The website SFX has launched the SFX Blog Awards, honouring SF sites that were created for the love of the genre, and maintained by people out of love rather than money.

Nominations have been drawn up from suggestions made by members of the SFX Forum, SFX team members and the SFX Bloggers and include a number of Doctor Who sites including The Doctor Who News Page which is nominated as Best SF News Blog.

Gallifrey Base is nominated as Best SF Fan Community and Doctor Who Podshock as Best SF Podcast.

Life, Doctor Who And Combom and Who Fix are both nominated as Best SF Franchise Specific Site.

Paul Cornell, James Moran and Neil Gaiman are all nominated for Best Celebrity Blog.

You can vote in the awards at the SFX website.

A Doctor Who fan is suing the BBC for breach of copyright, claiming that he invented the character Davros first seen in the series in 1975.

According to the Daily Mail, Steven Clark claims that he came up with the idea for the character when he was just 13 and entered a drawing competition run by TV Action magazine in 1972. Clark claims that he invented the name Davros and sent in a drawing of the character along with a handwritten essay called The Genesis Of The Daleks: The Creation Of Davros.

Clark has launched High Court proceedings to try to prove that the BBC has been using the character without his permission for nearly four decades and claiming damages, or a sum equivalent to the profits generated from the character over the years.

His competition entry was a pencil sketch coloured in with felt pens which he claims shows a ‘half-man half-Dalek’ with an additional eye in the centre of his forehead, a headset, epaulettes, a withered left hand and finger-like switchgear on the Dalek base.

The original competition was run independently of the BBC, but the judges included the then producer Barry Letts, script editor, Terrance Dicks, and the current Doctor, Jon Pertwee. Clark did not win the prize of a Colour Television and claims he was shocked when he saw his creation in the 1975 story Genesis of the Daleks.

He said he considered legal action at the time, but had lost his copies of the competition entry. However he claims the entries turned up 20 years later, when he found them hidden in a set of family encyclopaedias.

Clark said: 'The money aspect of it is not my primary motivation. I am proud of the character I created and I just want my work to be recognised. It would be nice to be finally linked to the character after all this time.' His lawyer Richard Kempner said: 'If they used the drawing, it’s only fair that they acknowledge it.'

Davros is one of the most popular Doctor Who villains, who has appeared regularly in the series since his first appearance in Genesis of the Daleks. Four actors have played the character which was brought into the revived series in 2008 in the story The Stolen Earth.

The character was always thought to have been invented by Dalek creator Terry Nation. Nation died in 1997 but agent for the estate, Tim Hancock, said he was aware of the claims and is to meet Nation’s widow Kate to search the family archives. BBC Worldwide have said 'We have received a claim from Mr Clark relating to matters from the Seventies.'

BBC Publicity have indicated the possibility of a 10 second teaser trailer being broadcast on BBC1 at some point today, though this has not been finalised at the time of writing and may occur at a later date.

A longer "Coming Soon" compilation trail is currently expected to launch from next Saturday (26th March).

Tonight saw BBC's Comic Relief broadcast a special mini-episode of Doctor Who in two parts, Space and Time. Both have now been added to the BBC's official YouTube channel.




Matt Smith himself appeared on the charity show at around 11:20pm, portraying the Doctor who arrives in the TARDIS and gives presenters Jonathan Ross and Claudia Winkleman a brief 'review' of what was to come up later in the evening!

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The BBC have now confirmed the title for episode one of the new series as The Impossible Astronaut, which will be broadcast at Easter; the title and date were given at the end of the Comic Relief Doctor Who special sketches broadcast this evening.

BBC America confirmed the date for the US premier last week.

The BBC's Doctor Who site is planning to mark the start of the series with a specially prepared prequel:

BBC Books are to launch a range of classic novelisations from this July, with the republication of several books from the original Target range of the 1970s - the only way for fans to visit the old adventures of the Doctors in the days before video and DVD!

The series kicks off with six novelisations, using their original cover designs by artist Chris Achilleos and inside illustrations, with a new introduction especially written for each book by a well-known Doctor Who fan/writer.


The books are due to be published on 7th July.

