The Chicago Tribune is reporting that the writing team for series four of Torchwood has been selected by Executive Producer and Lead Writer Russell T Davies.

• John Shiban
  John Shiban is an Emmy Award nominated American television writer and producer. He has worked on The X-Files and its spin-off The Lone Gunmen, Smallville, Legend of the Seeker and Breaking Bad.
• Doris Egan
  Doris Egan is an American screenwriter, producer, and writer. She has worked on Smallville, Dark Angel, and House.
• Jane Espenson
  Jane Espenson is an American television writer and producer who has worked on both situation comedies and serial dramas. She is perhaps best known for her five-year stint as a writer and producer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, work for which she shared in a Hugo Award, and as showrunner for Caprica.
• John Fay
  John Fay is a British television writer who wrote two episodes of Torchwood, Children of Earth. His work includes episodes of Clocking Off, Blue Murder and Robin Hood. Fay spent several years on the writing staff of Coronation Street, and created the three-part ITV drama series Mobile.
  

For Season 4 of Torchwood, John Barrowman will return as Captain Jack Harkness and Eve Myles will be back as Gwen Cooper. Casting is underway for several new characters. Filming on the Starz-BBC co-production will begin in January for transmission later in 2011.

Matt Smith's mother has talked about the pressures of dealing with the Eleventh Doctor's fan mail. Talking to the Northampton Chronicle. Lynne Smith tells how important it is that every letter sent to the actor is read and dealt with. Fan mail comes from all generations and in all shapes and sizes. "Some think of him as a heart-throb" says Smith. "That makes me smile because to me he's just Matthew."

Meanwhile Doctor Who Executive Producer Steven Moffat had been in LA, along with co-creator Mark Gatiss, promoting Sherlock which has been signed up by PBS Masterpiece for broadcast starting on October 24. The UK will see the final episode of Sherlock this Sunday. The first two episodes have achieved critical acclaim, scored high ratings and outstanding Appreciation Index figures.

John Barrowman has added the Royal Albert Hall to the list of venues in his 2010 concert tour. The tour begins on 1st October in Oxford and runs through to 2nd November in Edinburgh taking in many cities, including Brighton, Liverpool, Cardiff, Birmingham and Manchester, on the way.

The Doctor Who Audiobook Dead Air has been shortlisted for the 2010 Audiobook of the Year award.

Written by James Goss and read by David Tennant, the Audiobook was released in March this year.

Other books nominated include Adrian Mole, The Prostrate Years, Othello, Animal Farm, Shakespeare in Love and War Horse.

The full list and a voting form can be found at The Audiobook store.

Doctor Who - The Specials - the latest in the line of music from the television series - has now been reported as being released on the 20th September 2010. No track listings have been made available as yet, but it will be a 2-CD boxed set of Murray Gold's music for the final four adventures of the Tenth Doctor.

Click on the image for the large version of the cover.

The certificate awarded by Guinness World Records confirming Doctor Who Magazine as the Longest Running Magazine Based on a Television Series has been presented to the magazine's editorial team.

The award was accepted by the original editor Dez Skinn and the current editor Tom Spilsbury at the magazine's headquarters in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

The citation on the award reads:

The award was first announced in April.

2|Entertain have confirmed the fourth Doctor story The Seeds of Doom, will be released in the UK on 25th October 2010.

This story was originally due for release in 2011. The Revisitations boxset was due in October but has not clear if this has been postponed or if The Seeds of Doom is an additional release.

Originally shown in the first part of 1976, The Seeds of Doom was the final story of Series 13. As well as starring Tom Baker as the Doctor, it features Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, Sylvia Coleridge as Amelia Ducat, Mark Jones as Arnold Keeler, John Gleeson as Charles Winlett, John Challis as Scorby and Tony Beckley as Harrison Chase.

Made in six parts, the story was written by Robert Banks Stewart and directed by Douglas Camfield, and is one of the most fondly remembered stories from the fourth Doctor's era.

As we previously reported Tom Baker has recorded the commentary track for the release along with John Challis and Philip Hinchcliffe, who was producer at the time.

Big Finish have announced that an online adventure featuring Bernice Summerfield will be available from September.

Bernice Summerfield or Benny, is a character originally created by author Paul Cornell as a new companion of the Seventh Doctor in Virgin Publishing's range of original full-length Doctor Who novels. Since 1998 Big Finish Productions have been producing officially licensed audio dramas starring the character.

The latest adventure, Dead and Buried, is a 10-minute CGI animated adventure that will be available to view absolutely free of charge. Lisa Bowerman is back playing Benny, who is returning to her roots as an archaeologist – although it isn’t long before she’s being pursued through the ruins of an alien world by a deadly adversary.

Dead and Buried is animated by Alex Mallinson, who has been working on the project for months and says
There’s a glimpse of what’s to come in the teaser trailer, available at the Big Finish website.


The final animation will be available in September, completely free and will lead into the events of Bernice Summerfield 11.1 Resurrecting the Past.

Doctor Who has dominated the 2010 Portal Awards, held by Airlock Alpha part of the BlipNetwork.

Doctor Who was named Best Series/Television with 65% of the vote beating Torchwood into second place.

David Tennant was overwhelmingly voted Best Actor/television with a massive 68% of the vote, beating John Barrowman who was in second place with 10% of the vote.

Bernard Cribbins won Best Supporting Actor/Television for his portrayal of Wilfred Mott in The End of Time with 59 percent of the vote. The End of Time was itself voted Best Episode/Television.

Alex Kingston was voted Best Special Guest for her portrayal of River Song in Time of Angels.

The award for Best Actress/Television went to Eve Myles for Torchwood - Children of Earth, beating Karen Gillan into second place

The Gene Roddenberry Award for lifetime achievement was given to Russell T Davies for his work on Doctor Who and Torchwood.

This was the 11th year for the Portal Awards, which started in 1999 as the SyFy Genre Awards. An international nominating committee generated a list of five nominees for each category and readers then had 30 days to vote.

Doctor Who has won seven awards over the years, and is third to Star Trek: Voyager (18 wins) and Farscape (eight wins).

Full list of winners.

The official site has released details of a new Doctor Who game, Amy's History Hunt, to be released next week.

The game will is not part the Adventure Games series and does not need to be downloaded. It stars Karen Gillan as Amy and features a series of specially shot videos. The challenge is to unlock the Doctor's safe and if you're successful you'll release a special short story by Paul Cornell, writer of Father's Day, Human Nature and The Family of Blood.

Throughout the quest you'll find out more about the Doctor's friends and places he's visited. Plus, you'll get Amy's unique point of view about some of the people she's met during her adventures with the Time Lord.

Cast Update 2nd August

Details are available for Relics of Time, the first episode of the new Tom Baker audio series Demon Quest.

The BBC Audiobook production comes in five parts and is a sequel to Hornet's News released last year. Tom Baker reprises the role of the Fourth Doctor and is joined once more by Richard Franklin and Susan Jameson, reprising their roles as Mike Yates and Mrs. Wibbsey respectively.

The series also features Nigel Anthony as the Wizard and Rupert Holliday Evans and Kate Sachs as the Warriors with with Samuel West, Lorelei King, Jan Francis, Finty Williams and Rowena Cooper.

The series is written by Paul Magrs and the first part is released in the UK on 2nd September and in the US on November 16.