A legal tender coin, and a series of collectible coins are due to be issued to mark the 50th Anniversary.

New Zealand Mint will launch a one-ounce silver .999 coin which features an engraved picture of the TARDIS and a 50th Anniversary logo. The coin comes packaged in a 3D model replica of the TARDIS, which opens with the TARDIS sound effect.

The coins themselves are legal tender for $2 in the South Pacific Island nation Niue.

Later in the year New Zealand Mint will also release collectible coins featuring all 11 Doctors. Further Doctor Who coin releases are also planned for 2014 and 2015.

“We are thrilled to be partnering with New Zealand Mint on this global deal. It is an historic year for the Doctor Who brand, and we are pleased to be able to bring this unique product to Doctor Who fans and coin collectors alike,”
- Rachael Hammond, BBC Worldwide’s Senior Licensing Executive, Consumer Products

 “I grew up watching Doctor Who as a child in New Zealand which, coincidentally, was the first country outside the UK to screen the show. It’s a great honour to now be asked to produce these coins to celebrate the 50th anniversary. Fans are going to really like what we’ve come up with.”
- Simon Harding, NZ Mint Chief Executive

The coins will officially launch at the World Money Fair in Berlin on 1 February and will be available from 1st May. They can be pre-ordered  at www.newzealandmint.com for NZD $155 each + shipping, or via selected international coin distributors.

The BFI has changed the date of its celebratory screening of The Mind of Evil.

Originally scheduled for Saturday 2nd March at 2.30pm, it will now take place on Sunday 10th March at 2pm. The new date and time supersede the details given in the BFI brochure, which had gone to print by the time things had to be changed. It is unknown as yet why the date change had to be made. Tickets for the event have not gone on sale yet so will show the new date and time, as will the BFI's website.

The story, which has been newly colour-restored, will represent the Third Doctor's era as part of the organisation's Doctor Who At 50 season, and its big-screen showing at the BFI Southbank will be its public première in its colour-restored state ahead of being released on DVD.

Episode one of the six-part story has been "colourised", as the surviving print didn't have the necessary information to make colour recovery possible. However, episodes two to six have been fully colour restored. The screening will take place just weeks after the work has been completed by the Restoration Team.

To mark the programme's 50th anniversary this year, the BFI is showing a story per Doctor as well as digitally-restored prints of the two Dalek films starring Peter Cushing, with question-and-answer panels featuring special guests at each session. In November, it will première the docudrama, commissioned for BBC Two, about the show's genesis. Entitled An Adventure In Space And Time and written by Mark Gatiss, it starts filming at Wimbledon Studios next month.

The first two events at the BFI sold out before the first one had even taken place. The second - a screening of The Tomb of the Cybermen - will be held on Saturday 9th February. The guests for it are yet to be announced.

The titles of most of the remaining stories to be shown during the season are yet to be revealed, although the Eighth Doctor's will, of course, be Paul McGann's sole TV outing as the Doctor (so far).

BFI members receive priority booking as well as discounts on ticket prices plus exemption from booking fees. There is currently a special offer with annual membership at £30 (down from £40). The offer expires at the end of February - click here for more details.

UKTV continues its season of classic Doctor Who stories today (20 January) with the broadcast of The Dalek Invasion of Earth at 3:30pm (Australia) and 3:15pm (New Zealand). The six-part adventure is the third of four stories to be screened as part of the channel's celebration of the First Doctor this month.

It follows earlier screenings of An Unearthly Child and The Aztecs and continues with The War Machines next week, on 27 January (AU:4:30pm, NZ:4:15pm).

For New Zealand this is the fourth screening of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, and the second time that it has been broadcast to mark a milestone anniversary. It was first broadcast in November 1988 as part of the Doctor Who 'Silver Jubilee' celebration. New Zealand viewers missed out on seeing the story in the 1960s as it was judged by the NZBC censor to be unsuitable for children. It did however screen on Australian television in 1965-66.

UKTV is showing stories every Sunday throughout the year in the lead-up to Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary in November, focusing on a Doctor a month. February is dedicated to the Second Doctor, featuring The Tomb of the Cybermen (3rd), The Dominators (10th), The Mind Robber (17th), and The Seeds of Death (24th).

All up-and-coming broadcasts from both 20th and 21st Century series of Doctor Who can be found via UKTV's Doctor Who sections for Australia and New Zealand.

