The stop motion animated fan series, Doctor Puppet is seeking funding via Indiegogo to make their next Christmas Special episode. The previous specials, "How the Doctor Puppet Saved Christmas" and "Doctor Puppet - A Timelord Christmas" have more than 180k views each. The campaign was started on 29 September and will finish on 29 October 2014. The perks for donating money range from a simple thank you card at $5 to having a custom puppet created plus all the other perks which will cost $5,000. The goal for the project is set at $15,000 with over 52% already raised. The production was recently featured on BBC America's Earth Conquest documentary where Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman provided voices for their puppets. The documentary will be available in full on the Series 8 DVD.

BBC Worldwide are offering replacement discs to fans who bought the Blu-ray version of the 50th Anniversary box set. The new disc will fix a frame rate fault on Disc 2 which contains The Day of the Doctor. Fans have been expressing disappointed with the fault on forums since the release on 8 September and eventually drew attention of the BBC. One fan received the following email:

Doctor Who: Mummy On The Orient Express finished the week as the 14th most watched programme on British Television, according to figures from Barb.

Top for the week was the final of The Great British Bake Off, which had 13.51 million watching, over 3 million more than the second placed Downton Abbey.

Doctor Who edged ahead of the Friday edition of EastEnders, and this week outrated Emmerdale. The series has had a top twenty place for every episode so far in the current series.

Doctor Who writer Neil Gaiman has indicated that recruiting women writers is “a priority” for people working on the show.

The Who script editors and producers he has worked with on a direct basis - most of them women - have been giving much attention to bringing onboard female writers, he said.

Posting on Tumblr in response to a question from site user lenyberry, Gaiman also added: As well as suggesting that Moffat has found these set-backs frustrating, Gaiman said that Who certainly needs "some women writing for it."

Both lenyberry’s query and Gaiman’s answer make reference to another question the writer tackled on Tumblr this month.

When guyplayfair asked which Who writer Gaiman would hug, the author quipped that he wanted to hug every woman that has written for the series this side of 2008 - a number that, as he noted, is zero (at least as far as TV episodes are concerned).

“That can’t be right... (goes off, puzzled),” he added.

The response, Gaiman said in his more recent post, “was mostly wistful” and wasn’t meant to be the attack on the programme’s makers he has seen it read as.

To contextualise his comments it’s worth noting that since 2005 only four TV Who episodes out of more than 100 have been written by a woman.

Helen Raynor penned 2007 adventure Daleks in Manhattan/ Evolution of the Daleks and followed this up in 2008 with The Sontaran Stratagem/ The Poison Sky.

Between Rose (2005) and last week’s Flatline, 23 different writers have had television episodes credited to them, meaning only around four per cent of these have not been men.

Gaiman, a well known writer across several mediums from graphic novels to long-form fiction, has authored TV Who twice, with The Doctor’s Wife (2011) and Nightmare in Silver (2013). Last year, he also released Eleventh Doctor short story Eleven O’Clock.

His most recent novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, was named Book of the Year at the 2013 National Book Awards in Britain.

The BBC have confirmed that the penultimate episode in the current run of Doctor Who, Dark Water, will broadcast in the UK on 1st November at the slightly earlier time of 8:15pm.

The programme will once more follow Strictly Come Dancing and will be followed by Casualty. On the other main UK channels the episode is scheduled against ITV's The X Factor (which airs from 8:00pm to 10:00pm), a repeat of Dad's Army, on BBC2, Walking through History on Channel 4, and World War II in Colour on Channel Five.

Live +7 figures are now available for the first four episodes of the current series of Doctor Who.

The Live+7 figure are a measure used by the BBC to estimate the total audience for a programme. Unlike the official BARB figure, it includes not only those who watch the BBC One broadcast and those who time-shift it, but also those who watch the repeats on other UK channels and those who watch the programme on i-Player. The total figure is an estimate of the total number of unique viewers who watched the episode, in the UK, within one week on broadcast.

Episode	Live + Same Day	Repeat	Time Shift	iPlayer	Total Live+7
Deep Breath	6.81 (63%)	0.46 (4%)	2.53 (23%)	0.97 (9%)	10.76 million
Into the Dalek	5.16 (62%)	0.40 (5%)	2.21 (27%)	0,50 (6%)	8.26 million
Robot of Sherwood	5.26 (64%)	0.44 (5%)	2.03 (25%)	0.51 (6%)	8.25 million
Listen	4.82 (62%)	0.37 (5%)	2.14 (27%)	0.48 (6%)	7.80 million
BBC Average	(85%)	(6%)	(7%)	(3%)

Author and scriptwriter Gareth Roberts, writer of several Doctor Who books and scripts over the past 20 years, has this evening announced on Twitter that he is no longer working on a novelisation of the 1979 Doctor Who serial City of Death, the most-watched story in the programme's history. Instead, the book will now be written by author and former BBC Doctor Who website editor James Goss. Goss's previous work includes the Torchwood novel Almost Perfect, the Tenth Doctor audio book Dead Air, and being one of the first authors to pen a novel for the Twelfth Doctor with the recent The Blood Cell. He also worked as producer of the animated Doctor Who serials Scream of the Shalka and The Infinite Quest.

