BBC Books have announced that the forthcoming novelisation of the Douglas Adams story City of Death will be released on 21st May 2015.

The BBC have revealed that Michelle Gomez will be reprising her role as Missy in the two-part premiere of the next series of Doctor Who, entitled The Magician's Apprentice, and The Witch's Familiar.

Writer Steven Moffat commented:

Michelle Gomez said:
The BBC website have also presented a video message from the actress:



The premiere will also see the return of Jemma Redgrave as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, who appears alongside UNIT in the current block directed by Hettie MacDonald. The episodes will also feature Kelly Hunter (who previously played the Shadow Architect in The Stolen Earth), Clare Higgins (Ohila in The Night of the Doctor) and Jaye Griffiths (perhaps best remembered by sci-fi fans as Ros Henderson in Bugs).

Other guest stars appearing in the series include Daniel Hoffmann-Gill, Jami Reid-Quarrell, Aaron Neil, India Ria Amarteifio, Joey Price, Dasharn Anderson, Harki Bhambra, and Demi Papaminas.

The BBC has confirmed that filming has started on block 2 of the next series of Doctor Who, and that Hettie MacDonald will be returning to the directors chair for the session.

MacDonald previously directed the Weeping Angels’ debut in the 2007 story Blink.

Filming for the new series started in Cardiff in January and the Doctor and Clara will be back in the Autumn.

Figures showing the Live+7 performance of the Doctor Who Christmas Special Last Christmas are now available.

The LIve+7 figure is calculated by the BBC to try to get an accurate estimate of the total unique audience for an episode of a programme. Unlike official BARB figures the Live+7 uses data to include those who watched one of the broadcast repeats of the episode and those who watched the episode on iPlayer all within 7 days of the original transmission.

Overall the episode had a audience of 9.62 million who watched either on the day of broadcast or within the following 7 days. Of that 6.29 million watched on Christmas Day, 0.53 million watched the repeat on BBC Three, 1.97 million watched a timeshifted recording while 0.83 million watched on iPlayer.

Two archive interviews are to be released on DVD and are available from Galaxy 4.

An interview with Tom Baker, conducted in 1989, was originally available on Video Cassette, published by Reeltime Pictures. It is released on DVD for the first time. Also available is a brand new title, an interview with Anthony Ainley from April 2000.

Both are released on 27th February.

The BBC has released details for Series Nine of Doctor Who, which began filming in Cardiff at the start of last week.

The episodes currently being filmed are written by Toby Whithouse whose first worked on the series in 2006, when he wrote School Reunion, the story which saw the reintroduction of Sarah Jane Smith and K-9 into the series. He also wrote The Vampires of Venice, The God Complex and A Town Called Mercy for the Eleventh Doctor, as well as an episode of Torchwood.

Steven Moffat, lead writer and Executive Producer, said,On set filming for the new series, Peter Capaldi addedJoining the Doctor and Clara in the story will be Paul Kaye who is known for playing Thoros of Myr in the third series of Game of Thrones. In the 1990's he was better known for creating Dennis Pennis, the shock interviewer who ambushed celebrities with bizarre questions. Kaye is also well-known for being the voice of Vincent the fox on the puppet-based BBC comedy Mongrels.

Commenting on his role, Paul Kaye, saidAlso starring in the episodes will be Morven Christie who recently played the role of Amanda in the crime drama Grantchester and featured in Death in Paradise (2014) and Twenty Twelve.

Other guest artists in the story include Arsher Ali who played the part of Malik Suri in the critically acclaimed The Missing (BBC One) and Colin McFarlane who appeared in EastEnders as part of the Who Killed Lucy Beale? storyline. McFarlane provided an alien voice in the 2007 Christmas story Voyage of the Damned as well as appearing in Torchwood: Children of Earth.

