This month's Doctor releases from Big Finish feature the continuation of the Seventh Doctor's travels with Klein and Will, an adventure for the First Doctor and Susan, plus an interview with the two actors that brought the popular Victorian investigators - aka Jago and Litefoot - to life.

Win a copy of The Alchemists

This month's competition thanks to Big Finish is to win one of five copies of The Alchemists. To be in with a chance to win, please answer the following question:
Send your answer to comp-alchemists@doctorwhonews.net with the subject line "I'm a Genius!", along with your name, address, and where you saw the competition (the news website, twitter, facebook, etc.). Only one entry per postal address will be accepted. The competition is open worldwide, and the closing date is 5th September 2013.

AudioGo's ongoing celebration of 50 Years of Doctor Who reaches the Ninth Doctor in September, with he, Rose and Jack entering the Night of the Whisper in the Destiny of the Doctor series. Meanwhile, the Sixth Doctor finds himself on trial for his lives in The Trial of a Time Lord in the latest Target novelisation adaptations, whilst the soundtrack of six adventures with the First Doctor are released in a collected edition.

The 50th Anniversary audio adventure Light at the End from Big Finish is to be released in a limited edition Vinyl edition.


The Light at the End will also be available as a limited edition five-disc CD, which features:

• Discs 1 and 2 – The Light at the End
• Disc 3 – The Making of The Light at the End (70 minute documentary)
• Disc 4 – This is Doctor Who at Big Finish (70 minute documentary)
• Disc 5 – Doctor Who – The Companion Chronicles: The Revenants performed by William Russell as Ian

The Light at the End is scheduled to be released on 23rd November 2013; the standard version is currently available to pre-order via our shop.

The eighteenth in our series of features telling the story of the creation of Doctor Who, and the people who made it happen.

Production on the new series was progressing. The main cast were under contract and being measured for costumes and make-up.

It was on Tuesday 20th August 1963 - exactly 50 years ago today - that Doctor Who had its first studio session.

The place was Stage 3A of the BBC's television studios in Ealing, and the event was testing for what would become the iconic Doctor Who title sequence. The designer assigned was Bernard Lodge and the inspiration for the design came from a piece of 35mm film obtained by Verity Lambert. The film had been created for the children's production of Tobias and the Angel, made in 1960, and featured a howl-round effect that impressed Lambert.


The use of howl-round as an effect had been pioneered in the late Fifties by Norman Taylor, a BBC technical operations manager on Crew 9 based at Lime Grove in London. He discovered, while experimenting with a camera looking at a monitor showing its own picture, the effect of diminishing images into limbo.
Lambert would later ask permission for Taylor to be given a credit for his work on the series. Although this was rejected by Taylor's Head of Department, R W Bayliff, Taylor was given a Technical Suggestion award of £25 for his idea.


In 2011, Palmer recalled how Taylor had brought the effect to him in his role as an Investigations Engineer, responsible for developing new operational techniques:
It was this film sequence for Tobias and the Angel that had caught the attention of Lambert and which she showed to Lodge as the type of effect she would like for the opening of her new drama series. The sequence impressed Lodge and he suggested feeding the letters from the Doctor Who title into the sequence.

Clive South, who was part of the technical team, recalls that TC3 was used to create the effect which was recorded on to film at Lime Grove. He said:
Hugh Sheppard, who was on camera for the session, recalls Taylor lighting matches to trigger the howl-round.

Geoff Higgs, who was working in videotape in 1963, talked about some of the complications in recording the sequence:
Lodge used just one part of the old Tobias and the Angel footage: the very start, the opening line that comes up and then breaks away. Everything else was new.

Complete with the Ron Grainer music, realised by Delia Derbyshire and Dick Mills, the opening sequence would become one of the most memorable and inspired in the history of British television.

The writer of the eighth Puffin Books e-book to celebrate the 50th Anniversary is the author of the TimeRiders series of books, Alex Scarrow.
With careers as a rock guitarist, graphic artist and game designer Scarrow became a successful author, writing adult thrillers and screenplays, but it is the world of Young Adult fiction that has enabled him to further develop concepts he originally delved into when designing games. Commenting on his latest commission, he said:
The author can be reached on Twitter via @AlexScarrow, and more details about the TimeRiders series can be found via this website.

