Issue 556 of Doctor Who Magazine heralds the start of Time Lord Victorious the Multi-format Doctor Who series launching this Autumn. 

Highlights of the new issue include

• A bonus 20-page supplement featuring the first part of Time Lord Victorious: Monstrous Beauty, an exclusive new comic-strip adventure for the Ninth Doctor and Rose
• A detailed guide to Time Lord Victorious and an interview with producer James Goss
• Tracy-Ann Oberman answers questions from the TARDIS tin.
• A celebration of Virgin Publishing’s New Adventures novels, including contributions from authors including Russell T Davies, Paul Cornell and Mark Gatiss.
• The Fact of Fiction explores the 1964 story Marco Polo, plus interviews with Waris Hussein, Brian Hodgson and Derek Ware
• The untold story behind a proposed season of Doctor Who repeats in the late 1970s
• Apocrypha looks at Doctor Who Fights Masterplan “Q”
• A review of the new animated version of Fury from the Deep.

Previews and reviews, news, prize-winning competitions, Time and Space Visualiser and The Blogs of Doom…PLUS!

• A giant double-sided poster.
• A diorama of the Ninth Doctor’s TARDIS control room.
• A download code for a complete, six-part audio adventure from Big Finish.

Doctor Who Magazine Issue 556 is on sale from Thursday 17 September £9.99 (UK)

Doctor Who will have a strong presence at this year’s New York Comic Con X MCM Comic Con Metaverse

BBC Studios have announced that two panels will join the already announced Doctor Who Spotlight panel from BBC America featuring Jodie Whittaker, Mandip Gill and Bradley Walsh.

New York Comic Con and MCM Comic Con’s Metaverse is a multi-faceted digital event with a focus on the fan experience. From October 8-11, Metaverse will exclusively live stream free panels on the New York Comic Con YouTube channel from leading entertainment brands.

‘The Making of Time Lord Victorious’ will see producer and writer James Goss talk about how this ambitious multi-platform project came together, and he will be joined by Joe Sugg, Nicholas Briggs and Ayesha Antoine for a sneak peek of the animated series Daleks! due to launch in November. Hear more from the cast about what fans can expect, who they play, and how they filmed their voiceovers during the global pandemic.

Also joining the Comic-Con line-up is Maze Theory’s ‘Exclusive: New Doctor Who games launching soon’ which will see Ingrid Oliver (Doctor Who), Maze Theory’s Studio Director Russ Harding, writer Gavin Collinson and CEO of Kaigan Games, Azmi Shah, reveal exclusive new Doctor Who adventures that form a trilogy of experiences across multiple gaming platforms.

The Time Lord Victorious panel will premiere on the New York Comic Con YouTube channel on Saturday 10th October, and the Maze Theory panel will premiere on Sunday 11th October. Check the Doctor Who Facebook page and www.findthemetaverse.com for updates to the premiere time.

The actress Dame Diana Rigg has died at the age of 82

During her long career, Diana Rigg had starring roles in The Avengers and Game of Thrones as well as appearing in the James Bond franchise. 

She played Mrs Gillyflower in the 2013 story The Crimson Horror alongside Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith.and her daughter Rachael Stirling. The episode had been specially written for her by Mark Gatiss who paid tribute to the actress.  

Diana Rigg was born in Doncaster, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire. She grew up in India where her father worked on the Railways before returning to England for her education. She studied at the Royal Acadamy of Dramatic Art alongside the likes of  Glenda Jackson and Siân Phillips.

Her first roles were on stage and for eight years she was a member of the  Royal Shakespeare Company.

After small roles on Television, her big break came when she joined the 1960's adventure series The Avengers playing Emma Peel. She was not the first choice for the role replacing Elizabeth Shepherd after two episodes, but she made the role her own and stayed for 51 episodes. A dispute with the producers over pay equality with Patrick Macnee, the male star of the show, meant she left the series after two years. 

Big Screen stardom came in 1969 playing Mrs James Bond opposite George Lazenby in the On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Many memorable TV appearances followed including playing Regan in a Granada Television production of King Lear opposite Laurence Olivier and playing Lady Dedlock in the BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens' Bleak House

In 1989 she played Helena Vesey in Mother Love for the BBC as role which gained her the 1990 BAFTA award for Best Television Actress.

In 2013 she joined Game of Thrones portraying Lady Olenna Tyrell, a witty and sarcastic political mastermind popularly known as the Queen of Thorns. Her performance earned her an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series. 

She appeares in the new series of All Creatures Great and Small, currently being shown on Channel Five. Last year she  appeared on Broadway in the Musical My Fair Lady, earning her fourth Tony nomination. 

Diana Rigg Rigg died earler today at her home in London after a short illness. 

BBC Studios today announced the final, missing piece in Doctor Who Time Lord Victorious with a five-part CGI animation launching in November this year.

Daleks! will be available for fans to watch for free, weekly on the Doctor Who YouTube channel.

Daleks! is a 5x10 min animation and will feature a star-studded voiceover cast with Nicholas Briggs (voice of the Daleks in Doctor Who) Joe Sugg (YouTube, Strictly Come Dancing), Anjli Mohindra (Bodyguard, The Sarah Jane Adventure) and Ayesha Antoine (Holby City).