2|Entertain have released a short video on their YouTube channel previewing Lords of the Red Planet, a feature on the upcoming re-release of the Patrick Troughton adventure The Seeds of Death, part of the Revisitations 2 boxed set due on the 28th March.

The latest in the BBC Books range of Doctor Who novels following the adventures of the Eleventh Doctor and his companions are due for release on the 28th April 2011:


In addition, the 12th May will see a new book released dedicated to the Doctor's greatest foe:

Comic Relief are offering auctioning a chance to be super-followed on twitter by the man behind the series, Steven Moffat. The winner will also get a five minute phone call from Moffat himself along with The Doctor in the form of Matt Smith.

The ‘Super-Follow’ means that Moffat will

1. Follow you on Twitter for 90 days
2. Retweet one of your tweets
3. Send out a tweet including your Twitter @username

In addition he will send you two Doctor Who scripts. One from a previous Doctor Who series, signed by David Tennant, Russell T. Davies and Dan Ryan (who donated it) and one from the last series signed by Matt Smith and Karen Gillan.

You will also get 2 tickets to the Doctor Who Experience at Olympia in London (on 4th April) and 2 tickets to the screening of the first episode of the new series of Doctor Who plus a question and answer session with the key cast afterwards (also on 4th April).

The auction is now open on ebay.

The actor Michael Gough has died.

Michael Gough was best known to Doctor Who fans for his role as The Celestial Toymaker alongside the first Doctor, William Hartnell. He later appeared with fifth Doctor Peter Davison when he played the Doctor’s old friend Hedin, in the 1982 story ‘Arc of Infinity’.

Gough was born in Kuala Lumpa in either 1916 or 1915 – he never knew which. Despite the uncertainty about his year of birth, he holds the honour of being one of the longest-lived actors to have appeared in Doctor Who. His career was extraordinary. Between 1947 and 2000, he recorded at least one film per year, often more, in addition to a busy TV and stage career, which included tours with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Michael Gough’s unstoppable film career began in the forties, with ‘Androcles and the Lion’, but it was his role as Nicholai in ‘Anna Karenina’ that set in motion a prolific and distinguished movie career. By the early sixties he was well-known to TV viewers through such series as ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’, ‘The Count of Monte Christo’, ‘The Saint’, ITV’s ‘Play of the Week’ and many more.

After appearing in the title role of the 1965 Doctor Who story ‘The Celestial Toymaker’, Gough started to achieve a cult status among horror film fans, appearing in several notable productions from Hammer and Amicus, while continuing to be a regular face on British TV, with roles in ‘The Avengers’, ‘Orlando’, ‘The Champions’ and ‘Theatre 625’, to name just a few. Throughout the seventies, he continued making several movies and TV series each year. Among the many classic series he appeared in during that decade are ‘Colditz’, ‘The Protectors’, ‘Crown Court’ and ‘Blake’s 7’. His career continued into the eighties with ‘Brideshead Revisited,’ ‘Smiley’s People’ and a second appearance in Doctor Who – this time with the fifth Doctor, Peter Davison.

After a further decade of TV and film appearances, Gough found new adoration among a new generation of film-goers as Batman’s butler, Alfred, in the new films in that franchise which began in 1989. His relentless work-rate continued during the 90s and into the 2000s, and he established a long friendship with director Tim Burton, appearing in ‘Sleepy Hollow’, ‘Corpse Bride’ and, in 2010, ‘Alice in Wonderland’.

Gough was married four times – his third wife being Doctor Who actor Anneke Wills. Wills had encountered him at various times during her life – firstly during a theatre trip with her mother in 1952 – but they first met formally, on the set of ‘Candidate for Murder’ and the attraction was instant. Gough adopted Anneke’s daughter Polly, and in 1965, their son Jasper was born.

Wills said: "As his body was deteriorating this week, he said that he wanted to hang on for St Patrick’s Day. And he did, just. In the end... there is only love."

Michael Gough leaves his wife Henrietta, his daughter Emma and sons Simon and Jasper (Yogi).
His grandchildren Samuel and Daisy are also actors.

He was 94 or 95.