Posted By John Bowman

With filming having begun on Series Three of Torchwood, the BBC Press Office today said the team would be engaged in a "battle for the future of the human race against the fiercest force they have encountered".

Co-executive producer Russell T Davies said: "The new series of Torchwood is hugely bold and promises to be bigger and better than ever - the audience is in for an amazing ride.

"This series is one big serial and the most ambitious story we've ever made, and we've got plenty of surprises in store."

Fellow co-executive producer Julie Gardner said: "We hope to make Torchwood a gripping and surprising TV event with storylines that push our team into greater danger and sacrifice.

"Joining our main cast are some fantastic guest artists who will only add to making this unmissable TV."

The guest stars are Peter Capaldi - Caecilius in the Doctor Who story The Fires of Pompeii - playing a civil servant called Mr Frobisher "who is hiding a terrible secret", Paul Copely and Liz May Brice.

The five-part series - called Torchwood: Children Of Earth - is being written by Davies, John Fay and James Moran, and directed by Euros Lyn. Produced by Peter Bennett, it will air over one week next year.

Doctor Who's first director Waris Hussein will be guest of honour at the National Media Museum's Bite The Mango film festival, taking place in Bradford from September 19-25, 2008.

As well as receiving a lifetime achievement award and being interviewed about his 40 years as a director, Hussein will be taking part in an interview specifically about directing the very first Doctor Who serial An Unearthly Child and the lost epic story Marco Polo.

The interview will take place on Sunday, September 21 at the museum in Bradford. It will be accompanied by photographs from the museum's Daily Herald archive and a screening of the 'take one' version of the episode "An Unearthly Child". Further details and tickets will be available from the museum's website.

Just a couple of weeks following the release of complete seasons of new series Doctor Who on iTunes in the USA, a selection of classic Doctor Who adventures are now available on the download service as well.

While most of the titles released so far have already been made available on DVD, such as "Carnival of Monsters", "Mark of the Rani" and "The Ark in Space", a number of stories have been released that are avaiable nowhere else (with the VHS releases now long out-of-print), like "The Krotons", "The Sun Makers" and "Planet of the Spiders".

The stories are avaiable episodically, and cost $1.99 per episode.

Posted By John Bowman

The title of the five-part story that will comprise Series Three of Torchwood is Children of Earth.

Issue 8 of the programme's official magazine, out today, revealed the name.

The episodes, to be directed by Euros Lyn, will be shown over one week next spring. Principal photography starts on August 18.

Posted By John Bowman

The Restoration Team today released details of the forthcoming DVD releases of The War Machines and Four To Doomsday.

The War Machines, which the team first looked at 11 years ago, proved to be quite a problem, and Restoration Team member Steve Roberts goes into great detail regarding the work that has been done on the story.

The feature also includes a link to the 1min 3sec "Coming Soon" trailer for The War Machines that never made it to previous DVD releases because of last-minute schedule changes.

Extras include a then-and-now comparison of locations plus related excerpts from Blue Peter.

The extras on Four To Doomsday will include material from Peter Davison's first day in the studios as the Doctor, which has come from late producer John Nathan-Turner's personal archive, Davison's Boxing Day 1980 appearance on magazine show Saturday Night At The Mill plus a theme music video featuring a new remix of Peter Howell's arrangement.

Videotape dropout had affected the studio block 1 material but otherwise it proved to be what Roberts called "a very standard restoration job".

The War Machines will be released in the UK on August 25 and Four To Doomsday on September 15.

(With thanks to Tony Clark.)

The official BBC website has announced that the forthcoming DVD release of the 1986 Sixth Doctor epic The Trial of a Time Lord has been delayed from its intended August 25th release date. It will now be released on September 29th, though no reason has been given for the delay. In its place, the First Doctor serial The War Machines starring William Hartnell, Jackie Lane, Michael Craze and Anneke Wills, will now be released on August 25th.