Nicholas Briggs said:

Joe Sugg said:

Anjli Mohindra said: 

Ayesha Antoine said:

Written by James Goss and created by Salford-based animators Studio Liddell, Daleks! is a BBC Studios Digital production.

Time Lord Victorious officially launched earlier this month, with products and experiences dropping every week until early 2021. The multi-platform story brings together eleven partners across ten platforms for the first time ever to tell a brand new Doctor Who adventure for fans across the world. Fans can enjoy as much or as little of the adventure as they choose, exploring the animation as well as novels, magazines, comics, escape rooms, audios, games, immersive theatre, vinyl, figurines and t-shirts. 

More information about Daleks! will be announced soon. Details about Time Lord Victorious along with a full timeline of product launches can be found on the Time Lord Victorious website. 

A free ebook celebrating Blackpool's Doctor Who exhibition, has been released. 

Blackpool Remembered is a FREE digital publication, collated and edited by John Collier. It celebrates the original Doctor Who Exhibition on Blackpool’s Golden Mile, which ran from 1974 to 1985.

Hot on the heels of the latest series of Doctor Who, every year fans would travel the length and breadth of the country to visit the TARDIS and defy the Daleks – no other television show had its own permanent exhibition, and this was a chance to get up close and personal!

Blackpool Remembered charts the history of the exhibition, bringing together special memories, stories and photographs from the fans who visited it, as well as documenting the ever-changing exhibits which, like the series itself, regenerated every year to bring new thrills and excitement. Alongside this, are detailed recollections from some of the people who made it happen. 

Travel back in time through a feast of nostalgia, with many previously unseen photographs, exclusive interviews and illustrations. Contributors include Steve Cambden, Julie Jones, Bob Richardson and Mike Tucker.

The ebook can be downloaded here 

The Doctor Who Feature - The Doctor Who Cookbook - Revisited has won the 2020 Royal Television Society's West of England Award for best production of Features and Factual Entertainment Programme/Content or Series. 

The feature, produced by Moon Balloon Productions, was included in the Season 23 boxset. It featured Toby Hadoke enticing brave cast members, including Colin Baker, Janet Fielding, Nicola Bryant, Frazer Hines, Sarah Sutton and Terry Molloy, to tackle their original recipes from the 1986 cookbook, written by Gary Downie. 

FACTUAL ENTERTAINMENT AND FEATURES - Nominees

• Countryfile: Evacuee Special (BBC Studios Unscripted Productions)
• Beat the Chef  (Twofour)
• Rick Stein’s Secret France (Denhams)
• Doctor Who: The Doctor Who Cookbook - Revisited  (Moon Balloon Production) - WINNER

The judges described the winner as

The award was presented at an online ceremony to Chris Chapman, head of Moon Balloon Productions.

Titan Comics have released a trailer for their part in the new multi-platform Doctor Who series Time Lord Victorious. 

The comic, which pits the Tenth Doctor against the Daleks will be released on 2nd September 2020

Find out more about the new series and Time Lord Victorious at timelordvictorious.com

Young gamers can now transport themselves inside the iconic world of Doctor Who for a limited time in Nightfall, the BBC’s online multiplayer game.

Nightfall’s REM Zone 2 has been transformed until 29th September, and it’s up to Nightfallers to work together and keep the Doctor’s most infamous villains – the Daleks – at bay.

The free-to-play game gives players the chance to claim new outfits and style their Nightfaller as Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor, or as one of the Doctor’s long-standing enemies, the Cybermen. Once they’ve unlocked the outfits, they’ll be able to keep them forever. 

In Nightfall, players control a version of themselves that exists in their dreams – a Nightfaller. Their purpose: to work with other Nightfallers and defend the Dream from Nightmares, made up of worries from the waking world.

The Doctor Who takeover of REM Zone 2 is one of five REM zones available within the game, hosting up to 20 players across them at a time. Nightfall is being continuously updated and this time-limited feature is the latest in a series of collaborations with BBC brands, with more coming soon.

Rachel Bardill, executive editor, BBC Children’s says:

The Doctor Who zone is available until 29th September. Download Nightfall now for iOS, Android and Amazon devices, or play online here. 

The latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine goes back to the 1970's to investigate a TARDIS journey we never saw. 

Highlights of the new issue include:

• The story behind a bizarre and long-lost adventure starring Tom Baker as the Doctor.
• Derek Jacobi answers questions from the TARDIS Tin.
• An exclusive preview of the new animated version of Fury from the Deep.
• How Doctor Who was nearly cancelled in 1970… and how the show was saved.
• How Doctor Who joined the satellite revolution on Super Channel and UK Gold.
• The inside story of BSB’s Doctor Who Weekend – 30 years on.
• The Controversial Continuity of Doctor Who companions, the Silurians, UNIT dating and time travel.
• The Fact of Fiction explores the 2014 story Mummy on the Orient Express.
• Apocrypha revisits Continuity Errors, Steven Moffat’s first professional Doctor Who story.
• A review of The Power of the Daleks Special Edition.

Doctor Who Magazine Issue 555 is on sale from Thursday 20 August £5.99 (UK)