The reconstruction of the lost Dalek episode of Doctor Who, Mission to the Unknown is now available on Youtube.

The first ever officially-licensed Thirteenth Doctor Scarf is released this week by Lovarzi.

Inspired by the colourful t-shirt worn by Jodie Whittaker's incarnation of the Time Lord, this rich blue scarf is edged with a stylish rainbow pattern based on the t-shirt the Thirteenth Doctor proudly acquired at the end of her first full episode, The Woman Who Fell To Earth (2018).

This exclusive design is made from 100% high-quality Acrylic.

Maninder Singh Sahota, Director of Lovarzi, saysLovarzi's Doctor Who line launched in 2012 with the best-selling multi-coloured Fourth Doctor Scarf. Since then, the company has catered for cosplayers, collectors, and casual fans with items such as the TARDIS and Dalek Christmas Hat and Scarf, Seventh Doctor Sweater, and The Pandorica Opens Scarf. The Winter 2019/20 range also includes the TARDIS Laptop Bag.

The Thirteenth Doctor Scarf (25 x 175cms) will be available to order on 11th October, priced £24.99, from the official Lovarzi website

If you join LOVARZI Doctor Who Fan Club now and enjoy savings of 15% at time of launch plus get early exclusive access to buy the scarf.

A recreation of a long lost Doctor Who episode is to be released on the official Doctor Who YouTube channel, exactly 54 years after it was first screened in the UK.

Mission to the Unknown was first screened on BBC One on Saturday 9th October 1965. Sometimes known as The Dalek Cutaway it was a prequel to the upcoming 12 part story The Dalek Masterplan and is the only Doctor Who episode in history in which neither The Doctor or any of his companions are featured.

The original episode was destroyed by the BBC many years ago, but the story has been faithfully recreated by a team of students, graduates and staff of the University of Central Lancashire.

The new production will be premiered on the Doctor Who YouTube channel at exactly 5.50pm BST on the 9th October to mark the anniversary of the original broadcast of the episode.

The project was masterminded by Andrew Ireland, Pro-Vice Chancellor of Digital and Creative Industries at the university, and brought together a dedicated group of students from a wide range of disciplines including film and television, acting, fashion, music, design and dance to recreate the episode from the original script as authentically as possible, carefully researching and reproducing as faithfully as possible the original 1960s production techniques to re-create the classic look of the series.

The recreation caught the imagination of several Doctor Who luminaries including Nicholas Briggs, who has provided the Dalek voices for the recreated episode, and stars including Peter Purves, who played 1960s companion Steven Taylor, and Edward de Souza, who played Marc Cory in the original episode, visiting the new set to lend their support.

The episode will be followed by a making-of documentary short created by YouTuber Josh Snares.

Luke Spillane, Digital Publishing Manager for Doctor Who at BBC Studios, said: Andrew Ireland, Pro-Vice Chancellor of Digital and Creative Industries at the University of Central Lancashire, said:

Ninth Doctor Christopher Eccleston has been announced as a guest at the annual Gallifrey One Convention to be held in Los Angeles early next year.

The appearance will see the actor attend both days of the convention, now in its thirty-first year.

Christopher Eccleston has for many years been reluctant to discuss his time in Doctor Who. He was cast as The Doctor when the series returned in 2005, but only served for one year. The manner of his departure was controversial with the BBC at the time having to apologise for a press release issued on his departure which was inaccurate over the reasons the star left the series.

Eccleston said the incident at the time left him feeling bitter. In recent years he has been more amenable to discussing his role as the Doctor and in his recent autobiography, he paid tribute to the show's fans. Eccleston has recently released a new memoir I Love the Bones of You: My Father And The Making Of Me, a gritty account of his life, his battles and his relationship with his father, who suffers from dementure. In the book, the actor discusses his mental health, revealing that he has lived with eating disorders and had considered suicide. He revealed that while making Doctor Who he was suffering from anorexia. A spokesperson for the eating disorder charity Beat praised the actor's courage speaking about having anorexia.

In the UK Christopher Eccleston will be discussing the book at a special event being held at the Lowry Theatre in Salford Quays on Monday 14th October.

