Radio Times: 2000 - Current

Introduction

Whilst the decade started off rather quietly, and disappointingly after the excitement of the Doctor Who Night and repeats in late 1999, great things were to happen in 2003. However, back in early 2000 the repeat season unfortunately petered out and for the rest of the year things were very quiet indeed.

UK Gold continued (continues!) to support the series with repeats and special events, such as the Doctor Who @ 40 Weekend in November 2003, but back in 2000 it remained to be seen what the BBC's plans for the series' future were.

Later in 2000 there was news that BBC Radio 4 had commissioned a pilot for a potential radio series, starring Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred. Unfortunately whilst the pilot was in development management changes at the station ended with it's being rejected for broadcast.

This, however, was not the end and the BBCi website picked up the torch, completed the story and began a series of acclaimed, and very successful, webcasts of stories that culminated with 2003's Cosgrove Hall animated Scream of the Shalka, starring Richard E Grant and debuting on the 13th of November.

The latter garnered some excellent press coverage, some of which can be seen on our 2003 Newspapers and Magazines page (see right).

Shortly before the debut episode of Shalka, the BBC in a surprise announcement answered every fans dream of the previous fourteen years - a NEW SERIES was to be made by the BBC for 2005!

The announcement, made on the 26th of September 2003 set the scene for an anniversary with, although low key on BBC TV, was celebrated superbly by the Radio Times itself with four different covers on a very special issue with contained articles, features and a special pullout supplement on the series. This was followed, in the festive issue of the magazine a few weeks later, with coverage for a special BBC TV documentary on the series. See our 2003 page for a full set of cuttings for all of these.

With the count down to the new series now on we can expect to see much more coverage of the series in the Radio Times through 2004 and into 2005. As someone once said - watch this space...

You will find chronological listings and links to all available cuttings on each page in this section. Use the links above-left to view each page.