* The Matt Smith/Steven Moffat era of Doctor Who is set to open with a 60-minute episode, reports Radio Free Skaro. The site has got its hands on an official press release from the BBC to promote the new series of the show, and in there it reveals that Smith's first adventure, The Eleventh Hour, will be an hour long. Radio Free Skaro

* The same press release confirms that the Daleks are returning, but that this time they'll be in a story set in the middle of London in the 1940s. It also teases that the Doctor and his assistant, Amy Pond, are followed by a "silent menace" wherever they go.

* Among the monsters that the Doctor will be battling in the new series is an old favourite: the Silurians, last seen in Doctor Who in 1984...

* Nina Wadia, of EastEnders fame, is also reported to be playing a villain in the new series. She plays Zainab Masood in the soap, but in Doctor Who she's going to be playing an evil psychiatric.

* Fancy see what this year's Doctor Who Easter Eggs are going to look like? Our chums at Blogtor Who have pictures...

* Finally, there's an interesting story today about how the scriptwriters of Doctor Who in the 1980s had an anti-Margaret Thatcher agenda (something that anyone who looked at The Happiness Patrol in any depth could have picked up on). Sylvester McCoy has been quoted as saying, "The idea of bringing politics into Doctor Who was deliberate, but we had to do it very quietly and certainly didn't shout about it."

He went on to say, in a piece quoted in The Times that, "We were a group of politically motivated people and it seemed the right thing to do. At the time Doctor Who used satire to put political messages out there in the way they used to do in places like Czechoslovakia. Our feeling was that Margaret Thatcher was far more terrifying than any monster the Doctor had encountered. Those who wanted to see the messages saw them; others, including one producer, didn't."

Those high up the BBC chain were apparently unaware of what was going on, which has also been confirmed by script editor at the time, Andrew Cartmel. The BBC has released a predictably snotty response to all of this when questioned, claiming to be baffled by the claims. The Daily Mail has also run a mighty predictable story, talking about "left-wing scriptwriters" and "propaganda", and how Norman Tebbit was right. So we won'tlink to that, if it's all the same. Here's the story at The Times.