The producer for Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary celebratory drama An Adventure in Space and Time has been revealed to be Matt Strevens. Initially a script editor for EastEnders and The Bill, he then became producer for the latter show until 2009, before turning his hand to the shows Raw, Skins and most recently producer of the science fiction comedy drama Misfits.

Speaking on Twitter, he also confirmed that the production, written by Mark Gatiss and based at the Wimbledon Studios in London, is expected to commence from the beginning of February.

UKTV continues its season of classic Doctor Who stories today (13th) with the broadcast of The Aztecs at 4:30pm (Australia) and 4:20pm (New Zealand).The four-part adventure forms part of the channel's celebration of the First Doctor this month, which kicked off last weekend with An Unearthly Child and continues with The Dalek Invasion of Earth next week (AU:3:30pm, NZ:3:15pm), rounding off with The War Machines on the 27th (AU:4:30pm, NZ:4:20pm).

The channel is showing stories every Sunday throughout the year in the lead-up to Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary in November, focussing on a Doctor a month. February is, as one might then expect, dedicated to the Second Doctor, featuring The Tomb of the Cybermen (3rd), The Dominators (10th), The Mind Robber (17th), and The Seeds of Death (24th).

All up-and-coming broadcasts from both 20th and 21st Century series of Doctor Who can be found via UKTV's Doctor Who sections for Australia and New Zealand.

United Kingdom:

Wimbledon Studios in Deer Park Road, London, is being used for the forthcoming docudrama An Adventure In Space And Time, it has been revealed. Written by Mark Gatiss for BBC Two, the 90-minute special will detail the genesis of Doctor Who as part of the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the series. The casting for the programme, which will be shown in November, is still to be announced. [Wimbledon Guardian, 10 Jan 2013]

Still in the capital, a wooden police box is to be built at Kensington Palace to bolster the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's security. The box, measuring 1.6 metres square, will be dark blue and will have a glazed door. It will stand on the lawn on the south side, between the Grade I-listed building's high perimeter brick wall and iron railings. [Evening Standard, 3 Jan 2013]

Australia:

Ex-patriate fan Michael Lauder, originally from north Kent and now living in Melbourne, Victoria, has been talking about the thrill of building two Daleks for his personal collection, using his carpentry knowledge and learning new skills along the way, having discovered the Project Dalek forum. He said: "You never get over the thrill of having a Dalek of your own in your house." His Daleks form part of the Invasion exhibition, which is at the Warrnambool Art Gallery until Monday 28th January. [ABC South West Victoria, 7 Jan 2013]

A cleric is looking to sell his prized collection of Doctor Who videos and magazines. Father Paul Kelly, of Maryborough, Queensland, said: "I've collected them since 1983 and they're in boxes in my carport and I have made a New Year's resolution to clear my clutter." [The Gympie Times, 5 Jan 2013]

USA:

A Doctor Who club is being set up at River East Public Library in Illinois. The first meeting will be held on Tuesday 29th January at 7pm. [NorthWest Herald, 6 Jan 2013]

California-based technology expert Greg Kumparak has built a miniature TARDIS that enables an augmented reality app on his smartphone to create the illusion that the model of the police box really is bigger on the inside than on the outside. Buoyed by the positive reaction to it on Twitter and YouTube, he said: "The feedback has been resoundingly positive so far, almost shockingly so, really. Doctor Who fans might be some of the nicest people on the internet." [BBC News, 24 Dec 2012]

Special screenings at the BFI this year to celebrate Doctor Who's 50th anniversary are proving to be a massive success, with the first two events selling out before the first one has even taken place.

To mark the show's golden milestone, BFI Southbank is showing a story per Doctor as well as digitally-restored prints of the two Dalek films starring Peter Cushing, with question-and-answer panels featuring special guests at each session.

This coming Saturday sees a big-screen showing of An Unearthly Child to start the season, with the second event on the programme - a screening of The Tomb of the Cybermen - taking place on Saturday 9th February. However, in both instances BFI members, who are entitled to priority booking, have snapped up all the tickets for both shows ahead of them going on sale to the general public. Tickets for Tomb were due to go on public release on Tuesday 15th January.

