BBC Radio 7 will be broadcasting a number of Doctor Who related programmes in their 7th Dimension science fiction segment in the coming months.

The memoirs of Barry Letts will be broadcast over seven weeks from the end of March; "Barry Letts - Who and Me" is read by the late producer himself, delving into his career up to and including Doctor Who. (The autobiography is still currently available in print from publisher Fantom Films.)

In April, three BBC Audio Books will be broadcast; The Giant Robot, The Brain of Morbius, Creature from the Pit are all adaptations of the original Target novelisations, and are read by the 'Doctor' himself, Tom Baker.

The 7th Dimension is presented by the modern voice of the Daleks and Cybermen, Nicholas Briggs; the strand in the past has often featured Doctor Who, including new adventures for the Eighth Doctor as portrayed by Paul McGann.

According to the Sun, BBC Worldwide has inked a reportedly £10 million contract with Nintendo to develop a Doctor Who game for the Wii and DS consoles.

The game, still in the early stages, is said to feature Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor as well as key adversaries such as the Daleks, the Cybermen and the Silurians.

A BBC insider reportedly told the Sun, "This has been in the pipeline for years. We're delighted to have finally nailed down a deal. We went with Nintendo as they have huge appeal for families and Doctor Who is very much a family brand. The Wii console is key for us as it's something families play together."

The Sun quotes David Tennant as saying that the element that kept this from getting off the ground before now was how developers treated the character of the Doctor. "The video game was quite actively developed, but it's difficult to nail as the Doctor doesn't blow things up. He's not Batman, who goes around smacking people in the head."

The insider added: "BBC Worldwide, which licenses BBC shows, has been trying to find some way of doing it. But you can't have Doctor Who blowing things to bits with a laser gun. That would massively change the nature of the show."

According to the Sun, the plan is to have the game in shops in time for the 2010 Christmas season.

Read the full article here.

According to an interview that appeared in today's Rutherglen Reformer, Andrew Smith, author of the 1980 Doctor Who serial Full Circle, has been commissioned for a new script by Big Finish.

Smith wrote Full Circle at the age of 18. The story involved the Fourth Doctor, Romana and K9 entering the universe of E-Space. The story is notorious for introducing the character of Adric.

The new script, entitled Invasion of E-Space, has been written for the Companions Chronicles line with Lalla Ward as Romana telling the story, which features the Fourth Doctor and Adric.

Big Finish Producer David Richardson said: “I met Andrew at a convention in Glasgow last year. I was a fan of Full Circle, which was such a clever and inventive script, so I was delighted when he said he might be interesting in writing for Big Finish. It was an instant yes from me - and over the subsequent weeks we set about formulating ideas for a Companion Chronicle featuring the Fourth Doctor, Romana and Adric.”

Andrew told the Reformer: “I wanted the dialogue to sound naturalistic, as if it’s being spoken, not read off the page. You want it to sound like a normal conversation, not an unrealistic description of green and verdant hills, or whatever. I've done the first draft, and this is with (script editor) Jac Rayner now, while David at Big Finish is reading it. They will come back with notes and I'll do the next draft in the next two or three weeks."

To read the full interview, visit the Rutherglen Reformer website.

Attendees will be able to see a special preview showing of the new series opener The Eleventh Hour at WonderCon, an event taking place at the Moscone Center South in San Francisco over the 2nd-4th April. WonderCon is an event operated by the company that puts on the annual large-scale media event in San Diego, California, Comic Con International, which BBC America exhibits at annually.
The episode will be shown twice on Saturday 3rd (the same day as the series is expected to start in the United Kingdom), at 6:30pm and 7:45pm.

For full details of the convention see the WonderCon website.

This weeks Doctor Who Adventures asks remember River Song, the Tenth Doctor’s mysterious friend? Alex Kingston, who plays her, tells the magazine all about it.

This week’s story guide is about the animated episode of Doctor Who, Dreamland. Find out what happens and who’s who, in the adventure that sees the Doctor discover aliens at a secret military base.

It has been revealed that the short clip of The Beatles, featured in episode one of The Chase, will only be included on the Region 2 DVD's and will be removed from the masters of the discs produced for regions outside Europe.

The short clip of the group playing Ticket to Ride, was taken from the BBC's Top of the Pops programme, and features as part of the sequence where the TARDIS crew look at various events from history on the Time-Space Visualiser.

The music is covered by a blanket agreement for use in the UK but this does not apply to the rest of the world. It may have been possible for the same masters to have been used for the international copies, as there is nothing in the BBC paperwork to indicate that the clip of the Beatles exists in the story. However the distributors have received so many queries about the inclusion of the clip that it became impossible to ignore its presence, so it has been removed from the edit.

In other DVD news, online retailers in the States are reporting the Region 1 DVD release of the animated story Dreamland has been pushed back to October.

ABC Television in Australia have announced that the new series of Doctor Who is to be made available on their online iView service, a couple of days before broadcast on television. Director of Television Kim Dalton said:Previous series of Doctor Who were available on the iview service, becoming its highest rated programme last year with some 378000 views between April and December. TV Tonight blog reports The Eleventh Hour will make its Australian debut on the ABC on Sunday 18 April 2010 on ABC1 at 7.30pm. It will be available on the iview service from 12am on Saturday 17 April 2010.


Meanwhile, in the UK the BBC's iplayer service still proves very popular, with figures for January showing some 68.2m viewers catching up on television. The 10th Doctor finale The End Of Time Part Two was the second most-watched programme with 831000 requests, with Top Gear performing best overall with some 1.1m requests for its final episode of the current series.

The Television and Radio Industries Club held their annual TRIC Awards yesterday at the Grosvenor House, London, during which Doctor Who won the award for "TV Drama Programme"; the show was up against ITV1's Doc Martin and Channel 4's Shameless. The award was accepted by Bernard Cribbins.

This is the first time that Doctor Who has won a TRIC award, though actress Billie Piper received the "New TV Talent" award in 2006.

You can find the winners of all categories at the TRIC website.

The BBC have issued a press release reporting that in the run-up to Doctor Who airing at Easter there will be a national tour featuring Matt Smith and Karen Gillan. The two stars will travel to five locations in a specially themed Doctor Who bus, and each venue will also feature a regional premiere of the first episode, The Eleventh Hour.

The tour has been arranged in association with BBC Outreach, whose remit is to take the BBC into specific communities and sections of society, and the focus here is to reach relatively under-served communities by the BBC.

The bus will be at the following places on tour:

There will also be three big screen showings at selected BBC locations in London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Plymouth and Swansea; these will take place between the 1st and 3rd April.

The events will feature exclusive footage – including the chance to see the Doctor Who trailer in 3D – and giveaways, and fans can also get their photo taken tumbling through the giant vortex. Visitors will also be able to meet monsters.

Says Executive Producer Piers Wenger:

This week saw filming taking place for the seventh and last block of the new series, for episodes 7 and 11. The beginning of the week saw the crew out in a village near St. Athan, whilst the latter half has been spent back on the streets and parks of Cardiff.