This weeks Doctor Who Adventures runs down the top 10 shape-changers, and asks who will come top?

There is a flash back to the 1920s for a monster murder mystery with this week’s story guide: The Unicorn and the Wasp, with a murder investigation, a beastly bug and best-selling author Agatha Christie.

This week’s Doctor Data is Sarah Jane Adventures’ Mr Smith, find out where he came from and how he once helped a shape-changing Slitheen and Doomfinger features in this week’s favourite scene as the magazine looks back to 1599 London and The Shakespeare Code.
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Posters on the Gallifrey Base discussion forum report that it was announced at this weekend's "Regenerations" fan convention in Swansea that the 1971 Third Doctor adventure The Mind of Evil has been restored to colour for a forthcoming DVD release. Like a number of stories starring Jon Pertwee as the Doctor, the colour master videotapes for this six-part story were junked by the BBC in the 1970s. This left only black and white film recording copies of the episodes, made for overseas sale, in the archives. A small handful of colour clips survived on a domestic videotape recording of a transmission of the story in the United States, and were used to restore colour to scenes as a bonus feature at the end of the 1998 VHS release.

No detail has yet emerged of whether the full story has been recolourised for this DVD edition, nor for when the disc is scheduled for release. It is also not currently known whether the episodes were restored to colour using the chroma dot technique employed on the similarly-afflicted third episode of Planet of the Daleks in the forthcoming Dalek War box-set, or whether they were restored from scratch with artificial colour.

Actor Nicholas Courtney, who appears in the story as the Doctor's ally Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, is also reported to have participated in an audio commentary for the release.

(Image from Shillpages.com)

The BBC Press Office's release of information regarding programmes on Tuesday the 6th of October contains a small snippet of interest to Doctor Who fans. The BBC's long-running children's magazine programme Blue Peter - which has enjoyed a close relationship with Doctor Who since the 1960s - will be launching "a Doctor Who competition, which will see one lucky viewer design a Tardis console that will feature in the new series."

It is not known in what context this "Tardis console" will be used in Doctor Who, nor when it may appear. Previous Blue Peter competitions have seen young fans design a monster (the Abzorbaloff from Love and Monsters in series two) and appear in the series (Utopia, in series three).

North American release dates for two more DVDs have been announced.

Both the First Doctor story The Keys of Marinus and the Sixth Doctor story The Twin Dilemma will be released on 5th January 2010.



The Coming Next trailer included on the UK release of The Dalek War boxset is for The Kings Demons/Planet of Fire, indicating this boxset will be released in the UK in January.

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine confirms that series three of The Sarah Jane Adventures will premier in the UK on Thursday 15 October.

In a change to previous years the programme will air on BBC1 twice weekly, with the series being shown on Thursdays and Fridays for its six week run.

Final schedules have yet to be confirmed by the BBC and are subject to change.

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The BBC News website has made available a video interview with well-known scriptwriter Richard Curtis, who last week confirmed that he will be writing for the next series of Doctor Who, which is currently in production. In the short interview - conducted by BBC News Entertainment Correspondent Lizo Mzimba - Curtis says that he expects the episode to be shot in November. He also says that the script contains some comic moments, in line with his career as a comedy writer, and that showrunner Steven Moffat required him to rewrite the Eleventh Doctor's dialogue to make it less formal and more colloquial.

Please note that the full interview does contain some very minor spoilers about the episode's setting, so should not be viewed if all details about forthcoming episodes are being avoided.

This month's Doctor Who Magazine features the results of their poll to discover which story, in the programme's 46-year history, is the most popular. The magazine is available with four different covers, featuring the Fourth, Fifth, Ninth and Tenth Doctors each in one of their highest-rated stories. The poll also details the most popular series, the highest-rated story for each Doctor and asks which Dalek story is the most admired.

Also in the issue:

• Russell T Davies describes the incredible reception David Tennant received when he took to the stage in the USA
• There’s a new comic strip adventure, Onomatopoeia, by Dan McDaid with art by Mike Collins.
• Find out how to avoid spoilers in You Are Not Alone!
• The Watcher asks was the Seventh Doctor as dark and mysterious as his reputation suggests?
• Thomas Sangster, star of Human Nature/The Family of Blood talks about his role as Tim Latimer, his Doctor Who audio story and tells of playing Paul McCartney.

Tom Baker, well-known to all Doctor Who fans and many thousands of people worldwide as the Fourth Doctor, has launched an official website. The site is the first official one for Baker, despite the claims of other sites in the past. Among the features present are a list of performances dating back to 1966, photo galleries with rare pictures, videos, and a newsletter.

(Thanks to John Bowman).
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Four new Doctor Who and Sarah Jane audio titles are to be released by BBC Audio in the UK on 8th October.

• The Day of the Troll is a Doctor Who adventure read by David Tennant. It is the second in a series of audio exclusive stories, following the release of Pest Control in May.
• The Dead Shoes is the second in the Hornets' Nest series starring Tom Baker and Richard Franklin. What is so special about a pair of ballet shoes on display in Cromer’s Palace of Curios? When the Doctor meets Ernestina Scott there in 1932, they discover the horrific truth together.
• The Shadow People is a Sarah Jane Adventures audio book read by Elisabeth Sladen.
• The White Wolf is a Sarah Jane Adventures audio book read by Elisabeth Sladen.

The third part of Hornets' Nest will be released in November, not in October as indicated in a previous press release.

• The Circus of Doom is the third in the Hornets' Nest series. In Blandford, 1832, ringmaster Antonio exerts a strange influence on the townsfolk. When the Doctor steps into the ring, he discovers that Antonio has some familiar demons of his own.

TV/Movie CD publisher Silva Screen have released details on a new CD covering the music from the two 1960s Aaru films Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150AD.

The restored soundtracks feature the scores composed by Malcolm Lockyer and Bill McGuffie, with additional sounds from Barry Gray; the CD will also feature contemporary single releases, plus a 20 page booklet covering production notes and memorabilia.

The CD is due for release on 5th October; track details below.