Despite the overwhelming popularity of the events, there are no plans to slot in extra screenings. BFI programmer Justin Johnson told Doctor Who News: The guests at this Saturday's screening will be the Unearthly Child herself, aka Carole Ann Ford, director Waris Hussein, actors William Russell and Jeremy Young, Donald Tosh (the only surviving script editor from the William Hartnell era), Brian Hodgson of the Radiophonic Workshop, vision mixer Clive Doig, Jessica Carney (William Hartnell's granddaughter and biographer), and Mark Gatiss, who is writing a BBC Two docudrama about the show's genesis, called An Adventure In Space And Time, which will debut at the BFI in November.

The guest line-up for the screening of The Tomb of the Cybermen has yet to be announced. March will see the première of the colour-restored story The Mind of Evil ahead of its release on DVD. The remaining stories are still to be announced.

In addition to priority booking, BFI members receive discounts on ticket prices as well as exemption from booking fees. The BFI currently has a special offer with annual membership at £30 (down from £40). The offer expires at the end of February - click here for more details.

As reported last week, a new series of ebooks are to be published by Puffin over the course of Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary year, with the first book in the range being announced today by BBC Worldwide via Facebook.


Eoin Colfer is the author of the hugely successful Artemis Fowl series of books, and who also penned the sixth book in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series, And Another Thing ... - continuing the universe and characters created by Doctor Who writer/script editor Douglas Adams (whose unfinished television story Shada is released on DVD today in the United Kingdom).

A promotional video about Colfer will be released by BBC Worldwide via their YouTube channel on Friday, with the book itself published in electronic format on 23rd January through Amazon and iTunes. A paperback version will be published on the 50th Anniversary itself in November.

Update: an extract from the book has been published by the Guardian.

Penguin Books are to publish a new series of ebooks in their Puffin range for children to tie in with Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary. The series will consist of eleven short stories published electronically, with the first released on 23rd January featuring a tale about the First Doctor. Each subsequent incarnation will then be published on the 23rd of each month thereafter until the Eleventh Doctor's adventure on the anniversary itself.

The range is being produced in partnership with BBC Worldwide, who will be promoting each book through their Facebook and YouTube channels. The series launches next Monday with the author of the first book being announced on Facebook, with a promotional video appearing on YouTube the following Friday.

Each author will then continue to be announced on Facebook on the first Monday of the month, with a video on YouTube on the 11th.

Juliet Matthews, Publisher, Penguin Children's, said:
The books will be published online through Penguin itself, the iBookstore and Amazon.


In addition, the anniversary itself will see all eleven adventures released together as a single book anthology.

Other books during 2013:

Other Penguin Children’s books relating to Doctor Who this year include:

• Doctor Who: Puffin Eshorts (January – November)
  
• Doctor Who: Anniversary Sticker Book (4th April, Paperback)
  
• Doctor Who: Where’s the Doctor? (4th April, Paperback Reissue)
  
• Doctor Who: Official Annual 2014 (1st August, Hardback)
  
• Doctor Who: Lost in Space (5th September, Hardback)
  
• Doctor Who: The Essential Guide to Fifty Years of Doctor Who (October, Hardback)
  
• Doctor Who: Anniversary Anthology (November, Paperback)
  

The Royal Mail has confirmed that it will release a set of stamps in March to commemorate Doctor Who's 50th anniversary. All 11 television Doctors will be represented on first-class stamps, with their image surrounded by the title sequence and associated logo.


A five-stamp miniature sheet will also be released, with pride of place going to the TARDIS as a first-class stamp. The other four stamps will be for second class and will feature a Dalek, Cyberman, Ood and Weeping Angel.

Andrew Hammond, Managing Director, Stamps and Collectibles at Royal Mail, said:

Fiona Eastwood, Product Development Director, BBC Worldwide Consumer Products, said:

The stamps - which will be available to buy online from abroad - will be released on Tuesday 26th March 2013 and can be pre-ordered by registering with Royal Mail. A dedicated link for overseas buyers should be available tomorrow but if people from overseas want to register before then they can do so by using the "Register" link at the top right of the page linked to above.

More information relating to the issue will be released nearer the time, and Doctor Who News is delighted to say that it will be running a competition when the stamps are issued, with some terrific Doctor Who stamp prizes from Royal Mail.

UPDATE: Overseas residents can now register their interest in the stamps by using this dedicated link.