Actress Sophie Stone also appears in the show for the first time. Stone was the lead actress in the play Woman of Flowers and has appeared in Midsummer Murders and Casualty. Also confirmed for roles in the double episode are Zaqi Ismail, Steven Robertson and Neil Fingleton.

While filming continues in Cardiff, plans are underway for location filming later in the series, with the show heading back to Spain according to a tweet from Director of photography Ali Asad. Last year's episode Kill The Moon was filmed on the Spanish island of Lanzarote, as was the 1984 story Planet of Fire. Spain has also been used for location work for The Two Doctors, Asylum of the Daleks and A Town Called Mercy.

The new series will be back in Autumn 2015.

SPACE have reported that the Christmas Special Last Christmas not only ranked as the channel's most popular show over Christmas, but also the highest ranked programme on the channel so far this broadcast year.

BBC America have revealed that Doctor Who had its highest rated season ever on the channel, finishing with the Christmas Special which delivered over 2.3 million total Viewers and was the  number 1 non-sports telecast in all of cable during the time period among Adults 25-54 in Live+3.

The special, Last Christmas, had a total of 2.616 million Viewers in Live+3 when combining the 9:00pm premiere with the 11:45pm and 2:30am replays. The Twelfth Doctor’s first Christmas special more than doubled the viewership of the Eleventh Doctor’s first Christmas special, A Christmas Carol in 2010.

BBC AMERICA was the #1 network on Twitter and Tumblr and Doctor Who: Last Christmas was the #1 show on both platforms in all of television in Primetime (excluding sports) on December 25. Doctor Who is pacing as one of Twitter’s top 10 most-tweeted original dramas in all of cable for 2014.

Peter Capaldi’s first season as the Doctor, with co-star Jenna Coleman as Clara, delivered BBC AMERICA its highest rated season ever with an average of 2.035 million Total Viewers in Live+3.

Doctor Who: Last Christmas arrives on Blu-ray and DVD in the US on February 17, 2015 and Doctor Who: The Complete Eighth Series is available now.

Doctor Who director Fiona Cumming has died at the age of 77

Fiona Cumming had a long and illustrious career, working on over 34 episodes of the original Doctor Who series.

She began as an actress, working at the Royal Scottish Academy before going on to a variety of theatre and television work, including a spell at Border Television in the dual role of announcer and features interviewer. She appeared in Dr. Finlay's Casebook and Suspense.

Deciding that she would prefer production work, in 1964 gained a post as an assistant floor manager at the BBC. She first worked on Doctor Who on the season three story The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve.

By 1966 she had won promotion to the role of Production Assistant and in this capacity she worked on the second Doctor story The Highlanders, Patrick Troughton's second story and the one which saw the introduction of the character Jamie. She worked alongside the second Doctor again in 1969 on The Seeds of Death. In 1972 she worked with Jon Pertwee on the story The Mutants.

In 1974 she become a BBC Staff Director and in the 1980's she was asked to direct four stories featuring the Fifth Doctor, Peter Davison. She directed his first story Castrovalva as well as the Mara sequel Snakedance, Enlightenment and the story which saw the introduction of Peri and the departure of Turlough, Planet of Fire. In 1988 she made an uncredited cameo appearance as a tourist at Windsor Castle in the 25th anniversary story Silver Nemesis.

Other productions on which she worked included two episodes of Blakes 7, Sarcophagus and Rumours of Death, as well as Emmerdale, The Walls of Jericho, God's Wonderful Railway, The Omega Factor, Play for Today, Angels, Jackanory Playhouse, Z Cars and the ill fated Eldorado.

After leaving the BBC she remained active as a freelance director while also pursuing a number of other projects, including some with John Nathan-Turner in their Teynham Productions organisation.

Fiona Cumming died on the 1st January.

Last Christmas has debuted in Australia, averaging 563,000 viewers in the five major capital cities. It was the top-rating drama of the day and the thirteenth highest rating programme of the day overall.  These ratings do not include regional or time-shifted viewers.