From the Sunday Mirror (January 1): "Never has a TV series been so shrouded in secrecy," referring to the new series, "but soon we"ll be able to see how Christopher Eccleston fares as the travelling timelord, and whether Billie Piper measures up as his assistant. A few facts have emerged. The Tardis, which transports the Doctor through time and the universe, is made of coral on the inside and is a living organism which can grow and change shape. But don"t worry, the outside still looks like an old blue police box. On his journeys he will come across Simon Callow as Charles Dickens and Zoe Wanamaker as a very old woman. There is also more than a hint of romance this time around. Eccleston says: 'Doctor Who has two hearts and they can both be broken.' Ahhh." The comment about the TARDIS being "made of coral on the inside" has raised some eyebrows from Doctor Who fans online.

Item to watch in the US: BBC America is advertising the airing of "The Canterbury Tales" beginning Saturday, January 8th, at 8pm. The episode in which new series companion Billie Piper features, 'The Miller's Tale' is scheduled to first air on Jan 29, 2005.

The Sunday Independent (January 2) called Billie Piper a "talent to watch." "Billie Piper is out to prove her mettle as Doctor Who's new sidekick," says the article. Also, the Sunday Times (January 2) noted the BBC was "is in full charter-renewal mode. ... Then there is the BBC's remake of Doctor Who (BBC1), with Christopher Eccleston as the time lord. 'Everyone was expecting him to be dour, and he's so funny. I think we can do extraordinary things with it,' says the writer, Russell T Davies. 'It's classy, eccentric, there's a lot of satire, and I think it's going to work.'"

Billie Piper's film Spirit Trap will be premiered at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in the spring, before a general release across Britain and the United States. Piper and Luke Mably star in the supernatural chiller based around scary goings on in a seedy London student bedsit land, alongside Sam Troughton and Russian rock star Alsou.

From a syndicated interview with fifth Doctor Peter Davison that circulated around January 1: "People keep asking if I've got any inside information," he says. "But I don't at all. I do the odd convention from time to time, and I still play the Doctor on audio CDs but that's it. I'll be very interested to see it myself. Hopefully, it will have more money spent on it than they spent on ours. I remember it as a lot of running up and down corridors. And a lot of acting with people who weren't there because of blue screen. I was saving the world though. But it's certainly got very good writers now. A lot of the writers, like A League Of Gentlemen"s Mark Gatiss, are Doctor Who fans and have been for many, many years. So it should be good."

Interested in which story producer Russell T Davies really enjoys? From an article in January 1's The Guardian about Davies' favorite TV programs: "Doctor Who: The Ark In Space. Nothing creates terror and claustrophobia like the good old-fashioned walls of a BBC studio. You can almost hear the cameras hum. The regular cast make bubble-wrap truly terrifying, but in the unfamous, unsung guest cast, there are heroes. An actor called Wendy Williams creates a character who is frigid, humourless, ruthless, and eventually, through contact with the Doctor, completely human. I must have watched this a hundred times. It's not enough."

(Thanks to Paul Engelberg, Peter Weaver, Mark Askren, Mike Maddox, "Odoru Tardis" and others for these reports)

One very small piece of casting news is hidden in the latest edition of Radio Times today (8û14 January). Tamsin Greighas 'a cameo appearance' in the new series, according to the magazine. She is the voice of Debbie Aldridge in The Archers on BBC Radio 4, and has starred in Green Room (Channel 4, 2004), Black Books (Channel 4, 2000û) and Neverwhere (1996 on BBC2), as well as the film "Shaun of the Dead" (starring fellow new series guest star Simon Pegg) last year. (Thanks to Steve Tribe)

Illustrators Lee Binding and Clayton Hickman have completed a new cover for the UK DVD release of The Five Doctors, which was originally issued years ago with a different cover design than the current releases. The official Doctor Who site has both low- and high-resolution covers available for download; click here to download them.

A report in a recent issue of Doctor Who Magazine states that long-time author Terrance Dicks, penning an as yet untitled forthcoming BBC Books novel due in October, will return the Second Doctor to the era known as "Season 6B," a murky time in the life of the Patrick Troughton Doctor that follows "The War Games" but precedes the Jon Pertwee debut story "Spearhead from Space". Dicks recently spoke to the American Who radio broadcast (for a story taped for airing in January) in which he confirmed the story; according to Dicks, it has the Second Doctor "being kind of forced to do things for the Celestial Intervention Agency." He wouldn't say anything else about it, except that it's slated for release in late 2005, takes from elements in his BBC Books Sixth Doctor novel "Players," the first novel that dealt with this shadowy time period, and "It sort of links in with 'The Two Doctors.'" (Thanks to Joey Reynolds)

The website for the Bristol-based Pixel Studios posted what it calls "concept art" for the forthcoming Doctor Who series, including some sort of spider-type transport, the TARDIS in a metalsmith factory, and two illustrations which appear to be some sort of orbital construct. The images - which we have not confirmed are used in the series, merely posted as images "to help visualise some of the more challenging parts of the script" by an independent design firm (and which may not even have been taken up by the series once it went into production) can be seen at their website by clicking here. (Thanks to Robbie Dunlop)

Thanks to Tenth Planet we have a higher-resolution copy of the cover illustration for the forthcoming DVD release ofThe Mind Robber which we posted on Sunday. Click here to view the hi-res version (note: file is nearly 100k).

Word from the BBC over the weekend: many sections of its online presence will be closed or dramatically scaled back, including sports and local history sections and the popular Cult area... but not the Doctor Who portion of the site. Indeed, according to the Media Guardian on Sunday, "A cult TV and film site devoted to shows such as The Simpsons and Buffy will be pruned to concentrate on upcoming BBC shows like Dr Who." In other words, while the Cult section is being scaled back, the Doctor Who portion of the site will continue (albeit with likely changes) to focus on the new series.

The Doctor Who fan fiction anthology, the Trenchcoat Farewell Project is now available on CD-ROM and as a hard bound anthology, collecting 40+ stories of the fan fiction canon published in previous years into a single volume with illustrations; details available at the Trenchcoat website.

ABC Books in Australia, in association with BBC Books has brought out a paperback version of Justin Richards' 40th-anniversary tome Doctor Who: The Legend, according to their website. Despite the graphic to the contrary, the cover is actually slightly different (ie, not the picture they're showing on the page!) as it includes the ABC name and logo, and the strap line has changed from '40 years...' to 'Four Decades...'

Amazon has posted the cover illustration for the forthcoming bookWho's Next: An Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide To All Of Broadcast Doctor Who by Mark Clapham, Eddie Robson and Jim Smith. As we previously reported, "Who's Next" is "comprehensive, critical journey through every episode of Doctor Who broadcast by the BBC on television, radio, and the Internet." The book is due out in February 2005.