The latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine reveals that The TV Movie will be re-released on DVD as a special edition in 2010.

The special, which stars Paul McGann in his only television appearence as the Eighth Doctor, was first shown in 1996. The new release will be part of the "Revisitaions" box set, which will consist of new editions of stories that were previously released in the early days of the DVD range.

The TV Move special edition will include a documentary called The Seven Year Hitch, which looks at producer Philip Segal's long quest to get the project into production and talks to Segal himself, as well as writer Matthew Jacobs and the then-BBC One controller Alan Yentob.

There is no confirmed release date for the Box Set, nor is it known if the story will finally be available in North America.


Also in DWM is news that Jamie and Zoe will be reunited in a new three-part Big Finish story in 2010. Wendy Padbury will join Frazer Hines in a Sixth Doctor story starring Colin Baker. The first story, City of Spires by Simon Bovey, will be released in April and guest stars Georgia Moffett. It will be followed by The Wreck of the Titan by Barnaby Edwards and Legend of the Cybermen by Mike Maddox.

Doctor Who Magazine 416 is the biggest-ever edition and, less than a month before he leaves the role, is a David Tennant special. Tennant gives an in-depth interview about his last days as the Tenth Doctor, the forthcoming Christmas Special, The End of Time, and the reasons why he’s decided to leave his dream job.

"When the Doctor decides he’s the ‘Time Lord Victorious’, we’re making him quite unsympathetic", considers David. "Well, it’s making him more Time Lord, actually, when you consider how they turned out. When we see the Doctor behaving arrogantly, selfishly or uncontrollably, it’s then that he appears more fallible, and therefore more human?
The Time Lords were pretty fallible too. It’s hubris. It’s Greek. It needed that scale to tell the final story. It’s a tale of the gods, really but gods who are fallible and, I suppose, human."


Also in the issue:

• AS TIME GOES BY With just two weeks to go until this year’s Doctor Who Christmas Specials, there is a taste of what’s in store, with dozens of new photos from The End of Time.
• MASTERPIECE
  He’s the Doctor’s most persistent Time Lord nemesis – the Master is back. John Simm explains why he couldn’t miss out on the Tenth Doctor’s final party.
• GRANDAD, GRANDAD, LOVELY!
  The Doctor’s faithful friend Wilfred Mott enters the TARDIS – and for Bernard Cribbins it’s his first trip into time and space for 43 years! Cribbins looks back over his long career.
• A SPACEMAN CAME TRAVELLING
  The Fact of Fiction turns back the clock to Christmas 2005, and the moment when we first met the Tenth Doctor – in The Christmas Invasion.
• IT’S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN!
  Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies has written his very last Production Notes, what will be his all-important final word?
• SIMPLY RED!
  Majenta Pryce’s dark secrets are about to be revealed as the Tenth Doctor begins his final, epic, comic strip adventure – THE CRIMSON HAND, by Dan McDaid with art from Martin Geraghty.
• THOSE WERE THE DAYS, MY FRIEND
  A look back at the most memorable Doctor Who moments of 2009 in the Review of the Year.
• PARTY LIKE IT’S 1999
  THhe Time Team relive the end of the twentieth century as they turn their attention to the Eighth Doctor’s only on-screen adventure, the 1996 TV Movie.
• EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE
  The Watcher concludes his definitive guide to the Time Lord’s many incarnations by taking a close look at The Tenth Doctor.
• MONEY – THAT’S WHAT I WANT
  Catches up with the Sil, aka Nabil Shaban and find out what he thinks about Jonathan Ross, YouTube, weapons of mass destruction – and returning as Sil on audio.

Plus The Watcher is back with the Christmas Quiz, there is a giant-sized, double-sided poster, and a chance to win the latest DVDs, CDs, books and audios – including the Doctor Who Series 1-4 box set.

The Christmas edition of the Radio Times contains details of another Doctor Who-themed addition to the already-packed schedules of the BBC. On Saturday the 26th of December at 8pm, BBC Radio 4 will broadcast the one-hour documentary Doctor Who: The Lost Episodes, as part of its Archive on 4 strand. The documentary is produced by Shaun Ley, the same man responsible for the previously-reported documentary "Shelved", which looks at the abandonment of several 1970s television productions, including the 1979 Doctor Who serial Shada, and airs on Radio 4 this Saturday.

