Sunday 17th February sees the broadcast of the five-part 1968 Patrick Troughton story The Mind Robber in Australia and New Zealand. The story is the latest instalment in the the 50th Anniversary season of classic Doctor Who stories on the UKTV channel.

 It is scheduled in New Zealand at 3:50pm and in Australia at 4:00pm. New Zealand has a additional screening on Monday 18th February at 3:50am.

The Mind Robber was first broadcast in Australia in 1970. New Zealanders had to wait another 15 years to see the story (it was first screened in 1985 to launch an extensive series of Doctor Who screenings by TVNZ that continued with few interruptions until 1990).

UKTV is showing stories every week throughout the year in the lead-up to the anniversary in November. The Mind Robber is the third of four stories to be aired as part of the channel's celebration of the second Doctor this month. The next story is The Seeds of Death (24th February). Next month UKTV will move on to focus on the third Doctor.

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 BBC has released details of three forthcoming books featuring the 11th Doctor, with new companion Clara also in one of them. All three hardback titles will be published on Thursday 11th April.

Nicholas Briggs has been a prolific Doctor Who contributor since 1999, when he began work on the Big Finish Doctor Who audio dramas, for which he is now executive producer. Nick is also an actor, and since Doctor Who’s return to television in 2005 he has worked on set with all three of the new Doctors as the voice of the Daleks, also providing the voice of the Cybermen and other aliens.

Justin Richards is creative consultant to BBC Books' range of Doctor Who titles, has written for stage and screen, and has penned novels and graphic novels. Together with Jack Higgins, he has also written several action thrillers for older children.

Tommy Donbavand is the author of the 13-book Scream Street series, published in more than 12 languages worldwide, and was the winner of the 2011 Hackney Short Novel Award.

Big Finish have released a teaser trailer for The Light at the End, the 50th Anniversary story featuring the first eight Doctors and their companions.



A synopsis for the story has also been released:

The Light at the End can be pre-ordered now as a Limited Collectors Edition set and as a Standard Edition set.

The latest edition of Doctor Who Adventures - out today - comes with a free Doctor or Dalek popper folder that has four pencils and a notepad.

Also in issue 307:

• A guide to the war-hungry Sontarans - plus how to create your own potato-head Sontaran
• A Dalek survival guide
• Monsters in love
• Comic-strip adventures with the Doctor and Decky Flamboon as they try to stop a slimy horror that is connected to Valentine's Day
• Posters
• Puzzles

As well as being available in print form, the publication can also be downloaded as an app for the iPhone and iPad from App Stores in the UK, USA, and Australia.

Earlier today, the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations report showed that DWA's circulation had risen for the first time since the second half of 2010.

Latest figures for Doctor Who Magazine and Doctor Who Adventures show both publications defying economic hard times and adding to their total average net circulations during the second half of last year.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations report for consumer magazines from July to December 2012, issued at midday today, showed that the weekly Doctor Who Adventures, published by Immediate Media Company, was up by 0.1 per cent to 31,935, having added 32 to its net average total, while the net average total for Panini's monthly Doctor Who Magazine was up by 6.1 per cent to 28,743, thanks to an extra 1,654 on its figure.

DWM had been experiencing six-monthly falls in circulation since the second half of 2010 and the same had been the case for DWA since the first half of 2011. Year-on-year, both are still showing drops in circulation, with DWM's down by 6.1 per cent on July to December 2011 and DWA's down by 34.1 per cent for the same period, but the new figures show encouraging signs for both publications.

DWM editor Tom Spilsbury told Doctor Who News: and DWA editor Natalie Barnes told us: For detailed breakdowns of the latest figures, click on the relevant links in the table below.


The next set of figures, covering the period January to June 2013, is due to be published on Friday 16th August.

UPDATE - 29th MARCH: The bureau has changed the publication date for the next set of figures to Thursday 15th August.

Poland and South Africa will get the second part of Series 7 the day after each of the eight episodes is shown in the UK, it was announced today by BBC Worldwide.

The episodes will air on BBC Entertainment, starting on Sunday 31st March at 6pm in Poland and 7pm in South Africa.


Jon Farrar, the vice-president of programming for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa at BBC Worldwide Channels, said: BBC America and SPACE in Canada will be launching the second part of Series 7 on Saturday 30th March in line with the UK.

The BFI is to screen The Robots of Death to mark the Fourth Doctor's era as it celebrates Doctor Who's 50th anniversary, it was announced today.

The four-part story, which first aired in 1977, will be shown at BFI Southbank on Saturday 20th April at 2pm. The guests will be announced in due course.

Tickets go on sale to the general public on Tuesday 12th March but will be available on Tuesday 5th March to people with a standard BFI membership and on Monday 4th March to Champion members.

Screenings that the BFI organised for last month, this month, and next month - honouring the First, Second, and Third Doctors - all sold out to members before tickets were due to go on general release.

The organisation has a Doctor Who At 50 season this year, showing a story per Doctor per month as well as digitally-restored prints of the two Dalek films, with question-and-answer panels featuring special guests at each session. In addition, the BBC Two docudrama An Adventure In Space And Time about the show's genesis, written by Mark Gatiss and currently being filmed, will debut at the BFI in November.

BBC America continues its celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who by revisiting the Second Doctor and showing the classic 1967 story The Tomb of the Cybermen.

The widely-regarded story will air on Sunday 24th February at 8pm ET and will be preceded by a documentary looking back at the era of the Second Doctor, featuring contributions from Steven Moffat, Caroline Skinner, David Tennant, John Barrowman, Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury.

The Tomb of the Cybermen was the first story of the fifth season of Doctor Who, showing in four parts in September 1967. For many years it was lost from the BBC archives, presumed destroyed, before being rediscovered in Hong Kong in 1991.

Alongside Patrick Troughton as the Second Doctor, the story stars Frazer Hines as the young highlander Jamie McCrimmon and Deborah Watling as the Victorian refugee Victoria Waterfield. It sees the TARDIS crew land on Telos, where members of an archaeological expedition are searching for the legendary tomb of the Cybermen.

The revisited series began last month with a repeat of the First Doctor story The Aztecs, which gets a repeat showing at 5pm just before the transmission of The Tomb of the Cybermen.

The new edition of the Radio Times has revealed that Lesley Manville is to portray William Hartnell's wife Heather in the 50th Anniversary drama An Adventure in Space and Time. The actress has had an extensive career, with recent work including Grief alongside long-term collaborator Mike Leigh, on television in Cranford and Law and Order: UK, and on film in Womb (which also starred Matt Smith).

Production-wise, it has been confirmed that Director of Photography for the production is John Pardue (Spooks series 10, The Bletchley Circle and Endeavour), Production Designer is Dave Arrowsmith (Dirk Gently, Postcode), and Art Director is Lucienne Suren (who worked on Asylum of the Daleks as well as shows like The Inbetweeners and Lewis) with assistant Oliver Benson.


The currently known cast and crew can be found via our guide entry.

BBC Worldwide Australasia is currently in talks with Event Cinemas to show the Series 6 two-part opener The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon at venues across Australia.

However, despite Event Cinemas' website listing venues showing the episodes and giving dates for the screenings - details that were reproduced here - we have since been informed by the BBC that it has merely been holding talks with Event about the possibility of a screening, with no dates settled as yet.

Having published the details in all good faith, based on publicly available information, we regret any confusion caused and will update readers as and when.

13th Feb, 12.05pm: DWN understands that Event Cinemas is now in the process of taking down the screening details from its website.