John Leeson and Katy Manning are to appear at a charity event this Thursday in Coventry.

The People's Dispensary for Sick Animals, PDSA is holding a Doctor Who-themed open day later this week at the Coventry PDSA Pet Hospital. The open day will give local families, animal lovers and budding vets the chance to go behind the scenes of the busy Pet Hospital to see where life-saving pet operations are carried out.

John Leeson, who has been the main voice of the Robot Dog K-9 since his first appearance in Doctor Who in 1977, will be attending along with actress Katy Manning, who played companion Jo Grant alongside the third doctor.

The stars will be joined by a host of baddies and props from the hit sci-fi series, including a TARDIS, Dalek, Cyberman, and K9 himself, who will, of course, be given a free doggy MOT. The free family event is being held at the Pet Hospital on Barkers Butts Lane on Thursday 23 August 11am to 4pm.

Senior Vet at Coventry PDSA, Kurt Vandamme, said The event will raise funds for Coventry PDSA Pet Hospital, which costs around £850,000 annually to run and doesn’t receive any government funding. The special appearances have been arranged by Fantom Events who have donated their services to PDSA free of charge, as well as making a generous donation to Coventry PDSA.

Kurt added Coventry PDSA Pet Hospital treats sick and injured pets in need, providing a vital lifeline for local owners who are struggling to afford vet care for their beloved pets. The dedicated team can see as many as 130 pets a day and perform nearly 50,000 treatments a year, ranging from major life-saving surgery and x-rays, to routine vaccinations and treatment of long-term illnesses.

Nationally PDSA runs 48 Pet Hospitals across the UK, and treats more than 5,000 pets a day – that’s 13 pets a minute! For more information visit the website.

Please note Katy Manning and John Leeson will be signing promotional cards only with every donation.

BBC Studios have announced Doctor Who Season 19 will be the next release in the Doctor Who: The Collection range.

Season 19 is Peter Davison’s first series as the Fifth Doctor and this edition follows the success of Tom Baker’s first season on Blu-ray which sold out within days of release.

The set will be released on the 19th November 2018, as a collector’s edition limited run.

The title will be available to pre-order from HMV and Amazon from tomorrow.

The Limited Edition Blu-ray includes brand new ‘Special Features’ exclusive to this set include: Five new ‘Making-Of’ documentaries for Castrovalva, Four To Doomsday, Black Orchid, Earthshock and Time-Flight, surround sound mixes for Kinda and Earthshock, an Extended Version of Black Orchid Part One, rare studio footage from Castrovalva, Four To Doomsday, Earthshock and Time-Flight, updated special effects for Castrovalva, seven more editions of Behind The Sofa and a newly-shot one-hour interview Peter Davison In Conversation with Matthew Sweet, and much more.

The eight-disc box set also includes the Peter Davison/David Tennant mini-episode Time Crash, plus hours of extensive special features previously released on DVD.

All 26 episodes are being remastered from scratch by Peter Crocker and Mark Ayres. With this season’s original 16mm film elements still in existence, the location material can be presented in true HD, with studio material upscaled. Lee Binding is again providing stunning packaging design and Pete McTighe has written extensive booklet notes and is the content consultant for the title.

Doctor Who: The Collection is executively produced for BBC Studios by Russell Minton.

Doctor Who: The Collection – Season 19 is available in the UK from November 19, 2018 and can be pre-ordered on Amazon

Details of the international release will be available soon.

The Season 19 Safety Video with Tegan Jovanka

The BBC has announced the team behind the new series of Doctor Who, launching this autumn on BBC One and around the world.

In revealing the list, showrunner Chris Chibnall says Writers

Former Children’s Laureate Malorie Blackman has written over 60 books for children and young adults including the Noughts and Crosses series of novels, and her book Pig-Heart Boy, which was adapted into a BAFTA-winning, six-part TV serial. Malorie says:

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Ed Hime was nominated for a Craft BAFTA for his first episode of Skins, and won the Prix Italia for his radio play The Incomplete Recorded Works of a Dead Body. Ed says:

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Playwright and screenwriter Vinay Patel’s television debut, Murdered By My Father, won the 2016 Royal Television Society Award for Best Single Drama and was nominated for three BAFTAs. Vinay says:

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Pete McTighe is the originating writer of Wentworth, the female prison drama that has sold to over 150 countries. He’s written over a hundred hours of TV drama and been nominated for five Writers Guild Awards. Pete says:

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Joy Wilkinson has been selected as a Screen International Star of Tomorrow and has had two screenplays featured on the Brit List. Her TV scripts include the critically-acclaimed BBC five-parter The Life and Adventures of Nick Nickleby, while her theatre work has won prizes including the Verity Bargate Award. Joy says:

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Directors

Sallie Aprahamian has been directing television for over two decades with critically acclaimed shows including: Extremely Dangerous, The Sins, Real Men, The Lakes, Teachers and This Life. Sallie’s memories of Doctor Who go right back to the 1960s, when William Hartnell created the role. She says:

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Jamie Childs, who directed Jodie Whittaker’s reveal as the Thirteenth Doctor, returns for the opening episode of the new series. Jamie says Doctor Who represents an important part of our television landscape.

