The latest Special Edition of Doctor Who Magazine reveals the role that directors have played in bringing the series to the screen.

Looking at the series from 1963 to the present day, the Magazine Includes tributes to some of the greatest behind-the-scenes names, shot-by-shot highlights of outstanding episodes and exclusive interviews with directors from almost every decade of the show’s history.

This is the ultimate guide to some of Doctor Who’s most influential figures.

Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition 58: Directing Doctor Who is on sale from panini.co.uk and WH Smith from Thursday 5 August priced £6.99 (UK). Also available as a digital edition from pocketmags.com priced £5.99.

Jodie Whittaker and Chris Chibnall will be leaving Doctor Who following a trio of specials ending in an epic blockbuster to air in autumn 2022 as part of the BBC’s Centenary celebrations.

The current showrunner and Thirteenth Doctor have been in charge of the TARDIS since filming for the Thirteenth Doctor began in 2017 but both have confirmed they will be leaving the series at the end of 2022

A six-part Event Serial has been announced for this autumn, and two Specials were already planned for 2022. To help mark the 100th Anniversary of the BBC, BBC One has now asked for an additional final feature-length adventure for the Thirteenth Doctor before the Doctor regenerates once more.

After taking the helm of the show, Chris Chibnall made the groundbreaking decision to cast Jodie Whittaker as the first female Doctor. He also brought in Tosin Cole (Ryan), Mandip Gill (Yaz) and Bradley Walsh (Graham), and cast the acclaimed Sacha Dhawan as the latest incarnation of The Master, plus Jo Martin as the mysterious Fugitive Doctor, adding new characters, layers and twists to the mythology of the show.

Chris Chibnall said

Jodie Whittaker added

Current Director of BBC Drama Piers Wenger added

With over a year of adventures to come, the Thirteenth Doctor still has plenty in store for fans.

The BBC has announced that Game of Thrones star Jacob Anderson is set to make his debut on Doctor Who later this year, playing Vinder.

As a recurring character throughout the series, Jacob’s new role will see him join forces with the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker), Yaz (Mandip Gill) and Dan Lewis (John Bishop) as the Doctor faces her biggest ever adventure battling evil across time and space.

Known to millions as Grey Worm in Game of Thrones, Anderson is a star of stage and screen and has appeared in many television series including Episodes, Broadchurch and Skins as well as roles in King Lear at the Young Vic and War Horse at the National Theatre.

Anderson is also a successful music artist who goes under the name Raleigh Ritchie.

Speaking about joining Doctor Who, Jacob Anderson said

Jacob’s role was announced at today’s Doctor Who San Diego Comic-Con panel where Chris Chibnall, Jodie Whittaker, Mandip Gill and John Bishop teased what is in store for the Doctor.

Doctor Who will return later this year.

Thirteenth Doctor Jodie Whittaker and Tenth Doctor David Tennant will face a new nemesis in a quest to save reality in a new videogame to be released this Autumn.

Digital entertainment studio, Maze Theory, in partnership with BBC Studios, have today announced that the brand-new videogame Doctor Who: The Edge of Reality will launch on Wednesday 30th September 2021.

Compatible with current and next-gen consoles as well as PC, Doctor Who: The Edge of Reality reimagines and expands on Doctor Who: The Edge of Time, with a completely new and compelling adventure.

With new worlds to explore and all-new modes of gameplay, players will be guided by the ThirteenthDoctor (voiced by Jodie Whittaker), and for the first time will also encounter the Tenth Doctor (voiced by David Tennant) in a new story written by Gavin Collinson (Doctor Who: The Edge of Time, Doctor Who: The Lonely Assassins).

Doctor Who: The Edge of Reality will include easter eggs, new foes, and iconic monsters such as the Cybermen, the Daleks and the Weeping Angels. Players will also find themselves immersed in the ‘Chaosverse’: a corrupted alternate universe where worlds and timelines collide to create new adventures, encounters, and threats…

Doctor Who: The Edge of Reality Highlights

• In this thrilling first-person adventure, a ‘reality virus’ is wreaking havoc across the universe, causing time glitches that distort the past, present and future.
• Players will face an entirely new antagonist – The CyberReaper, an ominous foe with a terrifying purpose. More to be revealed….
• The new story opens up multiple new environments for the player to explore, from a Cybership to the Chaosverse.
• New and expanded levels include new gameplay modes, such as puzzles, shooting, collecting and stealth.

Ian Hambleton, CEO of Maze Theory said:

A Doctor Who superfan, who has raised over £16,000 for charity, has had the chance to meet one of his heroes, Tom Baker.

Louis Moorhouse has been blind since he was 18 months old. A few weeks ago he launched a fundraising campaign on Crowd Funder in an attempt to raise £15,000 to make it possible for a charity, Living Paintings, to make a set of Touch to See books which will bring him and other blind and partially sighted people closer to the world of Doctor Who.

Having reached his first fundraising target Louis is now looking to raise £25,000 to support the charity that has helped him since he was two years old.

Louis says of his motivation to carry on with the campaign:

Louis and Living Paintings have been overwhelmed by the support shown by the Doctor Who community and this week he had the chance to meet one of his favourite Doctors on Zoom.

As well as support from Baker, Louis has received messages of support from Sir Derek Jacobi, Sylvester McCoy and David Bradley as well as the current showrunner Chris Chibnall who said

You follow Louis campaign on Twitter and Facebook

The latest edition of Doctor Who Magazine gets us ready for summer. 