A promotional video featuring Scarrow has been made available via the BBC's YouTube channel, and the Guardian has also published an extract from the e-book.

A party celebrating the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who is to be held in London in November.

Organised by Jeremy and Paula Bentham together with Tony Clark, The Doc Lands @ 50 Party will be free to attend and will take place at a venue in Docklands on Saturday 23rd November, starting around 7pm after the BBC's Doctor Who 50th Celebration at ExCeL has ended that day. The party is open to all people aged 18 and over, whether or not they are going to the ExCeL event.

Jeremy told Doctor Who News: If the broadcast of the anniversary episode and any other Doctor Who programming by the BBC coincides with when the party is taking place, it will be shown on the venue's large-screen TV.

Food and drink will be available to buy at the party – although fish fingers and custard will not necessarily be on the menu!

Entry to The Doc Lands @ 50 Party will be by allocated ticket only, and capacity is strictly limited to 1,500 places. To apply for tickets, e-mail Jeremy at jjbentham@aol.com by Monday 9th September, using the subject line Doc Lands ticket applications and stating your name as well as how many people will be in your group. Before applying, though, people are urged to consider their transport options for getting home afterwards, as the party will finish late.

Successful applicants will be contacted in early November, when they will be told the exact location of the party and will be sent their group or individual tickets too.

Since the show's return to TV in 2005, the organisers have held a series of highly popular event parties in London.

Producer Phil Collinson and director Joe Ahearne will be joining actor Bruno Langley and visual effects designer Dave Houghton as the special guests for the BFI's screenings marking the Ninth Doctor's era, it was revealed today.

The episodes Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways - which comprised the Series 1 finale and saw Christopher Eccleston bowing out as the Doctor - will be shown on the big screen on Saturday 24th August.

The Ninth Doctor event is the latest in BFI Southbank's Doctor Who At 50 celebratory season and will start at 2pm. Tickets are currently sold out but returns and stand-bys are a possibility.

Radio Times is trying to find the nation's most-loved drama series, with Doctor Who featuring in the final shortlist.

The magazine is celebrating its ninetieth birthday by creating a fantasy TV schedule made up of the most popular TV shows in history. This week, in a poll to find the best drama series, readers are invited to choose their favourite show, the one they would most love to watch on a Saturday night.

The Time Lord faces competition from some of the greats, from Brideshead Revisited to Our Friends in the North, from Cracker to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Classic adaptations are also included, such as Bleak House, Pride and Prejudice and The Jewel in the Crown, as well as the soap operas EastEnders and Coronation Street. Political thrillers are represented in the form of Edge of Darkness and House of Cards, alongside crime dramas such as Prime Suspect, State of Play, Inspector Morse and Life on Mars. All-time classic Upstairs Downstairs is also nominated, with Broadchurch, Downton Abbey and Sherlock representing the recent past.

Voting is via the Radio Times website.

The seventeenth in our series of features telling the story of the creation of Doctor Who, and the people who made it happen.

Production is now well under way on the new science-fiction series, the main actors had been cast and issued with their contracts.

It was clear to the production team that a vital element of the new drama's success would be the title music and special sounds. On Monday 12th August, exactly 50 years ago today, director Waris Hussein contacted the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to discuss the requirements for the first episode of Doctor Who.

The Radiophonic Workshop had been founded in 1958, with a brief to produce effects and new music for radio and television using new techniques available in the new electronic age. It was based in the BBC's Maida Vale Studios in Delaware Road, north-west London.

Verity Lambert had by now abandoned her original idea of asking the French group Les Structures Sonores to provide the title music. A meeting with the head of the Workshop, Desmond Briscoe, had persuaded Lambert that what she needed was "something electronic with a strong beat", something "familiar, but different" - something the Radiophonic Workshop could provide. Lambert was keen to obtain the services of Ron Grainer to write the music.

Grainer was an Australian composer who had been living in London for the past ten years. After working as a pianist in a nightclub, he had achieved some success as a composer, creating the scores for a number of TV series and a couple of features films. In 1961 he had won an Ivor Novello Award for the theme to Maigret, the series based on the books by Georges Simenon. Grainer had already worked with the Radiophone Workshop when creating his score for Giants of Steam, a documentary about railways.