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Jennifer Perrott wrote, directed, produced and executive produced her award-winning 35mm short film The Ravens. Since finishing Doctor Who she has been directing Gentleman Jack, a forthcoming BBC One/HBO historical drama series created by Sally Wainwright. Jennifer says:

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Mark Tonderai went to school in Zimbabwe and architecture school in Kingston, before landing a job at the BBC as a trainee presenter. Mark has directed the full season of The Five, Impulse, Lucifer, Gotham, Black Lightning, George RR Martin’s Nightflyers and Jennifer Lawrence thriller House at the End of the Street. Mark says:

Big Finish is to celebrate 20 years of creating Doctor Who stories on audio with The Legacy of Time – the biggest audio crossover event ever.

Six hour-long stories see characters from the entire history of Doctor Who crossing paths – some for the very first time – Classic and New Series Doctor Who will collide.

Professor River Song (Alex Kingston) meets her predecessor, a time-traveling archaeologist, Professor Bernice Summerfield (Lisa Bowerman). Kate Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) travels back in time to classic UNIT and meets the Third Doctor (voiced by Tim Treloar) and Jo Grant (Katy Manning).

As 2019 is also the 30th anniversary year of their first appearance in Remembrance of the Daleks, the Counter-Measures team will be reunited with the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) and Ace (Sophie Aldred). And the Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) and his companion Charlotte Pollard (India Fisher) once again meet Detective Inspector Patricia Menzies (Anna Hope) in a police procedural like no other!

Plus a visit to Gallifrey, and elsewhere the Time War. Doctors will meet, and there will be Easter Eggs aplenty.


Executive Producer and one of the founding members of Big Finish, Nicholas Briggs told us about this exciting new release
The producer assigned this epic task is David Richardson.
Chairman and Executive producer of Big Finish, Jason Haigh-Ellery said.
Doctor Who: The Legacy of Time will be available from bigfinish.com on download and, as one of the last audio producers and distributors still making CDs, released in an eight-disc CD set with a limited edition of just 4,000.

Doctor Who: The Legacy of Time will be released in July 2019 to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Big Finish’s first Doctor Who release, The Sirens of Time.

The Doctor Who Appreciation Society, DWAS has announced the first in a series of fund raising events, raising money to pay for a Blue Plaque to honour first Doctor William Hartnell.

A set of eight colour postcards have been released, selling for £5-99 at the society's eBay store, along with some recently released A2 posters.

Link to Auction

The actress Janet Hargreaves has died at the age of 81.

Janet Hargreaves appeared in three episodes of the 1988 Doctor Who story, The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, playing Mum.

She is best known for her performance in the long running soap, Crossroads, where she played Rosemary Hunter from 1971-1980. The series at the time attracted up to 18 million viewers in its late afternoon timeslot.

Hargreaves graduated from RADA in 1956, achieving a productive stage career appearing in Elgar and Alice, Habeas Corpus and a well-regarded performance in the Agatha Christie play The Mousetrap.

Prior to Crossroads she had a regular role in the soap Compact, playing Clare Farrell and The Doctors, playing Dr. Cheryl Barnes. She later appeared in Follyfoot, The Avengers, and Poirot and played a spy in Danger Man.

She remained active into her 80's continuing to teach and act, and was a regular at Crossroads reunions.

Janet Hargreaves died on Saturday, August 4th.

Big Finish Productions has announced its first wave of special releases to celebrate 20 years of Doctor Who audio adventures

As part of the anniversary celebrations, Big Finish is releasing a number of special titles in 2019 and 2020, each focused on an incarnation of the Time Lord. And today they unveil the first two titles.

Coming out this November, Sylvester McCoy’s calculating and comic Doctor returns with two companions from the Virgin Books’ New Adventures of Doctor Who: Yasmin Bannerman plays Roz Forrester and Travis Oliver plays Chris Cwej in Doctor Who – The New New Adventures.

The Virgin Books’ New Adventures of Doctor Who took the reigns of Doctor Who after the television series finished after its 26th season back in 1989. The novels took a darker, deeper approach to Doctor Who, using longer storylines and ideas that wouldn’t have made it to the television screen.

This new box set includes four stories:

1. The Trial of a Time Machine by Andy Lane
2. Vanguard by Steve Jordan
3. The Jabari Countdown by Alan Flanagan
4. The Dread of Night by Tim Foley

Producer and director Scott Handcock explains The New New Adventures will be released in November 2018, available as a CD box set for £23 or on download at £20 from www.bigfinish.com

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Two new adventures are also being released for the bohemian Fourth Doctor adapted from the comic strip by Pat Mills and Dave Gibbons that featured in Doctor Who Magazine (when it was Doctor Who Weekly).