"Doctor Who: The Lost Episodes" will look at how 108 episodes of the classic series came to be missing from the archives, and how efforts have led to the recovery of several more that were also previously thought lost. The programme will also be repeated, in a shortened 45-minute form and on FM frequencies only, on Radio 4 at 3pm on Monday the 28th of December. It will also be available internationally on the BBC website.

You can keep track of all major Doctor Who-related programmes on British TV and radio this Christmas with our broadcast summary.

Amazon are advising their customers that the UK January release of Peladon Tales is being delayed by two weeks. No information is available from 2 entertain to confirm this and it is not known what effect any delay may have on the rest of the 2010 schedule.

Meanwhile TV Shows on DVD is reporting that The Next Doctor will be "upconverted" from standard definition to HD for the upcoming Blu-Ray edition of the 2009 Specials box set. This is the first time a Doctor Who episode that hasn't been produced in HD has undergone this treatment.

The website also confirms the extras which will be included on The End of Time's DVD/Blu-Ray release. The information is for the North American release, but is expected to be identical to the UK edition.

• Doctor Who Confidential - The End of Time Part One
• Doctor Who Confidential - The End of Time Part Two
• Deleted Scenes
• David Tennant Video Diary - The Final Days
• BBC Christmas Idents
• Doctor Who at Comic Con
• 5.1 Surround Sound

The Specials Collection will include Doctor Who at the Proms.

The actor Richard Todd has died at the age of ninety.

Arguably one of the most respected actors to appear in the classic series, Richard Todd was a British film star well known for his heroic roles in such films as The Dambusters, D-Day the Sixth of June, and The Longest Day.

Born in Ireland, he was a war hero in his own right, being one of the first soldiers to parachute into occupied France on D-Day in 1944. He had a long and distinguished career in British stage and film. He was Oscar-nominated for the 1949 film The Hasty Heart, appearing alongside future American President Ronald Reagan. He won the Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer for the same film. In 1957 he appeared in Yangtse Incident alongside William Hartnell.

He appeared in many Disney adventure movies such as The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men, The Sword and the Rose and Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue. In 2002 he was made a Disney Legend.

Todd appeared in the 1982 Doctor Who story Kinda. Appearing with Fifth Doctor Peter Davison, Todd played Sanders, the leader of the Earth colonisation survey expedition to the jungle planet Deva Loka.

Todd, who was made an OBE in 1993, was last seen on screen in a 2007 episode of ITV drama Heartbeat.

He died peacefully in his sleep on Thursday at his home near Grantham in Lincolnshire.

BBC Obituary

"Special Project Three" has been leaked onto the internet. (Russell T Davies has repeatedly mentioned that David Tennant had worked on three special Doctor Who projects this year, in addition to the four television specials; the first two were the Doctor's appearance in The Sarah Jane Adventures and the animated serial Dreamland.) The third project consists of a special ident for BBC One featuring Tennant as the Doctor. A version of the ident for BBC Scotland has appeared on the website BlogtorWho. The official launch will be later this month, but the BBC have now released a still from the ident.

The BBC has started promoting its Christmas lineup with trails on BBC One. The drama version features several clips from Doctor Who and is available on the BBC YouTube Channel.

The Radio Times for 12 - 18 December confirms the Doctor Who edition of Never Mind the Buzzcocks will be shown on Wednesday 16 December. David Tennant hosts the special show with team captains Phill Jupitus and Noel Fielding. Guests include Bernard Cribbins and Catherine Tate, plus platinum-selling jazz artist Jamie Cullum and Radio 1's Jo Whiley.

Broadcast on December 12th is the previously reported edition of Shelved, the BBC Radio Four documentary which looks at TV episodes which were scrapped because of prevailing political and social circumstances. The Doctor Who story Shada is one of the programmes investigated and Tom Baker takes part.

Meanwhile BBC Radio Seven have scheduled a repeat of An Hour with Jon Pertwee. The show on Saturday 12 December at 5pm is a radio version of Pertwee's one man biographical show.

