Doctor Who appears on the cover of the pre-Christmas edition of Radio Times, on sale in the UK tomorrow (click on the preview below to see a larger version). Their website also reveals something nice coming in the Christmas Double Issue.

The Christmas bumper edition will feature a free CD inside; part one of "The Feast of the Drowned", read by David Tennant. If this freebie is in the same style as last year's Christmas present from Radio Times, then the second part will be available free in the following issue of the magazine in the new year. This however is yet to be confirmed.

A pop-up preview of a partially wrapped Christmas cover suggests it will be a traditional seasonal painting with a Dr Who splash along the bottom promoting the free CD.

(Thanks to TaraLivesOn from our forum)

BBC Video and 2Entertain have released full details about the forthcoming New Beginnings DVD boxed set due out in January in the UK, featuring the classic Doctor Who serials The Keeper of Traken, Logopolis and Castrovalva starring Tom Baker, Peter Davison and Anthony Ainley as the Master.

Below are the full list of extras as posted on the official Doctor Who website recently about the three DVDs included.

Additionally, clickable below are each of the cover illustrations for the three discs.

Tom Baker is Everywhere

There's more coverage of Tom Baker's return as the voice of British Telecom's text-to-voice service, and the novelty single in which Baker "sings" "You Really Got Me" by the Kinks, at The Mirror, The Scotsman and Metro.

Baker is also providing his voice to Little Britain the Video Game, which is covered at PSP World, Pro-G,WorthPlaying.com and Games Asylum.

People

Catherine Tate is profiled in The Sunday Times, in advance of her appearance in The Runaway Bride on Christmas Day.

An interview with Sophia Myles in The Independent mentions her relationship with David Tennant, and the Tenth Doctor action figure she keeps in her purse when the two are separated: "I'm pretty excited about the fact that my boyfriend has an action doll. How cool is that? Now, all I'm waiting for is for the Doctor Who people to make a Madame de Pompadour doll so I can do a bit of Barbie and Ken action with them ... You know what I'm talking about." Myles is appearing in Dracula on BBC One opposite Love and Monsters' Marc Warren.

Paul Cornell mentions on his blog that he'll be watching his next Doctor Who story being filmed this Thursday.

The Observer asks Torchwood's Naoko Mori what she would save if her house was burning down. (The answer: Kermit the Frog and family photos.)

John Barrowman is supporting the canine charity Dogs Trust in their campaign against giving dogs or puppies as presents. Barrowman made an appearance at Dogs Trust West London Rehoming Centre as part of the campaign, titled "A Dog is for Life, Not Just for Christmas." Covered at the Dogs Trust website and (appropriately enough) at K9 Magazine. (Who knew the tin dog had his own magazine?)

And it seems that Victoria Beckham (who famously bought her husband Doctor Who: The Complete Shooting Scriptsfor Christmas last year) may be buying Billie Piper's old house in Los Angeles. The story, with mention of Piper, is popping up everywhere from Canada to India to New Zealand.

Miscellaneous mentions

The UK Sunday Express newspaper has printed praise for both Doctor Who and Torchwood as part of a front-page article claiming that "Ten million families have switched off their TVs because of the diet of sex and violence." The piece, by journalist David Stephenson, carries a quote from a spokeswoman for Tessa Jowell, the UK government's Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, which praises Torchwood as being at the head of digital television programming, along with the sketch show Little Britain and US import Curb Your Enthusiasm. "Increasingly programmes on digital channels are giving those on their terrestrial neighbours a run for their money," the spokeswoman said. Praise for Doctor Who itself comes in a quote from BBC Director of Vision Jana Bennett, responding to comments from the actor David Jason that it was one of the few programmes he was happy for his daughter to watch. "We’re delighted that David Jason appreciates Doctor Who and Robin Hood," the American executive said, "because we created them as programmes we hoped the whole family would enjoy, along with others like Planet Earth, Strictly Come Dancing and How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?"

Scotland on Sunday has a review of the bestselling Doctor Who Annual 2007.

Jed Mercurio, writer of the medical drama Bodies, complained to The Times about the current vogue for family drama, or, as he described it, "juvenilia, things that are really children’s drama dressed up a bit for an adult audience."Bodies lost to Doctor Who at the BAFTAs this year, and Mercurio seems to be referring to Doctor Who in his commentary. He concludes, "If I give it a year people will have seen how boring it is to have endless Doctor Who spin-offs. Then, hopefully, people will go ‘we’ve made idiots of ourselves, let’s make something good again'." The Stage responds to Mercurio, calling him "bitter" and mentions in passing, "While I have my own feelings about Torchwood (i.e., it isn't very good), from the clips disc that just landed on my desk of the forthcoming Sarah Jane Adventures, I'm personally glad that somebody's making a bit of exciting drama for a bona fide children’s audience."

Also at The Stage, ITV's Controller of Drama mentions David Tennant and Billie Piper as examples of the type of "new talent" ITV hopes to show more of in the future: "Look at Billie Piper and David Tennant - even though they have worked before - the viewers feel like they have been in on their transition to mainstream television. They feel like they have been involved in the process and that’s what we are trying to do with more of our drama and new talent."