Doctor Who: The Comic Strip Adaptations will be released in March 2019 comprising of:

1. Doctor Who and the Iron Legion adapted by Alan Barnes
2. Doctor Who and the Star Beast adapted by Alan Barnes

In these two adventures, we find the Fourth Doctor travelling with his famed elongated technicolour scarf for company. He’ll encounter the Iron Legion, an army of robotic Roman legionnaires, and in Doctor Who and the Star Beast, the Fourth Doctor encounters one of the deadliest and most adorable villains ever – Beep the Meep!

Nicholas Briggs, director of the Fourth Doctor audio adventures, explainsThese two epic stories will be released in March 2019 as a 5-disc CD box set for £23 or on download at £20 from www.bigfinish.com. Or you can get both sets together as a pre-order bundle, at £46 on CD or £40 on download.

Candy Jar Books have announced the next chapter in the adventures of Lethbridge-Stewart, Anne Travers, Bill Bishop and the men and women of the Fifth Operational Corps:


Published at the end of August 2018, Scary Monsters opens the new Lethbridge-Stewart series of six-book celebrating fifty years of the Brigadier. And with it comes a brand-new look for the range.

The new design was the brain child of head of publishing Shaun Russell and Will Brooks, known for his work on Titan Comics’ Doctor Who range, as well merchandise for the latest series of Doctor Who. Shaun says:

The artwork for Scary Monsters is by Lethbridge-Stewart artist Richard Young. He says:

Andy Frankham-Allen explains the umbrella-title, The Laughing Gnome:

The first book in the series, Scary Monsters, is by Simon A Forward, who penned the 2016 Lethbridge-Stewart novel, Blood of Atlantis:
Scary Monsters also forms something of a sequel to Blood of Atlantis, with the return of popular character Grigoriy Bugayev and Señora Sophia Montilla. But Simon is keen to stress there’s more to it than that:

Scary Monsters is now available for pre-order from Candy Jar Books. The book also forms part of any existing subscriptions to the range.

The BBC is continuing its attempt to get the US courts to force computer firms to release details identifying the individual who leaked a short section from the upcoming series of Doctor Who.

In June, a 53-second clip was released unofficially online. The latest BBC action confirms this was from episode one of the new series.

Last month we reported that the BBC had asked a California court to force the online platform Tapatalk to produce information allowing the identification of the source of the leak.

On 2nd August, BBC Worldwide Limited filed a request in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington State, under the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The act, introduced in 1998, is designed to enable copyright holders to learn the identities of suspected infringers of their copyright material.

The subpoena asks Microsoft to disclose details of the owner of the OneDrive account on which the stolen clip was stored. It lists the clip name, IMG_ l563.TRIM.MOV, and seeks access to the details of the person uploading the clip.

The subpoena does not need to be approved by a judge. Once drafted, It is simply checked by a court clerk for completeness, before being issued to the service provider, who is then required to hand over any relevant identification, including the name, email and other information collected.

Big Finish have confirmed that the Fourth Doctor, as played by Tom Baker, will be continuing his audio adventures until at least 2021.

Two new audio series featuring the enigmatic time-traveling bohemian have been confirmed, out for release in 2020 and 2021 with the Fourth Doctor being joined by some old friends.

In series nine of The Fourth Doctor Adventures, Tom Baker’s Doctor is reunited with Time-Lady Romanadvoratrelundar II, played by Lalla Ward. And joining them will be Adric, played by Matthew Waterhouse, in his first adventures back with Tom since his regeneration in 1981. John Leeson also reprises K9, the Doctor’s faithful robo-canine companion.

These stories are set in the beginning of Tom Baker’s last television series as the Doctor, season 18, in between the stories State of Decay and Warrior’s Gate. Trapped in E-Space, a pocket universe next to our own (N-Space), the Doctor acquires a new companion Adric, a 15 year old mathematical genius, who begins to travel with the Doctor and Romana.

Volume 1 of Series 9 of The Fourth Doctor Adventures is out for release in January 2020:

• 9.1 Purgatory 12 by Marc Platt
• 9.2 Chase the Night by Jonathan Morris

And Volume 2 of Series 9 follows in February 2020:

• 9.3 The Planet of Witches by Alan Barnes
• 9.4 The Quest of the Engineer by Andrew Smith

Matthew Waterhouse talked about travelling with the Fourth Doctor again David Richardson, producer of The Fourth Doctor Adventures on audio, explains what mystical escapades this TARDIS team will encounter in a universe very different to our own In Series 10 the Fourth Doctor will be reunited with Leela (played by Louise Jameson) in four new double-length adventures. David Richardson explains more: Series 10 will be released in January and February 2021.