BBC Studios have announced that Season 26 will be the next instalment in the DOCTOR WHO: THE COLLECTION Blu-ray range

Released on Monday 23rd December is the acclaimed final season from the series’ original run, starring Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred:

Doctor Who – The Collection: Season 26

• BATTLEFIELD
• GHOST LIGHT
• THE CURSE OF FENRIC
• SURVIVAL

In 1989, Doctor Who was on a creative high, with the Seventh Doctor and his companion Ace revitalising the programme for a new generation. Season 26 featured four epic adventures traversing a future Britain invaded by inter-dimensional knights, a strange Victorian house haunted by ghosts from Ace’s past, an alien world populated by Cheetah People and a 1940s army camp under siege from monstrous vampires.

With guest stars including Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), Anthony Ainley (The Master), Jean Marsh, Nicholas Parsons, Anne Reid, Ian Hogg, Sylvia Syms and comedy duo Hale & Pace, this fondly-remembered set of stories saw the end of an era for Doctor Who, and set the stage for its hugely successful revival.

With all episodes newly remastered from the best available sources, this Blu-ray box set also contains extensive and exclusive special features including:

Rare Restored Extended Cuts

• The Curse of Fenric VHS Extended Version
• The Curse of Fenric DVD Special Edition
• Battlefield VHS Extended Version
• Battlefield DVD Special Edition

5.1 surround sound & isolated scores

• On all 14 broadcast episodes, plus 5.1 sound on all extended versions of The Curse Of Fenric and Battlefield.

Behind the Sofa

• New episodes with Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, plus companions Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton, Anneke Wills and Jodie-Whittaker-era writers Pete McTighe & Joy Wilkinson.

Showman - the Life of John Nathan-Turner

• A feature-length look at the life and career of Doctor Who’s longest-serving producer, who fought to keep the programme on-air during the 1980s. Contributors include Peter Davison and Colin Baker.

Making ‘The Curse of Fenric’

• A brand new documentary featuring Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Tomek Bork, Nicholas Parsons, Cory Pulman, Marek Anton, Ian Briggs, Andrew Cartmel, Mark Ayres and Ian Collins featuring unseen behind-the-scenes footage and photographs.

In Conversation

• Matthew Sweet chats to companion Sophie Aldred.

The Writers’ Room

• Ben Aaronovitch, Marc Platt, Ian Briggs, Rona Munro and Andrew Cartmel discuss their work on Season 26.

Becoming The Destroyer

• Actor Marek Anton and prosthetics designer Stephen Mansfield recall the creation of one of Doctor Who’s best ever monsters.

The seven-disc box set also includes hours of special features previously released on DVD.

Pre-order on Amazon.

On Saturday 23rd November, the BFI Southbank will be screening Doctor Who: The Curse of Fenric (from the Special Edition Blu-ray) and holding a Q&A with actor Sophie Aldred and script editor Andrew Cartmel. Tickets are available from the BFI on the following dates:

• Monday 16th September – BFI Patrons and Champions
• Tuesday 17th September – BFI Members
• Tuesday 24th September – public booking

Big Finish have announced four new adventures for the Sixth Doctor and Peri for August 2020, set after The Trial of a Time Lord and their audio adventure The Rani Elite.

Producer/Director Scott Handcock said:

Nicola Bryant said about her character's return:

This new set of stories will also feature Colin Baker's daughter Rosie in the third adventure.

The latest in the series looking in detail at the making of Doctor Who, Black Archive, has been published by Obverse Books

Edition #34 looks at the seventh Doctor story Battlefield and come from range editor, Philip Purser-Hallard.

Often seen as the black sheep of the final season of 20th century Doctor Who, Battlefield also happens to be one of Purser-Hallard's favourite Who stories, but he's not allowed that fondness to blind him the serial's faults - though fair to say he doesn't pan it either.

Battlefield (1989) sees a clash of mythologies, as the progressive, anti-racist, sporadically pacifist Doctor Who of the late 1980s takes on Britain’s authoritarian, chivalric national myth of King Arthur. With a script by Ben Aaronovitch, now a bestselling urban fantasy novelist but then only the writer of the previous year’s acclaimed Remembrance of the Daleks (1988), it forms with its predecessor a ‘philosophical pair’, replacing its 1960s setting with an imagined 1990s and showing a Doctor dealing with the repercussions of his future actions, rather than his past. Even as a script Battlefield falls short of complete success, yet it remains an emotionally literate, politically engaged and thematically complex piece. It finds areas of overlap between Andrew Cartmel’s radical conception of Doctor Who and Arthurian myth in the legend of a past golden age, represented by the return of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT, and in the identification of the Doctor – always presented by the series as a wizard, a prophet and a mentor – with Merlin. It interrogates the patriarchal attitudes of both the Arthurian myths and 1970s Doctor Who from a contemporary perspective, and questions the attitudes to war found in both.