(Additional material by Kenny Davidson and Paul Hayes; thanks to "Russwhover" of the YaWho discussion group.)

Warner Home Video has announced the release of The Sontaran Experiment starring Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen and Ian Marter, and The Invasion starring Patrick Troughton, Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury, on DVD in North America, due out on March 6, 2007. The cover illustrations for both are below; click on each for a larger version.

As in the UK release, The Invasion will feature both episodes 1 and 4 - missing from the BBC archives - in a special fully-animated reconstruction by Cosgrove Hall, using the program's original soundtrack. Full details on each release, including lists of extras, are available at the website of the Doctor Who Restoration Team (articles for The Invasionand The Sontaran Experiment accessible).

The BBC is set to release a series of three Tie-In Novels based on its hit series Torchwood. Due out on January 11th, 2007, the novels will be published in the same format as the Doctor Who book series and will carry a similar price tag. The first three releases are:

Slow Decay by Andrew Lane
A friend of Gwen's has recently done an impressive bit of slimming, thanks to a new Cardiff weight-loss clinic with a incredibly simple system, and now Rhys wants to give it a try. Elsewhere in the city, an ordinary woman with superhuman strength and a rapacious appetite attacks a group of teenagers. Eight women have disappeared over the past few days, and the police fear they may have a serial killer on their hands, but as the body count rises and the hungers grow, the Torchwood team realise there may be something much more dangerous than a serial killer at work.

Border Princes by Dan Abnett
Something is here that shouldn't be here. Something is watching. In Cardiff's secret heart, the members of the Torchwood team struggle to define and locate the intruder, and contain it before anyone gets hurt. But this time, they are out of their depth. How do you unlock a secret that can't be broken? How do you assess the facts when the facts change to cover all traces? How do you cope if people are already hurt and no one realises it? What do you do if you're one of them? The Border Princes are watching, and they play for keeps ...

Another Life by Peter Anghelides
A storm is brewing - the water levels of the Bristol Channel are inexplicably rising, and Cardiff Bay is under threat from the worst flooding in years. In the midst of the climate chaos, Torchwood is called to investigate a series of gruesome murders - vagrants found dead around Cardiff with their heads partially eaten. When Owen goes missing following a session on a virtual reality game, Jack, Gwen and the team must discover what's really going on before the water claims them all. And they must face the terror that lies at the bottom of the bay - waiting, feeding, controlling ...This work features characters from BBC's "Torchwood", as played by John Barrowman, Eve Myles, Naoko Mori, Burn Gorman and Gareth David-Lloyd.

Many of the major American retailers for Big Finish products have noticed a recent delay in getting titles. This is due to negotiations that are going on between Big Finish and The Ministry of Sound and Vision, their North American distributor. Many retailers are affected by this delay, and subscribers should be aware that they are working on the problem. Some websites, such as Who North America and DoctorWhoStore.com, have recieved copies of the missing stories directly from Big Finish. This follows on the decision made earlier this year to make special releases and subscriber extras available exclusively to those who subscribe directly from Big Finish.

The Radio Times online shows The Christmas Invasion scheduled to air on BBC One (all regions) at 4:25PM GMT on Sunday 17 December. This marks the first time that a Doctor Who episode has been repeated on BBC One since Planet of the Daleks was shown in 1993, and the first ever repeat of a new series episode on the programme's home channel.

In anticipation of the Christmas Day debut of The Runaway Bride on BBC One, the official Doctor Who homepagehas gotten into the holiday spirit. Going along with the holiday theme, there is an Advent calendar on the homepage which will provide a different treat every day between now and Christmas. The daily surprises have already included desktop wallpaper, a "Who's Santa?" game and images of prop money used in filming of The Runaway Bride, with many more to come throughout the month.

The latest edition of the UK listings magazine TV Times - the longtime rival of the BBC's Radio Times - has the results of its reader-voted television awards for 2006. Doctor Who was voted Best TV Show, with David Tennant taking the award for Best Actor.

(Thanks to 'PolyG' from the Outpost Gallifrey forum).

The Christmas double issue of the Radio Times is under threat of disruption and delays due to a planned strike by journalists from midnight tonight.

According to Media Guardian, "NUJ members at BBC Worldwide's magazines division met today and agreed to go ahead with the 48 hour strike from midnight, threatening to halt publication of the Radio Times' bumper, two-week Christmas and New Year edition for the first time in its 83-year history."

However, a BBC spokesman told the MediaGuardian — which illustrated the story on its index page with an image of the 2006 Doctor Who series launch week cover — that: "We'd like to reassure our readers that Radio Times' Christmas and New Year double issue will be appearing on UK shelves on December 9 as planned and will not be affected by December 5 and 6's 48-hour strike action."

This issue of the Radio Times would clearly be a major part of the pre-publicity for The Runaway Bride.

(Additional reporting by Paul Hayes)