City of Death was originally scripted by producer Graham Williams and script editor Douglas Adams, from a story idea by David Fisher. Transmitted under the pseudonym of "David Agnew", the story gained over 16 million viewers in the autumn of 1979, but like Adams's other scripts for Doctor Who, rights issues meant that - unlike the majority of classic series stories - a novelisation was never produced under the original Target Books run.

In October last year it was announced that Roberts would finally be penning a novelisation of City of Death, following the success of his novelisation of Adams' scripts for the unfinished serial Shada in 2012. Roberts had become particularly known for his affinity with the Season 17 era of Doctor Who during the mid-1990s, when he penned three well-received books set during that season for Virgin Publishing's Missing Adventures range of original Doctor Who novels. Two of Roberts's Missing Adventures for the Season 17 TARDIS team are currently being adapted into audio plays by Big Finish Productions.

Roberts's novelisation of City of Death had originally been expected to be released this year - there is currently no information on when Goss's eventual version of the book may be on the shelves.

German book publisher Cross Cult is planning to release three new Doctor Who books in the coming months:

• November sees the release of Gareth Roberts's adaption of Shada, based on a script by Douglas Adams. The novel can be pre-ordered on Amazon DE.
• In December Cross Cult is going to release the children's book Wann ist der Doktor? Ein Wimmelbuch ("When's the Doctor? A search-and-find book"), featuring illustrations by Jorge Santillan. It can also be pre-ordered from Amazon DE.
• Finally, the publisher announced that they secured the rights for the War Doctor novel Kriegsmaschinen ("Engines of War") by George Mann. It will be released in February 2015 and can already be pre-ordered.

Cross Cult, primarily known for its german translated Star Trek novels, started publishing Doctor Who novels in 2013, when they released the 2nd Doctor novel Rad aus Eis ("The Wheel of Ice") by Stephen Baxter. They went on to publish the 10th Doctor novel Wunderschönes Chaos ("Beautiful Chaos") by Gary Russell, and the anthology 11 Doktoren, 11 Geschichten ("11 Doctors, 11 Stories").

This week's issue of Doctor Who Adventures magazine features an imposter in the Alien Babies comic strip. Could it be One Direction's Harry Styles making a surprise appearance?

In the magazine you can also find out how to invade your school with monsters and raise money for BBC Children in Need. All you’ll need is your head teacher’s permission. Included in the magazine is a monster to cut out and stick on your face.

Also this issue:

• A look at the next two episodes, In the Forest of the Night and Dark Water.
• Who is Missy and why does she keep appearing in the series?
• Our favourite scares from this series so far.
• Interview with Ellis George, who plays Courtney in the current series.
• A round up of cool things to buy.
• Exciting comic strip by Richard Cookson featuring the Doctor and Clara.
• Draw a Cyberman!
• Fact figures to cut out and keep.
• Mega prizes, puzzles and posters!

The new issue of BBC Doctor Who Adventures, Issue 357, is on sale from 22 October – 4 November 2014, priced £3.99.

Issue Eighteen of the Fanzine Inferno Fiction is now available online featuring:

• THREAT OF THE CYBERMEN
by Nathan Mullins PART TWO: The Cybermen have control of the TARDIS, but will the Doctor help his friends stop the threat from a Cyberman invasion?
• THE LAST VICTIM
by Michael Baxter Dr Who arrives in 1559 Derbyshire to possibly witness the last burning, of the last victim, Alice Marsh at the hands of the Bishop Snaith. Can the Doctor persuade the Bishop to spare her life?
• IN HER ABSENCE
by Julie Kay PART TWO: Vastra tells of her meeting with the stranger known as The Doctor and her journey through time and space to the Ryūkyū Kingdom at a disconcerting time in the Kingdom's history...
• MISTER STARMAN
by J. Arthur Rodgers "A spaceman came travelling on his ship from afar, 'Twas light years of time since his mission did start, And over a village he halted his craft, And it hung in the sky like a star, just like a star"
• OH MY GIDDY AUNT!
by Sean Bassett ACT II: The Musical Extravaganza continues in ACT II as The Doctor's lives are told through song and verse...
• GRIMLIGHT
by Thomas Ahearn Upon visiting his friends at 13 Paternoster Row, the Doctor is invited along to investigate the strange occupants of 22 Charing Cross Road...
• THE FEAR OF ALL SUMS
by Samuel Marks PART FOUR: The Doctor and Romana must stop the Zeronaughts and put Time back on track but at what cost?

with artwork by Colin John