New items in the papers today: icLiverpool celebrates the 40th anniversary in an article that includes comments from several Doctors, including Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy. "I think the next Doctor should be a woman - Dawn French," said Colin. "She'd be fabulous, but I don't know if they'd have the bottle to do it this time." icWales also chimes in with anarticle about the show which includes comments from Russell T. Davies, in which he comments about being bombarded with personal e-mails from 'fans' demanding the return of the Daleks Cybermen, and so forth! The article speculates that there will be seven episodes, but this is speculative. (Thanks to Steve Tribe)

The British Board of Film Classification website is listing the following extras for the forthcoming DVD release of The Visitation starring Peter Davison, Sarah Sutton, Janet Fielding and Matthew Waterhouse, due out in January:


These items include the half-hour interview segment with director Peter Moffatt, a featurette about the scoring of the episode and other items. More when it's available.

The Reuters news service on Sunday ran a feature story on the anniversary, including mention of "Shalka" and the new show.

In the European edition of the Sunday Express (and presumably in the UK version as well), there were two brief mentions of Doctor Who. One was in the Pub Quiz: one question was "Which TV series started on 23 November 1963 with William Hartnell in its title role." The other was a half page interview with Tom Baker, in which he talked about the series. Said Baker: "When I was doing Who, I didn't have to do any acting. It was just me, reading the lines." Also, Sunday's "User Friendly" comic strip in the US featured a guest appearance by a Dalek! Also, a news item is available onYahoo UK/Ireland discussing the "Scream of the Shalka" webcast. (Thanks to Rollo Martin, Tom Beck, David French)

The ic North Wales site has a three-page article today on the 40th anniversary of Doctor Who, a summary of the show and it's connections with the Welsh. Interestingly, says the article, "The absence of a special Dr Who weekend of programmes dedicated to the time travelling doctor marks a bizarre scheduling decision which is entirely in keeping with the BBC's love/hate relationship with the adventurous Time Lord," omitting the fact that UK Gold did exactly that all weekend. You can read the full article by going here. (Thanks to Steve Tribe, Andrew Harvey)

According to producers of this past weekend's Doctor Who @40 event on UK Gold, the documentaries that have been run are cleared for "six transmissions over the next year," so they'll be repeated for those who weren't able to see them. No word as to when it will be done. Also, credits were left off these programmes only because the producers ran out of time in production, but the credits on each will be run during the next transmission. Meanwhile, among the highlights during the weekend was a ten-minute feature at the end about the future of Doctor Who... which ended with a number of people recommending Paul McGann for the new series, and the very final word was McGann saying "You never know..." and winking at the camera. (Thanks to Roger Anderson, Dave Pashby)

Fans have noticed a slight issue on the new DVD release of The Three Doctors that crept into the pressing of the DVD after the masters were delivered by the Doctor Who Restoration Team. Says Steve Roberts, it's "at the end of episode two, at the last chapter point in the episode. The sound continues across the chapter point OK, but the video jumps back three seconds and then continues to play out. The result is a shot gets repeated (a brief repeat of the grounds of the UNIT HQ minus the house, followed by the zoom into the soldier) and from that point on the picures are three seconds out of sync with the sound. I have checked the masters and they are fine, so I'm afraid that it's an error that has crept in downstream of us. ie it's not our fault!" Although a three second mismatch between audio and picture sounds a lot, there is no dialogue involved - the fault occurs just as the end title music is about to begin. According to Steve, the US/Canada release version, coming soon, doesn't have the problem; however, the Australia/New Zealand version has been for several weeks, demonstrating that it's not that noticeable if you're not aware of it. BBCi also comments on a different issue, that the DVD isn't as widely available as speculated: "It should be noted that only a few thousand copies of The Three Doctors come complete with a Corgi model Bessie car, making it a more limited edition than was previously thought." (Thanks to the Restoration Team and BBCi)

According to a news article that appeared today in the UK's "The Sun" paper, the Daleks may not appear in the new Doctor Who TV series because of an ongoing rights issue between the BBC and the estate of the late Dalek creator Terry Nation. While the BBC jointly owns rights to the Daleks with Nation's estate, the executors are apparently saying no to a deal. The Sun quotes an 'insider' as follows: "No one knows exactly why, but Terry fell out with the BBC at some point. He told the executors never to let the BBC use the Daleks again. Fans want to see the Daleks return, but they may be disappointed.ö A BBC spokesman confirmed to the Sun that there were on-going discussions between the BBC and the executors. The story has also been picked up word for word by Ananova. (Thanks to Nathan Baron, Steve Tribe)