Also released in the same article is a a better-quality scan of the cover illustration for the forthcoming UK DVD release of the Fifth Doctor serial Four to Doomsday starring Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Matthew Waterhouse and Sarah Sutton, which is out this autumn. The cover art was originally revealed yesterday on the Amazon.co.uk website. Click on the thumbnail image below for a larger version.

Issue 398 of Panini's Doctor Who Magazine was published in the United Kingdom yesterday, and contains several pieces of information of interest concerning the forthcoming special episodes of Doctor Who.

It is confirmed that the title of this year's Christmas episode - which will be 60 minutes long - is not "The Return of the Cybermen", as some have surmised from the teaser trailer at the conclusion of "Journey's End". This was merely a teaser description of the episode. It is also confirmed that actors David Morrissey, Dervla Kirwan and Velile Tshabalalawill be guest- starring in the episode, with Kirwan playing a character named Miss Hartigan. Andy Goddard directs, withSusie Liggat producing.

Of the four further specials which will follow in 2009, it is announced that Russell T Davies will write two of them solo, with the other two to be co-written with Gareth Roberts and Phil Ford respectively. Roberts penned "The Shakespeare Code" and "The Unicorn and the Wasp" for Doctor Who, while Ford wrote "Eye of the Gorgon" and "The Lost Boy" for The Sarah Jane Adventures - the series for which he is now chief writer - and "Something Borrowed" for Torchwood. His work on the special will make him the only writer after Davies to have written for all three shows.

Elsewhere in the magazine, information is given on release dates for the remaining classic series DVD releases of 2008. "The Trial of a Time Lord" comes out on August 18, "Four To Doomsday" on September 15, "The War Machines" on September 29 and finally "Battlefield" on December 29.

Doctor Who was the second most-watched show in the month of June on the new version of the BBC iPlayer catch-up service available to subscribers of the Virgin Media cable television platform. According to a report in The Guardian, the Virgin Media version of the iPlayer - which is also available to UK broadband internet users via the BBC website - attracted 10 million users to its programming during its first full month in operation.

The top ten most-viewed programmes were, according to The Guardian:

Delia Derbyshire's extensive collection of recordings has been taken up by academics at Manchester University for cataloguing and digital conversion.After she died in 2001, the recordings were entrusted to composerMark Ayres by her estate, as he was a friend of hers and because of his involvement with the Radiophonic Workshop archive.Derbyshire, who created the original arrangement of the Doctor Who theme music, composed by Ron Grainer, left behind a stockpile of 267 tapes. Her groundbreaking work is credited as having influenced the likes of The Crystal Method and Portishead.David Butler, a lecturer in screen studies at the university's School of Art, Histories and Culture, said: "We have just started to scratch the surface. The collection includes her freelance work and really does give us a better sense of her range. Many of the tapes have no labels so it is a case of using detective work to find out what they are.
"Delia Derbyshire never really received the recognition she deserved as one of our most influential composers of the past 30 or so years.

"Though brilliant, the Doctor Who theme is just one small example of her genius which was held in high esteem by figures across music, television, theatre and film, including Paul McCartney and John Peel, the disc jockey."

Ayres told The Doctor Who News Page: "Unfortunately, it became apparent that I was not going to be able to find the many months (possibly years) of time that researching the material properly would take, so I have passed the material on to the University of Manchester and David Butler on permanent loan so that they can do it properly."

He remains the titular owner of the material on behalf of Derbyshire's estate and is working closely with Butler as a consultant on the collection.

Ayres said: "The aim is to cross-reference it with the Radiophonic Workshop archive and hopefully end up, in due course, with a definitive study of Delia's life and work."

Probably the most surprising discovery in the collection is a piece of music that sounds like a contemporary dance track which was recorded, it is believed, in the late-Sixties.

Paul Hartnoll, formerly of the dance group Orbital and a great admirer of Derbyshire's work, said the track was "quite amazing".

"That could be coming out next week on [left-field dance label] Warp Records," he noted. "It's incredible when you think when it comes from. Timeless, really. It could be now as much as then."

For the full story and to listen to sound clips from the collection, visit the BBC News website.

The story is also covered by The Times and The Daily Telegraph.