Assigned to create the music would be one of the Radiophonic Workshop's staff, Delia Derbyshire. She had joined the BBC in 1960 working as a radio studio manager before joining the Workshop in 1962. The music she provided to herald the start of each episode of Doctor Who is now regarded as one of the most significant and innovative piece of electronic music ever produced. That it was created in the early Sixties, in the days before multi-track recorders and commercial synthesizers, is truly amazing. Aided by assistant Dick Mills, Derbyshire created each note separately by cutting, splicing, speeding up, and slowing down recordings of a single plucked string, white noise, and the output of test-tone oscillators. The notes were then edited together on quarter-inch tape. Mixing was done by starting several tape machines simultaneously and mixing the outputs together.

Grainer was highly impressed with the final result, famously asking Derbyshire, "Did I write that?" Her reply became equally famous: "Most of it."

Another important element of the show would be the special sounds. In charge for the first episode would be Brian Hodgson, who had joined the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1962. One of the most important effects that would be needed for the new series would be that of the Doctor's time-and-spaceship dematerialising. The ship had by now been named the TARDIS. Hodgson produced the effect by dragging the key to his mother's back door along the strings of an old, gutted piano. The resulting sound was recorded and electronically processed with echo and reverb. Hodgson would provide most of the special sounds for the series until 1972, creating much of the soundscape of Doctor Who.

While the music was being put together, events around the series were moving on. William Hartnell had attended Television Centre in west London for make-up and costume tests in the first week of August, and Carole Ann Ford would attend the following week. Terry Nation had submitted his scripts for the fourth story of the season and the production team had decided to up the episode count to seven to better serve the story. The story was, however, likely to be moved back to fifth in the season as script editor David Whitaker was keen to include a story where the TARDIS crew get reduced in size. This, however, was dependent on getting a better studio allocation with more up-to-date equipment to help achieve the effects needed for such a story.

.As previously reported, Splendid Chaps is a year-long performance/podcast project to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who hosted by comedian Ben McKenzie (Dungeon Crawl, Melbourne Museum Comedy Tour) and writer John Richards (ABC1 sitcom Outland, Boxcutters podcast).

Described by its creators as part intellectual panel discussion, part nerdy Tonight Show, Splendid Chaps is a combination of analysis, enthusiasm and irreverence. The first episode went to number 1 on the iTunes TV & Film Podcast chart in Australia, and to number 4 in the UK. The podcasts to previous episodes are now available at www.splendidchaps.com or at iTunes.

Tickets are now on sale for their Ninth Doctor show! Their ninth major episode brings the Splendid Chaps finally to new Who, that time when the seemingly impossible happened and the show returned! Russell T Davies reinvented the Doctor by casting renowned TV and film actor Christopher Eccleston, famous for serious roles in dramas like Cracker, Our Friends in the North and Elizabeth. His simultaneously light-hearted and tortured portrayal of a man who has lost everything won over old and new fans alike, though the revelation after the smash success of the first episode that he would only be staying for one year took fans and media by surprise. Despite his short stay in the role, Eccleston defined the new era of Doctor Who and laid the groundwork for the format that persisted ever since.

Just as important to new Who was new companion Rose Tyler, played by pop star turned actor Billie Piper. For some she was a revelation compared to the “scream queens” of the past; but is this a fair assessment? Splendid Chaps take as their theme women in Doctor Who: was having a proactive and near equal status companion for the Doctor really such a radical idea? Has Doctor Who been as terribly sexist as has often been claimed? Are the women in the show as varied and multifaceted as the men? And is the modern series really better in its portrayal of women than the old?

Hosts Ben McKenzie, John Richards and Petra Elliott are joined by a panel including feminist organiser and writer Karen Pickering (Cherchez la Femme), author and podcaster Tansy Rayner Roberts (Galactic Suburbia, Verity!) and more, plus a musical performance, giveaways and excellence!

Space: The Gasometer Hotel, 484 Smith Street, Collingwood (corner of Alexandra Parade)
Time: Sunday 15 September; recording starts 5 PM
Accessibility: Splendid Chaps regret that this venue is not wheelchair accessible.
Tickets: $15 (plus booking fee where applicable)
Bookings: via trybooking.com or at the door (subject to availability)
Podcast: not yet available; released 23 September 2013.