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.

BBC Worldwide have announced that they now fully own DVD distributor 2|entertain, the company closely associated with the release of Doctor Who DVDs over the last six years. The fate of the company has been uncertain since BBC Worldwide's partner Woolworth went into administration back in 2008.

John Smith, CEO, BBC Worldwide, said:Paul Dempsey, CEO of 2|entertain and Managing Director, BBC Worldwide Home Entertainment, added:

This months Doctor Who Magazine interviews Beth Willis and Piers Wenger, who, along with head writer Steven Moffat, are the new executive producers of Doctor Who. “We wanted to give the look of the series a slightly more storybook, fairy-tale feel,” reveals Piers. “It wasn’t about suddenly becoming Tim Burton, but it was a pinch of that, a pinch of Twilight, a pinch of Harry Potter – but it’s still absolutely, slapbang, mainstream Doctor Who…”

Also in the magazine a brand new audio adventure to download, featuring the Fifth Doctor, Turlough and Tegan – FREAKSHOW by Mark Morris. Mark Strickson and Toby Longworth star in this full-length story in which the TARDIS crew encounter a caged menagerie of the most unusual aliens. There is the penultimate instalment of the latest comic strip The Crimson Hand, written by Dan McDaid with art by Martin Geraghty. And DWM goes behind the scenes of the brand new K9 series with exclusive interviews with the cast & crew and new pics.

It has been reported that ABC in Australia will be showing the new series of Doctor Who from April, though no day has been scheduled at present; Matthew Galvin, from ABC Audience and Consumer Affairs, said:
The news indicates that Australia, Canada and the United States will all show the new series within a few weeks of the UK premiere transmission.

The BBC Press Office have announced that the Doctor Who Children's Television spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures has been recommissioned for a further two series. Both series will consist of twelve, twenty-five minute episodes.

Says CBBC Controller Damian Kavanagh:BBC Wales Head of English Language Programmes, Clare Hudson, added:The fourth series starts production at the end of March (believed to be the 29th), for transmission in Autumn. The new producer has been named as Brian Minchin (former script-editor for Doctor Who/Torchwood), who will work alongside co-producer Phil Ford, with Russell T Davies and Doctor Who producer Nikki Wilson as executive producers; writers include Ford, Joseph Lidster, Rupert Laight, Gareth Roberts and Clayton Hickman, and the series will be script-edited by Gary Russell.

The show will feature all three main stars Tommy Knight (Luke), Daniel Anthony (Clyde) and Anjli Mohindra (Rani), as well as the title-star Elisabeth Sladen as investigative journalist Sarah Jane Smith; however, no mention has currently been made of K9.
The fifth series is expected to go into production next year.