Canada's CBC Television online shows Eps 8 - The Impossible Planet (Part 1) scheduled to air on CBC at 8PM EST tonight (December 4th) across Canada. The CBC is airing all of Series 2 every Monday. cbc.ca/doctorwho

Big Finish has announced a writing contest in which the winner would see their story published in an upcoming volume of Short Trips. The contest is open to anyone, of any age, who has never had a work of fiction published that they have been paid for. In the past Big Finish has held similar competitions for their Bernice Summerfield range, but this is the first time that the door has been opened to the Doctor Who range.

Submissions should be less than 2,500 words. Participants are free to use any of the Classic Series Doctors and their companions. The Theme for entries will be: "How the Doctor changed my life."

A full list of rules and restrictions is available at the Big Finish website. Deadline for entries is January 31, 2007.

2007 marks the 15th Anniversary of Bernice Summerfield. To celebrate this landmark achievement, Big Finish Productions has announced their releases for the year.

February sees the release of the long-awaited Bernice Summerfield - The Inside Story by Ian Farrington and Simon Guerrier. This book with track Benny from her first appearance in Doctor Who Magazine #192 to the explosive events of her eighth audio season.

February also sees the publication of Missing Adventures, an anthology edited by Rebecca Levene which will be focused on Bernice's early adventures.

Season Eight releases start in February with The Tub Full of Cats by Daniel O'Mahony. April sees The Judas Gift by Nick Wallace, with Freedom of Information by Eddie Robson following in June. Dave Stone takes us to The End of the World in August, while Joseph Lidster's The Final Amendment comes out in October. The Audio Season ends with The Wake by Simon Guerrier in December.

Also seeing publication in 2007 are two more books: The Two Jasons by Dave Stone, War Stories by Jonathan Blum, Kate Orman and Philip Purser-Hallard.

More Details are available at Big Finish's Bernice Summerfield homepage.

The Daily Mail has run an article about star autobiographies that do not sell well. Billie Piper's book 'Growing Pains' is mentioned. The article does not go into details on her book sales, but a quick look atamazon.co.uk list it as 283 in Books. Amazon's synopsis of the book includes the following passage:'Billie Piper has won over the critics and the British public for a second time by re-inventing herself as an actress in BBC productions of Much Ado About Nothing, The Canterbury Tales and, of course, Doctor Who . So how did she get from there to here? This is the funny, honest and insightful story of an extraordinary young life.'.

Big Finish has released the final cover design for the upcoming Seventh Doctor release, Noctorne, starring Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor, Sophie Aldred as Ace and Philip Olivier as Hex.

Also available is the cover art for the upcoming Fifth Doctor adventure Circular Time, starring Peter Davison as the Doctor and Sarah Sutton as Nyssa.

Circular Time is scheduled for release in January 2007, Nocturne in February.

The BBC has just released the first publicity photo for the upcoming Doctor Whospin-off, The Sarah Jane Adventures. Pictured left to right are Porchsha Lawrence Mavour (Kelsey), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Yasmin Paige (Maria Jackson) and Thomas Knight as The Archetype/Luke. The first installment is rumoured to be airing on January 1st.

In an earlier press release, the BBC released a synopsis of the first episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures and was previously posted here on the OG News Page (protected in a Spoiler Tag for those who don't want to know in advance).

For those of you in the US and Canada, the Tenth Doctor novel The Price of Paradise by Colin Brake will be available at your local comic book retailer this Wednesday December 6th. If they don't have a copy, ask them to order you one from Diamond Distributing (item #SEP063808).

According to Sky Showbiz (Anne Montini's Gossip 29/11/06): 'Don't expect to see former Doctor Who actress Billie Piper at any sci-fi conventions. She told me: "I loved playing Rose Tyler but I won't be going to any Doctor Who-style conventions. They're just not for me."'

In an interview with John Barrowman on SyFyPortal site (posted 26/11/06), he comments: "I will be in [season] three of Doctor Who," he said excitedly. "I will be in the last three episodes of four episodes, and the scripts are being written as we speak because I just got a text from Russell [T. Davies] telling me that he's finishing the script that Jack returns to Doctor Who."

"You will never see, you will never have Who crossing over into Torchwood," Barrowman exclaimed. "Doctor Who is for children, is a base for family viewing and children. Torchwood is not. The only person that will cross at this point will be Jack going back and forth, because Jack has a different persona in Doctor Who as he does in Torchwood, if that makes any sense. He's darker because of his circumstances and he'll change again when [he] comes in, or he might be darker when he comes back in Doctor Who. I dunno yet but, the Doctor will never come into Torchwood."

Although he said that he cannot comment on his upcoming Doctor Who episodes because they are still a work in progress, he did drop a couple of hints surrounding the rest of Torchwood.

"I'm sure at some point whether it be in Doctor Who or Torchwood you'll learn all of his back history," Barrowman said of Capt. Jack. "What I can tell you is that you will learn a lot about Jack in the next few episodes and towards the end of the [season]. And also that as you've noticed in the series thus far, everybody has a secret and you're going to find out more about their secret and how things start to unravel. And that was a hint."

After the success of their Doctor Who Monster competition last year, Blue Peter and the Doctor Who production team decided to go one better this year with a new competition for a Blue Peter viewer to actually have aspeaking role in the new series!

Launched on the 16th October with an video introduction by David Tennant and other recent series actors, the following weeks saw thousands of videos submitted, choosing from three different scripts to act out.

As well as the top prize of appearing in Doctor Who, the next three runners up have an expenses-paid trip to the exhibition in Cardiff, all ten receive a signed boxed set for Season Two, and the 250 runners up receive a Doctor Who book and action figure.

Future editions of Blue Peter saw encouragement from Doctor Who's Casting Director Andy Pryor, and Stormbreaker film star Alex Pettyfer.

The competition closed on the 10th November, and the following Wednesday's show covered some of the 8057 entries that had been received! The top nine video finalists were then announced, plus an online poll run to enable viewers to select an additional finalist from ten other entrants by the end of the week.

The ten finalists will now be attending an acting workshop, and the eventual winners will be announced on a future programme.

Competition details online can still be seen on the CBBC website, with the original competition announcement and scripts, plus the voting results.