SPACE (www.spacecast.com), the home of Doctor Who and Torchwood in Canada, announced today that Radio Free Skaro will be blogging for the nation’s sci-fi channel, by way of our own Warren Frey! Warren will naturally be blogging about all things Doctor Who leading up to the Canadian premiere of the last three David Tennant gap year specials on SPACE, as well as the upcoming series featuring Matt Smith as the 11th Doctor in Spring 2010.

Click here to read Warren’s introductory blog entry, and stay tuned to radiofreeskaro.com for future updates on our new relationship with SPACE!

A couple weeks ago, Radio Free Skaro released a special Wednesday Cutaway episode of our podcast, focusing on the controversy surrounding Torchwood: Children of Earth and the perceived homophobia centred around the series. Hosted by Katrina, Nat and Erik, the episode proved to be extremely popular. Buoyed by this success, Katrina and Nat have decided to forge ahead and start their own weekly podcast.

And so, without further ado, we at Radio Free Skaro are proud to announce our very first spin-off podcast, Bridging The Rift!

From the Bridging The Rift website:

The Doctor Who Universe fandom is wide, diverse and vibrant, but it’s split into enclaves; be it ‘old fandom’ or new, LiveJournal or forums, Torchwood or Doctor Who, and the many different types of creative pursuits.

Bridging The Rift is a podcast that hopes to bring the Doctor Who Universe fandom together. We’ll be highlighting and discussing hot topics and debates; trying to see all sides of the argument and hopefully coming to some conclusions. We’ll also be exploring the fandom’s creative pursuits, helping you to find the best Doctor Who, Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures fan art, music, fiction, animation, films, reconstructions, comics, costumes and crafts.

Our two main co-hosts are not only fans of all three Doctor Who Universe shows, but also the fandom’s creativity. We’re also aiming to bring in guest hosts to bring new perspectives to our discussions and cover all sides of the story and all the corners of the fandom. So join us weekly, with new episodes usually released on Wednesdays or Thursdays. Subscribe on iTunes, add our feed or download directly from the site.

Here’s a link to Episode One – Torchwood: What Happens Next?

This one is from BBC One :

But then along comes this dark, bleak, moody little trailer that aired on the Australian channel UKTV earlier this week :

Good stuff! Sure, it’s only a trailer, but it does make us use a term that hasn’t been heard in these parts for a long time regarding Torchwood : modest anticipation.

You have our attention, Torchwood. Please don’t screw this up…

Those of you in the Toronto area should circle Saturday, June 13 on your calendar, and those of you who aren’t in Toronto will want to be on that date, as well. On that day, Who Party 14 will be taking place, a one day Doctor Who convention taking place at the Best Western Primrose Hotel in downtown Toronto. Featuring such notable guests as Rob Shearman, Toby Hadoke, Colin Teague, and Lance Parkin, this is shaping up to be one of the biggest conventions that our fair country of Canada has seen in some time. Who Party is being put on by the Doctor Who Information Network, the longest running Doctor Who fan club in North America.

UPDATE! (June 5) James Strong, director of several Doctor Who episodes including The Satan Pit, The Impossible Planet, and Planet of the Dead, has been added to the bill!

Full details of the convention are available at www.whopartytoronto.com, and you can get instant Twitter updates from the convention by following whopartytoronto. Also, check out the official DWIN website and the DWIN blog for more news about Doctor Who in Canada.

Also, for a teaser as to what to expect from Messrs Hadoke and Shearman, you can check out what these fine fellows had to say to us when we interviewed them at Gallifrey ’09 :

Radio Free Skaro #123 – Shearman After Dark (Interview with Rob Shearman with Jason Haigh-Ellery) – direct download: rfs123.mp3

Radio Free Skaro interviews Toby Hadoke – direct download: RFShadokeinterview.mp3

Radio Free Skaro #124 – Two Scoops of Hooray (Interview with Toby Hadoke and Phil Ford) – direct download: rfs124.mp3

According to Variety Magazine, Doctor Who will moving from the SciFi Network (soon to be called SyFy, to rhyme with “iffy”) to BBC America, starting with the gap year specials. The 2008 Christmas special “The Next Doctor”, which aired in Canada on SPACE in March 2009, will finally get its US premiere on BBC America on Saturday, June 27, at 9:00 PM. The remaining four specials have yet to be scheduled, but they, along with Series 5, looks like they have found a home.

This is also interesting news, given the Podcast 8 (for lack of an actual name) focusing much attention on the plight of US broadcasting Doctor Who earlier this month. Anyway, here’s the link to the Variety story.

(Now updated with Radio Free Skaro’s contribution in Part Two. Scroll to the bottom of this article to listen.)

As most of you know, to be a Doctor Who fan in the UK right now is to be on top of the world. The show is a ratings hit, and everywhere you look, you are surrounded by Doctor Who hype unlike any seen in the programme’s long history.

For Doctor Who‘s worldwide fan base, though, things are not as cheery. Each series of Doctor Who is often broadcast months after it is shown in the UK, or, in the case of the past two gap year specials, The Next Doctor and Planet of the Dead, they might not have even been shown on TV in your area at all. As a result, fans from outside the UK have to resort to alternate means to view new episodes of the show. This means that the fans most likely will not watch the episodes when they finally arrive on their local TV station, which diminishes the viewership ratings, which lends the TV stations to believe that the show is unpopular, which leads them to further scale back their broadcasting plans of the show, and so on.

The fine fellows from DWO Whocast, Thie Week in Doctor Who, and Two-Minute Time Lord have pulled together a few of the Doctor Who world’s finest Doctor Who podcasts (they even invited us!) to raise awareness of what Doctor Who fans in all parts of the world are having to go through to follow their favourite TV show, and to offer ideas of what can be done to remedy the situation.

This project has manifested itself as an unprecedented two-part version of the DWO Whocast. Part One (Whocast #118) is being released today, and involves Trev and Marty (The Whocast), Ben Elliott (This Week in Doctor Who), and Chip (Two-Minute Time Lord) discussing the issues as noted above.

Part Two (Whocast #119) will be released on Saturday, May 16, and will feature contributions from Dave AC (Cultdom in Audio), Louis, Ken, and James (Doctor Who: Podshock), Luke (The Minute Doctor Who Podcast), Michael (Tin Dog Podcast), and Warren, Steven, and Chris from this very podcast, Radio Free Skaro.

(Here’s Ben Elliott’s manifesto that unofficially sparked this whole event.)

Click below for the links to each episode, and thanks for listening!

direct download: Doctor Who Worldwide – Part One

direct download: Doctor Who Worldwide – Part Two

Your intrepid hosts at Radio Free Skaro briefly talked about the possibility of this happening in Episode #133. However, it’s not like it’s a massive surprise, given that SPACE has already aired “The Next Doctor”, and also given that the CBC, which aired the first four series in increasingly erratic and sporadic fashion, is facing a large amount of financial cutbacks these days.

Anyway, here’s the link to the story on the DWIN site.