Into the Vortex! (Of Good and Featured Content)

Since our newsletter last December, the Doctor Who WikiProject has seen a large amount of quality article improvement. So far, 16 Good Articles have been improved this year! We're at about the same pace we were last year, which is always good to see, especially given the twelve other articles nominated for GA status at present. Special shoutouts to users Rhain for their improvements on First Doctor serials, SkywalkerEccleston for their various improvements across a wide variety of articles, Lbal for their work on Full Circle (Doctor Who), and Doomitron for their work on Sixth Doctor.

Additionally, since then, Ice Warrior has been improved to Featured Article status, List of Doctor Who creatures and aliens and List of Doctor Who characters have been improved to Featured List status, and three Good Topics focused on articles relating to the Midnight Entity, the Slitheen, and Doctor Who series 15 have been nominated and approved.

Congratulations to all of the users who have improved quality Doctor Who articles in the past few months!

A flabbergasting discovery

In March, it was announced that episodes 1 ("The Nightmare Begins") and 3 ("Devil's Planet") of The Daleks' Master Plan were found by the charity Film is Fabulous! in a private collection among some films. The collector gave them permission to have them and sadly passed away not long after. Upon learning of the discovery through Toby Hadoke, actor Peter Purves, who starred in the episodes alongside William Hartnell and Adrienne Hill, said "My flabber has never been so gasted". The episodes were shown at a BFI screening (with Purves in attendance) in April and are now available on BBC iPlayer in the UK and the official Doctor Who Classic YouTube channel in the US. This means that episodes 1, 2, 3, 5 and 10 of The Daleks' Master Plan are now available.

It has been hinted that more could be found in the near future as 95 episodes remain missing.

Intelligence Bulletin from the Subwave Network

• The 1996 American-produced Doctor Who television film was remastered in 4K using the original film reels for a Blu-ray release this May. The restored version includes both the UK and U.S. broadcast versions and new special features.
• Big Finish Productions recently extended their contract with the BBC to continue licensing the Doctor Who franchise intellectual property for audio stories through 2035. The first new production to be confirmed following this announcement, is a fifteen-part box set featuring David Tennant set to begin releasing bimonthly next year.
• In February, the First Doctor serial The Rescue was published on vinyl record as a special release for Record Store Day in the United Kingdom.
• Circuit Breaker, a new multi-platform story starring Jo Martin as the Fugitive Doctor was announced by BBC Studios to launch this June. Spanning audio, books, comics, games, magazine, internet, and Blu-ray releases, tells a singular interconnected story about UNIT's Black Archive across several mediums.
• Seventeen years after its last release, Character Options is releasing a new five-part set of Doctor Who figures beginning in July.
• In the United States, AMC+ has secured rights to be the exclusive streaming video on demand host of all 2005–2022 Doctor Who episodes. This era of Who has been unavailable to stream in the States since its removal from HBO Max in July 2025. Noticeably absent from press releases are mention of spin-off series Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures; while these shows have historically been packaged with this era of Who in streaming deals on HBO Max, before that on Amazon Prime Video, as well as Netflix and Hulu in the ancient days, there is no confirmation if these will be included. Elsewhere in America, Classic Who has it's own streaming home on BritBox (yes, BritBox still exists on this side of the pond), while the 60th anniversary specials and Gatwa's era remain on Disney+ for the foreseeable future. Disney has also yet to release The War Between the Land and the Sea, a five-part miniseries previously marketed by the company as releasing outside of the UK and Ireland in "early 2026". There is also no news on where, if anywhere, future episodes of Who will air or stream in the United States (or elsewhere worldwide, for that matter); however, AMC Global Media (the owner of AMC+) owns BBC America, which it regularly licenses BBC content for and was the linear broadcaster of Who from 2009–2022, and a non-controlling ownership stake in BritBox. AMC+ was also previously the next-day streamer of Who episodes during the Jodie Whittaker/Chris Chibnall-era as a transitional period between their broadcast on BBC America and release on HBO Max. Given this, and the global reach of AMC+, it's a feasible home for future new episodes and even the rumored potential of a co-production deal to fill the funding deficit left by Disney.

Succession

The oldest-living person associated with the Whoniverse since Arnold Yarrow's death in December 2024, Laurie Webb, sadly passed away on 29 March aged 101 years, 327 days. He remains the fifth longest-lived person associated with the Whoniverse and the tenth to become a centenarian. The title of oldest-living person associated with the Whoniverse is now held by 97-year-old Peter Cellier (Time-Flight).