It also does an exemplary job of worldbuilding, sketching in a convincing near future based on a handful of lines, and presents a complex, questionable, even sympathetic villain motivated by a value system alien to our own. Finally, it raises questions of predestination: through the other characters’ foreknowledge of the Doctor’s future; through the fate apparently decreed for Ancelyn and Bambera; and, perhaps, through the Brigadier’s survival of a story whose structure seems to demand that he should die.

Philip Purser-Hallard is the founding editor of the Black Archive range, the author of The Black Archive #4: Death in Heaven and co-author of The Black Archive #13: Human Nature / The Family of Blood.

He has published five novels, including a trilogy of near-future Arthurian urbanfantasy political thrillers, The Pendragon Protocol, The Locksley Exploit and Trojans, and a Sherlock Holmes novel, The Vanishing Man.

Link to Website

A new Doctor Who Short Trips has just been released by Big Finish

Doctor Who: Short Trips – Battle Scars, by Selim Ulug, takes us back in history as the Ninth Doctor makes a voyage on the Titanic.

Writer Selim Ulug, a previous winner of the Paul Spragg Memorial Short Trips Opportunity, told us more about this tale for the Ninth Doctor (set before he met Rose)Narrated by Nicholas Briggs, Doctor Who – Short Trips: Battle Scars is available now at just £2.99 on download (only) from Big Finish.

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Coming next in the Short Trips range, #HarrySullivan gets trending!

This Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane and, of course, Harry Sullivan story is narrated by Louise Jameson.

Following the sell-out success of Big Finish Productions limited edition Doctor Who stories on vinyl, the audio company is delighted to announce another exclusive release in conjunction with Sainsbury's.

Doctor Who: Wave of Destruction starring Tom Baker, Lalla Ward and John Leeson on Friday 19th July 2019. It will be released as a Limited Edition run of 1500 copies on ocean swirl vinyl – only available in the UK, in Sainsbury’s stores.

In this full-cast audio drama from 2016, the Vardans return to take on Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor. The Doctor had previously encountered the Vardans on Gallifrey, the Doctor’s home planet, in the 1978 television story, The Invasion of Time.

Tom Baker portrayed the Doctor on screen from 1974 until 1981 returning to star alongside Matt Smith, David Tennant and John Hurt as the curator in the 50th anniversary TV special, The Day of the Doctor, in 2013.

John Leeson was first brought in as the voice of K-9 – the Fourth Doctor’s robot dog – for the 1977 TV story, The Invisible Enemy. After a short break John returned for season 18 of Doctor Who in 1980. He also reprised his role as K-9 in the pilot TV episode for K-9 and Company (1981 – a spin-off from Doctor Who) and voiced K-9 for the 20th anniversary TV episode of Doctor Who, The Five Doctors and the 2006 Doctor Who TV episode, School Reunion.

Lalla Ward made her debut as Romana in December 1979, and after almost three series she made her last appearance alongside John Leeson in January 1981.

Of this special vinyl release, Lalla Ward said: Wave of Destruction, written by Justin Richards, is the first story of the fifth series of The Fourth Doctor Adventures, produced by Big Finish Productions.

BBC Studios has announced that The Faceless Ones will be the next animated Doctor Who release.

The release follows the success of The Power of the Daleks, Shada and The Macra Terror. The Faceless Ones will be released on DVD, Blu-Ray and as an exclusive steelbook next year.

The Faceless Ones is the mostly missing eighth serial of the fourth season in Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts from April to May 1967. Starring Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, the story concerns a race of identity-stealing aliens known as the Chameleons.

The story is the last to feature Michael Craze as Ben and Anneke Wills as Polly.

Only two of the six episodes are held in the BBC film archives with snippets of footage and still images existing from the other four. Off-air recordings of the soundtrack also still exist, making the animation of a complete serial possible once again.

The six new animated episodes are being made in full colour and high definition and will be released on DVD and Blu-ray in 2020. The DVD/Blu-ray release will also include surviving archive material from the original 1967 production.

The Faceless Ones is available for preorder as Blu-Ray, DVD and Steelbook.