
An unedited presentation of the full original 'Doctor Who' title sequence, prepared using an all new HD re-master of the original film elements.
• The Power of the Daleks Animation and Photo Gallery
An extended gallery of images, featuring production photographs from the original 1966 series and artwork from the latest animated production, accompanied by incidental music from the story, which has been digitally re-mastered from the original music production tapes.
• The Power of the Daleks Surviving Footage & Original Trailer – BBC Store/EST only
A compilation of short film fragments and clips from the original 1966 BBC television production - the only surviving footage to remain of the show's original BBC1 run.
• Original Dalek Voice Session Recording (1966) DVD only
Rare and previously unreleased sections from the studio recordings that were made at Maida Vale Studios in 1966 for the Dalek voices.
• Servants and Masters - The Making of The Power of the Daleks
A specially prepared documentary directed by John Kelly and featuring interviews with members of the original 1966 cast and crew.
• Telesnap reconstruction.
Around 400 individual still frames of film exist from the original 1966 television production of The Power of the Daleks. These images were kept in the programme's production files by the BBC Written Archive Centre. These images are here combined with the programme's soundtrack to present a photographic reconstruction of the original programme.

BBC Books are to re-publish the three original Doctor Who novelisations from the 1960s on 3rd November 2016, reproducing the hardback books with their original covers and content: