A clean version of the cover artwork for the forthcoming special edition release of The Claws of Axos by Lee Binding has been published via the Tea-Lady Design Facebook page.

Special features have yet to be formally announced, though as well as items from the original release the new two disc set will also include a new documentary Axon Stations!, plus feature Living with Levene. Full details will be released shortly.

The special edition is currently available for pre-order at Amazon, expected to be released in the United Kingdom on 22nd October, and in North America on 13th November (cover illustration to the right).

AudioGo have released details on audio titles in their spoken word range due to be released in September.

The latest adventure for the Eleventh Doctor will be The Empty House, written by Simon Guerrier and read by Raquel Cassidy; meanwhile, Torchwood continues with The Exodus Code written by Captain Jack himself, John Barrowman with his sister Carole. For the classic series, this month's Target novelisation will be The Highlanders read by Anneke Wills, whilst the soundtrack release of Horror of Fang Rock will include linking narration by Louise Jameson. Finally, the complete series of Serpents Quest starring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor is to be released as a boxed set.

The Doctor Who adventures will be released on CD from 6th September, and can also be purchased as downloads from AudioGo from 1st September; Torchwood: The Exodus Code will be released in both formats from 13th September.

The British Board of Film Classification has now passed special features that will appear on the forthcoming DVD release of the last complete Tom Baker adventure Terror of the Zygons:

00:26:25:04  THE UNIT FAMILY - PART THREE
00:19:38:05  MERRY-GO-ROUND - THE FUEL FISHERS
00:01:47:19  (EASTER EGG)
00:05:06:24  TERROR OF THE ZYGONS - PHOTO GALLERY
00:31:22:14  SCOTCH MIST IN SUSSEX
             (REMEMBERING 'TERROR OF THE ZYGONS')
00:30:01:15  REMEMBERING DOUGLAS CAMFIELD
00:22:54:13  DOCTOR WHO STORIES - TOM BAKER
00:19:43:22  DOCTOR WHO STORIES - ELISABETH SLADEN

In addition, the Board have also passed a "director's cut" version of episode one, which has a run-time of 23m21s (the broadcast version is 21m41s).

No release date for the story has been announced at present.

The current confirmed schedule consists of Planet of Giants for 20th August, Vengeance on Varos (special edition) for 10th September, and The Ambassadors of Death for 1st October. Online retailers have also listed The Claws of Axos (special edition) for 22nd October.

Other known releases still be to scheduled include The Legacy Boxset (known to feature Shada and More Than Thirty Years In The TARDIS), The Reign of Terror (with animated episodes 4+5), Inferno (special edition), and The Mind Of Evil (with colourised episode 1 and colour-restored 2-6), plus the two recently returned episodes Galaxy Four: Air Lock and The Underwater Menace: Episode 2. How the remaining episodes of The Tenth Planet and The Ice Warriors are to be released has yet to be announced.

The Ambassadors of Death - Cover:

A clean version of the cover art by Lee Binding for October's The Ambassadors of Death has been published via the Tea-Lady Design Facebook page.

The actor Geoffrey Hughes has died at the age of 68.

Geoffrey Hughes was well known for supporting roles in several British television series. He played the lovable rogue Eddie Yeats in the soap opera Coronation Street from 1974-1983 as well as Onslow in the sitcom Keeping Up Appearances, Twiggy in the television comedy The Royle Family, and Vernon Scripps in the ITV drama series Heartbeat.

In 1986 he played Mr. Popplewick in The Ultimate Foe, the story which comprised the final two episodes of the Trial of a Time Lord Series of Doctor Who. Popplewick was the identity used by the Valeyard while in the Matrix.

Hughes also had a number of film credits to his name including Smashing Time, Till Death Us Do Part, The Bofors Gun, The Virgin Soldiers, Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall, Carry On at Your Convenience, and the cartoon Yellow Submarine for which he supplied the voice of Paul McCartney.

Hughes lived on the Isle of Wight where he was appointed Deputy Lord Lieutenant in 2009, providing the official link between the island and royalty at formal events.

Hughes had thought he had beaten prostate cancer in 2009, but a year later, after collapsing at his home, found it had returned. His agent said he died "peacefully in his sleep" on Friday night.

The actress Mary Tamm - who played the first incarnation of Romana - died this morning aged 62 after a long battle with cancer, her agent Barry Langford has announced.

Born in Dewsbury, Yorkshire, on 22nd March 1950, she graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and then acted with the Birmingham Repertory Company. Stage roles included Amanda in Private Lives and Beverly in Abigail's Party. Film and television roles followed, including Tales That Witness Madness, two appearances in Coronation Street, The Odessa File, and the film version of The Likely Lads.

She joined Doctor Who in the role of Romanadvoratrelundar, aka Romana (or Fred!), alongside Tom Baker as the Doctor for the sixteenth year of the show, which revolved around the search for the Key to Time. During the run she had the chance to play another character in the form of the identical Princess Strella in The Androids of Tara (not to mention android versions of both!). She only played the role of Romana for one year, citing that the character could not develop any further from its 'traditional' companion role, with The Armageddon Factor's guest actress Lalla Ward continuing the character from the following story.

Post-Doctor Who, Tamm continued her TV career with a recurring role as Jill Fraser in The Assassination Run and The Treachery Game, Jennifer Reynoldston in The Hello Goodbye Man, Yvonne Edwards in Paradise Heights and a stint in Brookside as Penny Crosbie. Other guest appearances included Casualty, Holby City, Jonathan Creek, Crime Traveller, Heartbeat, and adding EastEnders to her CV as Orlanda in 2009. She was due to play a judge in the film Far Out Far In but illness forestalled that role.

Though departing from Doctor Who in 1979, Tamm continued her association with the show through the audio plays of Big Finish, reprising the role of Romana - as well as the villainous Time Lord Imperiatrix Pandora - in the Gallifrey audio series. Later, she again reprised her original role for the Companion Chronicle The Stealers from Saiph in 2009, followed by Ferril's Folly and Tales from the Vault in 2011. She is also set to feature posthumously alongside Tom Baker once more, with the pair starring in the second series of The Fourth Doctor Adventures, due to be released from January 2013.

The first volume of her autobiography First Generation (Fantom Films) was published in 2009. Her official website can be found here.

Update 9th August: Tragically, her husband Marcus Ringrose also passed away this week, a few hours after Mary's funeral on Tuesday 7th August. They are survived by their daughter Lauren and family, including grandson Max.

Tributes

Her agent Barry Langford said:Tom Baker, who played the Fourth Doctor alongside Tamm, said:David Richardson, producer for Big Finish, told us:Dexter O'Neill, whose company Fantom Films published her autobiography, said:Ian Fraser, Mary's photographer, told us:Steven Moffat, current lead writer of Doctor Who, said:
On Twitter

• Colin Baker (The Doctor): Shellshocked to hear Mary Tamm is gone. A funny, caring, talented, lovely and down to earth lady. My heart goes out to Marcus and Lauren
• Nicola Bryant (Peri): Just heard the terrible news that Mary Tamm has died. Completely shocked. Very sad. Thoughts go to Marcus & Lauren. RIP Mary.
• Anneke Wills (Polly): Mary Tamm - How sad! A brave, beautiful woman, she will be greatly missed. I'm grateful to have known her. Love Anneke x
• Frazer Hines (Jamie): I'm still reeling from the shock of Mary passing away!always a smiley friendly person whenever we met at cons.
• Edward Russell (brand manager): My condolences to Mary Tamm's family. As a companion, Romana was my hero when I was 8 years old. So very sad. Guess we've reached that point in Doctor Who's history where it's time for many of its rich cast to say goodbye. Thank you for taking part.
• Nicholas Briggs (actor, Big Finish): Very sad indeed about the death of Mary Tamm. She was so much fun and lovely to work with. I shall miss her.
• Barnaby Edwards (actor): Very sad to hear of the death of Mary Tamm. A lovely actress and a sharp, witty person.
• Nicholas Pegg (actor): Raising a glass to the beautiful, talented, funny Mary Tamm. So young. What sad news.
• Paul Cornell: I'm so sorry to hear about Mary Tamm. It's an obit every month in DWM these days. How terrible.
• Andy Pryor (casting director): Sad times. Caroline John and now Mary Tamm. We salute you both.
• Mark Ayres (composer): Sad news to wake up to: RIP Mary Tamm, Doctor Who's first Romana, aka Fred. She was of the few Doctor Who girls I never met properly, though I did "music" her Myth Makers, which she played as Alice in Wonderland.
• Gary Russell (script editor): Mary Tamm, funny, sweet, smart and utterly outrageous. Will miss her so much RIP xxx
• Toby Hadoke (performer): Reeling from the news that Mary Tamm has passed away. RIP. And what?!
• Kai Owen (Rhys): Sad news indeed. RIP Mary Tamm.
• Benjamin Cook (DWM): Such sad news about Mary Tamm. I interviewed her once, in 2009. (Couldn't believe she was old enough to be a grandmother.) RIP. "I never, ever thought of Romana as a sex symbol," she said. "Glamorous, but not sexy… An old-fashioned, movie star style."
• Gary Gillatt (DWM): Mary Tamm now. Another tragedy. What an awful year it's been to be a Doctor Who fan. This terrible silence, slowly rolling over it all.

The man behind the Fifth Doctor's costume, Colin Lavers, has died.

Colin Lavers was a costume designer for the BBC. In 1982 he was scheduled to work on the Doctor Who story Four To Doomsday, which just happened to be the first story recorded by Peter Davison, and therefore the realisation of the Fifth Doctor's costume became his responsibility.

The cricket motif came out of discussions with Davison and producer John Nathan-Turner, who insisted the question-mark lapels sported by Tom Baker's Doctor should remain.

Lavers was also the costume designer on the 20th-anniversary story, The Five Doctors, which gave him the responsibility of creating costumes for a large number of Doctor Who alumni, some of whom had not been seen on television in colour before. He also worked on the 1978 story The Power of Kroll and the 1983 story The King's Demons.

Other productions in his long career included EastEnders, Last of the Summer Wine and Judge John Deed.

BBC Worldwide has confirmed that the 1970 Doctor Who story, The Ambassadors of Death, will be released on DVD in full colour.

The seven part story was made originally made in colour as part of the first Jon Pertwee season, but the only master tape to remain in the BBC Archive is that of Episode One. The rest of the story was only kept as 16mm black and white film.

A second generation colour copy does exist as an off air recording from WNED Channel 17 in Buffalo, New York and this was used to restore episodes five and six to colour for the 2002 Video release. At the time it was not possible to restore the remainder of the story.

With the advances in technology over the last decade, it is now possible to restore colour to the complete story. It was hoped to release the story last year, paired with the 1977 story The Sun Makers, however problems with restoration process caused the release to be postponed in order to allow the restoration team more time to achieve the best results on the story.

It is expected that the DVD will be released later this year.

A classic-era Doctor Who story and a new novel are getting the spoken-word treatment from AudioGo, which is also releasing its fifth and final compendium of lost TV episodes.

The Aztecs, read by William Russell, and The Wheel of Ice, read by David Troughton, join The Lost TV Episodes Collection 5 (1967-1969) in AudioGo's August release schedule.

The audiobook also boasts original sound design.

The Wheel of Ice is also being published in hardback on the same day and can be pre-ordered here.

The actress Caroline John - who played companion Liz Shaw - has died aged 71, it was announced today. The news came via a tweet from the BBC on the Doctor Who Twitter feed.

She passed away on 5th June but the news was not made public by her family until after the funeral, which took place yesterday in south-west London. The cause of death is unknown as yet.

Born in York in September 1940, John trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama then worked in theatre, touring with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre.

In 1969, she won the part of scientist and companion Dr Elizabeth Shaw opposite Jon Pertwee as the Doctor when the show was revamped for its seventh season, seeing the title character exiled to Earth. Liz Shaw appeared as a regular character for one season in 1970, with John playing two roles in the final story of that year, Inferno, the other character being Shaw's parallel-universe counterpart, Section Leader Elizabeth Shaw.

After leaving the series she had many theatre and television roles, including, in 1982, appearing in the BBC TV adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles, which starred Tom Baker as Sherlock Holmes. John returned to Doctor Who in 1983 for the 20th-anniversary special The Five Doctors, in which she played a fake Shaw. She reprised the role of Shaw for the 1993 BBC Children In Need special Dimensions In Time.

Married to Geoffrey Beevers, John appeared as Madame Salvadori with him in the Big Finish audio drama Dust Breeding, which was released in 2001. She also portrayed Liz Shaw for Big Finish for four stories in the Companion Chronicles range, starting with The Blue Tooth in 2007 and most recently in Binary, which was released just three months ago in March. In addition, she appeared as Shaw in the straight-to-video P.R.O.B.E. stories of the 1990s, which were written by Mark Gatiss and co-starred Pertwee, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy.