Going on holiday might not be so easy this year, but we can remember some of the highlights of summers past 

• A celebration of the BBC’s Doctor Who exhibitions in the 1970s, from the Science Museum in London to Middlesbrough Town Hall, plus Blackpool and Longleat. 16 pages packed full of previously unseen photos, and memories from fans who were there.

• A guide to Doctor Who filming locations.

• Apocrypha takes a trip to Blackpool with The Nightmare Fair, the Doctor’s rematch with the Celestial Toymaker.

• The Fact of Fiction visits a sinister amusement park in the 2013 episode Nightmare in Silver.

• An exclusive first-look at the forthcoming Blu-ray Special Edition of The Web of Fear.

• Tributes to Jackie Lane (who played the First Doctor’s companion Dodo in 1966) and Damaris Hayman (who played Olive Hawthorne in 1971’s The Dæmons).

• A review of The Collection: Season 24 Blu-ray box set.

• Results of the 2021 DWM Poll.

• Sufficient Data explores Doctor Who’s big ideas.

• Previews, reviews, news, prize-winning competitions, Time and Space Visualiser and more.

Doctor Who Magazine Issue 567 is on sale from panini.co.uk and WH Smith from Thursday 22 July priced £5.99 (UK). Also available as a digital edition from pocketmags.com priced £4.99.

BBC Studios have announced that the second Doctor story, The Evil of the Daleks is to be released as an animated special edition on 27th September 2021.

Today's announcement comes on the 54th anniversary of the broadcast of the last episode of the original version which brought an end to the 4th season of Doctor Who. 

The Evil of the Daleks is the mostly-missing ninth and final serial of the fourth season of Doctor Who, which originally aired in seven weekly parts from 20th May to 1st July 1967. 

Following the success of the existing animations, The Evil of the Daleks fills another gap in the missing Doctor Who content lost in the purge of the BBC archive soon after the programme’s original transmission. However, audio-only recordings of all seven episodes have survived and have been used here to create a brand new fully animated presentation of this lost classic, featuring the original surviving second episode.

The Doctor (Patrick Troughton) stars alongside his travel companion Jamie (Frazer Hines). The story unfolds as the Doctor and Jamie set out to find the missing time machine, bringing them face to face with a very old enemy - the Daleks, who have a new masterplan to conquer the universe. The Daleks force the Doctor to help them on their quest to ‘humanise’ themselves into deadlier living weapons.

This particular story is notable for introducing the Doctor’s new companion Victoria Waterfield (Deborah Watling), first seen in the surviving second episode, and also for presenting the Dalek Emperor.

The three-disc release gives fans the opportunity to enjoy The Evil of the Daleks, available in either colour or black and white. The release will include:

• Remastered Surviving Original Episode 2
• ​Telesnap Reconstructions – 6 episodes
• Audio Commentaries 
• Audiobook, with a recorded commentary by Tom Baker
• Making Of
• Photo Gallery

Anne Marie Walsh, Director of the 2021 production said

Jodie Whittaker and Mandip Gill answer readers questions in the latest edition of Doctor Who Magazine

Highlights of this issue also include:

• A CGI reconstruction of the sets from Episode 4 of The Tenth Planet.
• A tribute to the late Roy Scammell, who performed some of Doctor Who’s most spectacular stunts.
• The performance that recreated sections of Richard Rodney Bennett’s score for 1964 story The Aztecs.
• The story of Donald Wilson, and the part he played in the creation of Doctor Who.
• An interview with the museum owner who restores and exhibits Doctor Who monster costumes.
• Collectivity meets the fans who love Doctor Who audio cassettes.
• Apocrypha looks back at the 1978 Target book Doctor Who Discovers Strange and Mysterious Creatures.
• The Fact of Fiction analyses the 2014 episode Kill the Moon.

·         Sufficient Data crunches Doctor Who’s numbers

·         Previews, reviews, news, prize-winning competitions, Time and Space Visualiser and more.

Doctor Who Magazine Issue 566 is on sale from panini.co.uk and WH Smith from Thursday 24 June

priced £5.99 (UK). Also available as a digital edition from pocketmags.com priced £4.99.

The actress and agent Jackie Lane has died at the age of 79

Jackie Lane appeared in 19 episodes of Doctor Who in the 1960s playing Dodo Chaplet a companion of the First Doctor William Hartnell.

Jackie Lane was born in Manchester, England.  After training as an actress she had small parts in soap operas. Compact and Coronation Street. 

In 1963 her agent put her forward to play the character of Susan in the new tea-time science fiction programme Doctor Who. Lane however withdrew from consideration on learning she would be expected to sign a year-long contract should she win the role. 

Three years later, with Doctor Who a huge success, the actress was offered the role of Dodo by producer John Wiles. Arriving at the end of The Massacre, the character travelled with the Doctor and his companion Steven, played by Peter Purves across four stories, The Ark, The Celestial Toymaker, The Gunfighters and The Savages.

Lane told Doctor Who Magazine about her time on the series

Lane's contract expired after four months and it was not renewed by the new producer Innes Lloyd. The character disappeared from the series, without a goodbye, during the story The War Machines

Soon after Lane left Doctor Who she retired from acting. She spent some time as a diplomatic Secretary working for the Australian Government and as an antique dealer before returning to the world of show business, this time as a theatrical agent.  In this role, she represented Tom Baker. 

A very shy woman, Jackie Lane was always reluctant to involve herself in Doctor Who fandom. She gave very few interviews about her time on the show but did make an appearance at the time of Doctor Who’s fiftieth anniversary.

Jackie Lane's death was announced by Fantom Films earlier today.