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.

Canadian broadcaster Space have announced that they will be broadcasting the new series of Doctor Who from the 17th April, the same evening as BBC America for the United States. The show will go out at 9:00pm ET.

The DVD documentary Who Peter has helped earn its director and writer, Chris Chapman, a Royal Television Award, the Andrea Wonfor trophy, for Best Newcomer. The 30 minute feature will form part of the Myths and Legends Box Set due to be released in the UK at the end of March. The judges described Chapman's potfilio of work for Dene Films, which included Who Peter, as breathtaking for the quality of skills on show.

In other DVD news a couple of the additional extras for the re-issue of The Caves of Androzani as part of the Re-visitations box set have been announced. The disc will include 8 minutes of Peter Davison and Colin Baker's appearance on a chat show as well as a documentary looking at Graeme Harper's work on Doctor Who.

Three new episode titles have been revealed by Executive Producer Steven Moffat in his Production Notes column in this month's Doctor Who Magazine.

Occupying slots 4 and 5 of the new series will be The Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone. This two-part story is written by Steven Moffat and directed by Adam Smith and sees the return of Alex Kingston as River Song. It was the first story to be recorded. It is stressed that the titles are working titles and may be changed before transmission.

Slot 6 will be filled by Vampires in Venice. This story is written by Toby Whithouse and directed by Jonny Campbell.

Amazon have listed the first DVD release for the Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith. The disc, available in DVD and Blu-Ray format, is due for release in the UK on June 7th will contain the first three stories of the new Doctor, "The Eleventh Hour", "The Beast Below" and "Victory of the Daleks". Amazon currently have the title listed as Series Five - Volume One, at odds with the previous statement that the series would be promoted as Series One.

The disc will contain a special feature, The Monster Diaries. Produced by the same team who make Doctor Who Confidential, the documentary will contain previously unseen footage and comments from cast and crew.