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BBC Books have announced plans for a novelization of "Shada". The infamous 'lost story' written by Douglas Adams (creator of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) was originally meant to close out the 1979 season, and although parts were filmed, it was halted due to industrial action and never completed. It was later released on VHS in 1992 using the existing material with linking narration recorded by Tom Baker. In 2003, Big Finish Productions turned the story into an audio and animated webcast, this time starring Paul McGann as the Doctor.
The novelization will be written by Gareth Roberts and is planned for a March 2012 publication.
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Torchwood: Miracle Day, the new season of the Doctor Who spin-off co-produced with Starz, now has a US premier date of July 8. It will air in America on the Starz Network.
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The BBC premiered a new 15 second teaser for Season 6, with a longer 'Coming Soon' trailer planned to premier this Saturday.
Doctor Who fan Steven Clark is suing the BBC, claiming he invented the character of Davros, creator of the Daleks, who first appeared in the series in the 1975 story "Genesis of the Daleks".
Clark claims he made a drawing of the character and a handwritten essay, The Genesis of the Daleks: The Creation of Davros for a competion run by the magazine TV Action in 1972. The competition had no connection to the BBC, although judges included then producer Barry Letts, script editor Terrance Dicks, and Third Doctor actor Jon Pertwee.
Clark's claim seeks damages or an amount equivalent to the profits made on the character after nearly four decades. He says he considered legal action in 1975, but had lost the competition entry by then. However, it turned up twenty years later when he was looking through an old set of family encyclopedias.
It is generally thought that Davros was created by writer Terry Nation, responsible for the creation of the Daleks themselves. Nation died in 1997, but the agent for his estate is looking into the matter.
News taken from The Doctor Who News Page
BBC America have announced additional programming for the premier night of the new season on April 23.
At 8 PM ET/PT is Doctor Who Rewind, a look back at Season 5. "The Impossible Astronaut", Part 1 of the 2-part season opener airs at 9 PM, and finally at 10 PM is Doctor Who in America, a behind-the-scenes look at the new season.
Following the broadcast of the special mini-episodes "Space" and "Time", the BBC confirmed the premier of the sixth season of the new Doctor Who for April 23, coinciding with the date already announced for the US by BBC America.
You can watch "Space" and "Time" on the Watercooler or The Doctor Who News Page.
In the days before VHS or DVD releases, and at a time when TV repeats were a rare thing, if a Doctor Who fan wanted to relive a favorite story, the best way was to pick up its novelization. From the 60s to the 90s, Target Books published novelized versions of the classic TV stories. These became especially important, in the cases of the First and Second Doctors, when the BBC shortsightedly destroyed many episodes to make room for newer material in their archives.
For some time now, the Target books have been out of print (though you can still find existing copies of some of them for sale), but BBC Books have announced plans to reprint six of them in their original format, featuring the original cover art by Chris Achilleos and slightly different titles to their TV counterparts: Doctor Who and the Daleks, Doctor Who and the Crusaders, Doctor Who and the Cybermen (aka The Moonbase), Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen, Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters (aka The Silurians), and Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion (aka Spearhead from Space).
In other news, two special mini-episodes titled "Space" and "Time", written by Steven Moffat, will premier tomorrow as part of BBC's Red Nose Day comedy charity event.
