Doctor Who

Nearly all the Doctor Who press coverage from the last couple of days is related to the classic series. It's like we've gone back in time to 2003.

The Derby Evening Telegraph has a short interview with Colin Baker, who speaks about working with his ex-wifeLiza Goddard in "She Stoops to Conquer" and his visit to the filming of "Voyage of the Damned".

In the West End, Peter Davison will leave the role of King Arthur in Spamalot on March 1; his replacement in the role will be Alan Dale, who also has a guest role in an upcoming episode of Torchwood. The Official London Theatre Guide and Playbill have details.

An actual police box has been installed at the Kent Police Museum in Chatham. The Crawley Observer has the Press Association story and BBC News has video. NB: The police box, which is on loan to the museum from its home in Glasgow, will not be on public display until Sunday, February 10, when the museum reopens.

TVShowsOnDVD.com reports that BBC Video is reducing the price of two dozen classic Doctor Who DVDs in North America.

The only press items at all related to the new series are reviews of the recent adaptation of Mansfield Park starring Billie Piper, which will air in the US on PBS stations on Sunday, January 27 as part of the Masterpiece Classic series (formerly Masterpiece Theatre). The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and Deseret Morning News (Salt Lake City) review the production.

Torchwood

TV Guide and the Radio Times both have interviews with James Marsters about his role in Torchwood. TV Guidealso recommends the show to US viewers weathering the writers' strike.

There are more reviews of "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" from the Boston Herald, The Star-Ledger (New Jersey), the South Bend Tribune (Indiana), The Deadbolt and iF Magazine.

IGN, the Courier-Post (Cherry Hill, New Jersey) and The Globe and Mail (Toronto) have more reviews of the Torchwood First Season DVD box set; the Globe and Mail's review is on the same page as a review of the Criterion DVD release of This Sporting Life, the film which drew William Hartnell to the attention of Verity Lambert.

(Thanks to "Austin39" of the Doctor Who Forum.)

Wednesday's showing of Torchwood Episode Two, Sleeper received an Appreciation Index score of 85. This puts the programme in the excellent category and was one of the highest scores on Television on Wednesday. The edited version of Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang scored 82.

Meanwhile the Wednesday BBC3 repeat of Sleeper got an audience of 240,000while the BBC2 edited repeat was watched by 0.9 million viewers on Thursday evening, a 4.2% share of the audience. Torchwood Declassified on Thursday got an audience of 1.0 million.

SFX Magazine are currently running a feature on their website, previewing a forthcoming interview the magazine has conducted with actress Elisabeth Sladen. Sladen, who plays Sarah Jane Smith, confirms in the feature that not only has spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures been recommissioned for a second series, this time of 24 episodes, but that she will also be returning to Doctor Who itself for a guest appearance in series four.

The full interview will be printed in a special edition of SFX due out in March.

Doctor Who Adventures issue 48 is now available across the United Kingdom.

Titan Magazines has released the first issue of Torchwood Magazine this week. Full details are reported elsewhere on this page (scroll down to January 16 for the press release); the publishers also have created a Facebook group and a YouTube video to promote the magazine.

On Thursday, two UK radio stations broadcast interviews of people connected with Doctor Who. Colin Baker spoke toBBC Radio Ulster about his role in "She Stoops to Conquer"; near the end of the interview, he talks about how the revival of Doctor Who has given him new respect in his own household. The interview can be heard here (it begins approximately 10 minutes 6 seconds into the program).

And Gary Russell, script editor on the new series and author of Doctor Who in many different media, spoke toResonance FM's "Panel Borders" about the new Doctor Who comic book from IDW and the history of Doctor Who in comics. The interview is available as a podcast here.

Thanks to Brian Deane and Alex Fitch.

Episode two of Torchwood, Sleeper, achieved an overnight rating of 3.4 millionviewers, a 14% share of the television audience. The programme was the highest rated for the day on BBC Two and the 18th most watched programme across the channels.

The edited repeat of episode one, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, attained an audience of1.1 million, while Torchwood Declassified gained 1.0 million viewers.

With figures available for the whole of last week, episode one finished as the highest rated programme on BBC Two for the week, beating the second placed Masterchef by 800,000 viewers.

The BBC Press Office has announced that Alex Kingston and Colin Salmon will appear as guest stars in writerSteven Moffat's two-part story for the fourth series of Doctor Who, which is currently filming.

Kingston, who will play a character named in the press release as River Song, is best known for her regular role in the American television drama series ER. In the UK, she starred in the one-off dramas Moll Flanders and Boudecia for the ITV network. Salmon has been seen in a variety of roles in British film and television, including as the supporting character Charles Robinson in the James Bond films Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day. His character in Doctor Who has not yet been named.

BBC News and The Sun have stories about the casting announcement.

BBC Worldwide has launched a video channel on MySpace TV which contains clips from new and classic Doctor Who, Doctor Who Confidential, Torchwood and Torchwood Declassified.

The clips can be embedded in webpages and blogs

A full catalog of the Doctor Who and Torchwood-related videos can be seen here.

The news of the BBC/MySpace deal is covered by many sources, including the Guardian, the Financial Times, theAssociated Press, Reuters,Business Week, TVWeek and news.com.au, all of which mention Doctor Who in their coverage of the deal. (The CBC illustrates the story with a still from the Peter Cushing Dalek films, which are not included on the MySpace page.)

This deal is similar to an arrangement the BBC has with YouTube; however, the BBC's YouTube channel is restricted to users from the United Kingdom. The BBC Worldwide YouTube channel, which is accessible worldwide, has clips from classic Doctor Who, Doctor Who Confidential and Torchwood Declassified, but no content from 21st century Doctor Who or Torchwood. Full episodes of classic Doctor Who are also available for rent on Vuze and, for US viewers, on Amazon Unbox, but these services are available only to users with Windows XP or Windows Vista (or TiVo, in the case of the Amazon content).

Posted By Brigadier Bill

In an interview with Sci Fi Wire John Barrowman spoke candidly on how long he will stay as Captain Jack.

"If I was asked to do Jack for the next five or six years I would do it with a big smile on my face, because I absolutely love playing him," Barrowman said in an interview. "When the time comes for us to close the page on Torchwood and Jack Harkness, I'm also then happy to do that when that decision is made. But I think it's got a bit of a life out there. Let's hope we get [season] three, [season] four and, hopefully, [season] five."

Barrowman also talks about the direction of series two and the differences between time travel on Doctor Who andTorchwood.