BBC Radio can be heard around the world via the listen now links on the websites.
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The Doctor Who Restoration Team have provided details of the restoration of the UK January DVD release, Peladon Tales. Full details of the extras are listed on the groups website.

On his website, Tom Baker has confirmed he recently recorded a commentary for the DVD release of the Season 15 story, The Sunmakers, with co-stars Louise Jameson and Michael Keating and Director Penant Roberts. Note that DVD commentaries are often recorded way ahead of release.

Tom Baker's audio story Hornet's Nest will be released as a box set on the 12 January 2010 on both sides of the Atlantic. The recording co-stars Richard Franklin. Parts 4 and 5 will be released in the UK on 3rd December.

ABC Television in Australia have confirmed that although The Waters of Mars will be shown on ABC HD, it will not be the genuine HD copy that will be seen, but a SD copy up-scaled. The reason cited is cost with ABC's Director of Television, Kim Dalton, saying the priority for the network is the development of SD channels rather than the HD one. There will however be a move to develop the HD output in 2010. The Waters of Mars comes to New Zealand this Sunday and to Australia a week later.

BBC Worldwide have released a number of Classic Series episodes onto their YouTube Channel.

Stories uploaded so far are

• 1st Doctor - The Edge of Destruction
• 2nd Doctor - The Krotons
• 3rd Doctor - Carnival of Monsters
• 5th Doctor - The Caves of Androzani

The clips are usually blocked in the UK as under the terms of the BBC Charter it is not allowed to operate commercially in the UK. However viewers in the UK can view classic episodes on MSN Video, which is currently showing The Web Planet, The Tomb of the Cyberman and Planet of the Spiders, and BlinkBox which is also showing Tomb of the Cybermen and The Krotons.

A forthcoming BBC Radio 4 documentary is to examine what led to the cancellation of Shada - the six-part Fourth Doctor story originally intended to end Doctor Who's 17th season.

Shelved takes a look at three TV programmes that were made in 1979 but which never aired because of socio-political, industrial or cultural problems. The three comprise a particularly violent episode of ITV show The Professionals, the last episode of BBC series Secret Army, and Shada.

Interviewees for the Shada segment are Tom Baker, director Pennant Roberts and Jeremy Bentham - the Doctor Who historian, author, former associate editor of Doctor Who Magazine and co-founder of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society. The story, which was never completed at the time because of a BBC strike, would have been broadcast in January and February 1980.

The 30-minute documentary is scheduled to be broadcast on Saturday, December 12 at 10.30am, and it is understood it will make a key revelation relating to Doctor Who through documentation unearthed by producer/presenter Shaun Ley. Recording of the documentary took place at the BBC's Westminster studio on Thursday, November 5.

Incoming Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner tried to remount Shada, but those attempts failed and production was formally abandoned in June 1980. In 1992, the recorded footage was released on video with linking narration by Tom Baker completing the story. It was subsequently reworked as an audio play by Big Finish Productions, featuring the Eighth Doctor and with Paul McGann in the lead role. This version was webcast on BBCi in 2003 and broadcast on digital radio station BBC7 in December 2005, with a repeat the following year. The webcast is currently available to listen to on the official Doctor Who website (may only be available within the UK).

Former Production Unit Manager Christopher D'Oyly John has died.

D'Oyly John worked on many stories from the classic era of Doctor Who. He was an Assistant Floor Manager on the William Hartnell story The Ark, before working as Production Assistant on several Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee stories.

As Production Unit Manager, he worked on six Tom Baker stories working with producer Philip Hinchcliffe on some of the most-loved stories in the series history, including The Robots of Death and The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

His work outside of Doctor Who included The Bill, Poldark, House of Elliot and EastEnders.

He died peacefully at his home in Eastbourne on 21st October.

Assistant Floor Manager
• The Ark

Production Assistant
• The Macra Terror
• The Invasion
• Doctor Who and the Silurians
• Inferno
• The Curse of Peladon
• The Mutants
• Carnival of Monsters
• Death to the Daleks

Production Unit Manager
• The Masque of Mandragora
• The Hand of Fear
• The Deadly Assassin
• The Face of Evil
• The Robots of Death
• The Talons of Weng-Chiang