The official Doctor Who Magazine has announced the writers for the 2006 season of Doctor Who. Head Writer and Executive Producer Russell T. Davies will be writing the 60-minute Christmas special (which will likely have nothing to do with Christmas_the term comes from the fact that British television tend to show special extended one-off episodes of popular series during the holidays). He will also write five episodes out of the 13 for the next season, three single episode stories an one two-parter. Davies has written three of the four episodes broadcast thus far on CBC, along with five more of the nine still to be broadcast, including next Tuesday_s World War Three. Two other writers from the 2005 season will be returning next year. They are Mark Gatiss, who wrote this season_s The Unquiet Dead and is a co-writer, creator of the BBC comedy series The League of Gentleman, and Stephen Moffatt, writer of the upcoming episodes The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances and creator of such shows as Coupling and Press Gang. Gatiss and Moffatt are writing one episode each.

One of the new writers to the series is Matt Jones, a former script editor of the Davies-created Queer as Folk series, writer of the series POW (currently being shown on TVOntario) and author of the 1996 Doctor Who novel Bad Therapy. A former columnist for DWM, Jones will be writing a two-part story, tentatively entitled The Satan Pit. Toby Whithouse, an actor/writer who appeared in the most recent Bridget Jones Diary film and Tom McRae round out the team for 2006, writing one and two-episodes respectively. Whithouse and McRae have no previous professional Doctor Who credits but both are experienced television writers. Whithouse is doing one episode while McRae is entrusted with two. There is one more episode that does not yet have a writer attached to it, but is expected to be done _in-house_ at the BBC.

Outpost Gallifrey: The Doctor Who News & Information Magazine