Paying tribute, Companion Chronicles producer David Richardson said: Colin Baker tweeted: while Mark Gatiss also paid tribute via Twitter: and on the official site Steven Moffat wrote: Big Finish executive producer Nicholas Briggs said: John and Beevers also starred together in the Agatha Christie's Poirot episode Problem At Sea on ITV in 1989. In addition, the couple had roles in the Channel 4 adaptation of the political thriller A Very British Coup in 1988. They had three children: a daughter, Daisy, and sons Ben and Tom.

Her most recent screen appearances included the 2003 rom-com film Love Actually (written and directed by Richard Curtis and featuring Bill Nighy as well as Steven Moffat's Curse of Fatal Death Doctors Rowan Atkinson and Hugh Grant) and the ITV drama series Vital Signs (with Gugu Mbatha-Raw) in 2006 and the BBC daytime drama Doctors (with Malcolm Tierney and Matthew Chambers) in 2008.

She also narrated the audiobook of Elisabeth Sladen's autobiography, which was released last November, and narrated the audiobooks of Doctor Who And The Auton Invasion (2008) and Doctor Who And The Cave Monsters (2007), which were adaptations of her first and second Doctor Who stories respectively.

UPDATE (22nd June): A spokeswoman at Caroline John's agency, Shepherd Management Ltd, confirmed to Doctor Who News that John had died of cancer.

Planet of Giants:

The British Board of Film Classification has passed the special features for the forthcoming DVD release of the final complete William Hartnell story to be released, Planet of Giants:

00:28:01:16 DOCTOR WHO - CRISIS
00:24:31:18 DOCTOR WHO - THE URGE TO LIVE
00:08:27:11 REDISCOVERING THE URGE TO LIVE
00:15:17:10 SUDDENLY SUSAN
00:13:58:23 THE LAMBERT TAPES - THE DOCTOR
00:03:20:22 PLANET OF GIANTS - PHOTO GALLERY

As previously reported, the release will feature a recreation of the original four-part story based on the original scripts and featuring newly recorded dialogue and animation. The commentary by Clive Doig, Brian Hodgson, Sonia Markham and David Tilley was also passed on 6th June.

A clean version of the cover art by Lee Binding for the DVD has been published via the Tea-Lady Design Facebook page.

Future Release Updates:

Lee Binding has reported that an announcement about The Ambassadors Of Death will be made in the next week or so. The graphic designer recently completed the DVD cover, saying: "Ambassadors sleeve submitted to @classicdw. No Liz Shaw on the front, sadly. No decent pics. Rest: kinda classy, which is nice. « I'm sure the usual #doctorwho ming-mongs will complain anyway. 'It's not GREEN. Ambassadors is a GREEN story!' *rolls eyes* «" Meanwhile, an image of the colourisation process for the story undertaken by Richard Russell was shared on Twitter by Stuart Humphryes (aka @Babelcolour), who himself is working on episode one of The Mind of Evil.

Brian Hodgson recently mentioned that he had recorded a commentary for the incomplete Patrick Troughton adventure The Moonbase. It is currently unknown if this is for a Revisitations makeover of the 2004 Lost In Time collection of existing, isolated episodes, or if it will form part of a special release of the story with an animated reconstruction of the missing episodes one and three. The Special Sound Designer also mentioned a commentary for Fury From The Deep, though this seems more likely to be for The Underwater Menace, of which episode two was recovered last year - again, the context of such a release is currently unknown.

Behind The Scenes:

Producer Chris Chapman tantalised the Twitter community this week with updates on extras being made for the series: "Heading back to London after a day of exciting Doctor Who stuff - storyboard complete! « About to start the edit proper on Secret Project 5 (our 31st Who doco) - this one's a bit mad, a bit Louis Theroux and a bit golf-y.. « SP5 is presented by Toby Hadoke and is intended for the same DVD release as SP6 (which hits the edit next week)! «"

Finally, a small event in the history of the range was marked on 29th May, reported by the BBC's Classic Series Twitter feed: "Many thanks to Ed Stradling for all his hard work, as he delivers his final documentary. Hope to persuade him back for the odd special!"