Contributors

• Magneton Considerer: Pokelego999 (Talk) (Contribs)
• Spectritus (talk)
• TheDoctorWho (talk)

Their songs have ended... but their stories never end 🌹

Since the previous issue was published, a number of people related to the Whoniverse have sadly passed away and some who passed away before the previous issue only had their deaths announced recently:

2022

• October – Tony Scoggo, 86, actor (Terror of the Vervoids)

2023

• 25 March – Douglas Sheldon, 87, actor (The Daleks' Master Plan)

2024

• Q1 – Susanna Carroll, 90 or 91, actress (Galaxy 4)
• 9 December – Julia Burnett, 70, actress (The Hand of Fear)
• 29 December – Nick Hobbs, 78, actor (The Curse of Peladon, The Ark in Space, "Amy's Choice" and more)

2025

• Before 15 February – Geoffrey Keep, 76 or 77, convention regular and First Doctor cosplayer
• Before 14 April – Harriet Philpin, 73, actress (Genesis of the Daleks)
• 30 June – Jim Shooter, 73, editor-in-chief (1984–86 Doctor Who comic series by Marvel Comics)
• 11 August – Mike Winser, 83, OB cameraman (The Ultimate Foe)
• 14 August – Carol Sadler, 62, camerawoman (some unspecified 1980s serials)
• 28 August – John J. Johnston, 60, contributor to Doctor Who Magazine
• 3 September – Keith Hodiak, 75, actor ("The Five Doctors")
• 7 October – Tony Handy, 91, actor (The Underwater Menace)
• 1 November – Aidan White, 56, actor ("Partners in Crime")
• 7 November – Clemente Rezzónico, 90, artist (Daleks, invasión a la Tierra año 2150)
• 8 November – Geoff Beech, 81, studio cameraman (some unspecified 1960s and 1970s serials)
• 11 November – Nigel Walters, 84, camera assistant (The Ambassadors of Death)
• 11 November – Peter Sowerbutts, 76, actor (multiple audio stories)
• 16 November – Quenton Annis, 84, assistant floor manager (The Ice Warriors)
• 28 November – Carol Lawrence, 81, costume designer (Chute!)
• 3 December – John Dillon, 92, actor (The Savages)
• 8 December – Tony Van Silva, 75, stunt performer ("Tooth and Claw")
• 19 December – Richard Barnes, 81, actor (Nightmare of Eden)
• December – Roger Bamford, unknown age, floor assistant (The Daleks' Master Plan)
• 2025 – Rita Dunn, 92, production assistant (Snakedance)
• 2025 – George Reed, 91, visual effects assistant (The Seeds of Doom, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, Castrovalva, and many more)
• 2025 – Jan Spoczynski, 76 or 77, designer (Snakedance) and design assistant (Revenge of the Cybermen)

2026

• 1 January – Gregory de Polnay, 82, actor (The Robots of Death)
• 2 January – Colin Bell, 80, actor (The Sea Devils, Invasion of the Dinosaurs)
• 9 January – Tina Packer, 87, actress (The Web of Fear)
• 10 January – Derek Martin, 92, actor (Image of the Fendahl, The Romans, The Massacre and more) and stuntman (The Ambassadors of Death, The Mind of Evil, The Claws of Axos)
• 11 January – Marcus Gilbert, 67, actor (Battlefield, UNIT: Brave New World: Knightfall)
• 13 January – Paul Grist, 86, actor (The Claws of Axos)
• 14 January – Donald Douglas, 92, actor (The Sontaran Experiment)
• 16 January – Hazel Ellerby, 67, actress (Torchwood: Cadoc Point)
• 31 January – Lorne Martin, 79, props buyer (Doctor Who: The Tom Baker Years) and head of BBC Exhibitions
• 9 February – Tony Millier, 85, studio sound provider (The Enemy of the World, Colony in Space, The Dæmons and many more)
• 7 March – Paul Seed, 78, actor (The Ribos Operation)
• 17 March – Mike Smith, 87, helicopter pilot (Fury from the Deep, The Dæmons)
• 18 March – Tom Georgeson, 89, actor (Genesis of the Daleks, Logopolis)
• 25 March – Sheila S. Tomlinson, 100, film editor (Revenge of the Cybermen)
• 29 March – Laurie Webb, 101, actor (The Three Doctors)
• 6 April – Angela Pleasence, 84, actress ("The Shakespeare Code", The Curse of Clyde Langer)
• 10 April – Jan Williams, 87, actress (The Ark)
• April – Jill Curzon, 87, actress (Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.)
• 2 May – Barbara Kinghorn, 81, actress (The Caves of Androzani)
• 3 May – Joyce Hawkins, 95, costume designer (Horror of Fang Rock)
• 14 May – Alan Rothwell, 89, actor (The Twilight Kingdom)
• 18 May – Tom Kane, 64, actor (LEGO Dimensions)
• May – Michael Keating, 79, actor (The Sun Makers, The Twilight Kingdom, Year of the Pig, The Evil One, The End)

Unknown year

• Tom Reeve, unknown age, dresser (Full Circle, Paradise Towers, Delta and the Bannermen)
• Brian Holloway, unknown age, cameraman (some unspecified serials in the 1960s and 1970s)
• Dave Carter, unknown age, actor (Doctor Who and the Silurians, Inferno, Terror of the Autons, and many more)