New Zealand have finally found out when the new series of Doctor Who will arrive!

Broadcaster Prime TV have reported via Twitter that they will premiere The Impossible Astronaut on the channel on Thursday 19th May at 8.30pm.

Prime have a dedicated Doctor Who section on their website.

(with thanks to the New Zealand Doctor Who Fan Club)

In the latest edition of Doctor Who Magazine, acclaimed writer Neil Gaiman exclusively reveals secrets about his script for one of the most eagerly-anticipated Doctor Who adventures ever – The Doctor's Wife! But who on earth is she...?


Also in this issue:

• Pirates and Ood and Living Flesh! Take a sneak-peak at Episodes 3, 4, 5 and 6 of the new series as DWM previews The Curse of the Black Spot, The Doctor's Wife, The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People – featuring never-before-seen photos and exclusive interviews with writers Steve Thompson, Neil Gaiman, and Matthew Graham.
• Ahoy there, Captain! Ha-harr, me hearties! DWM interviews Hugh Bonneville, star of The Curse of the Black Spot, about his role as beardy pirate captain Henry Avery...
• Mr Grumpy Face! Doctor Who’s head writer and showrunner Steven Moffat relates tales of special screenings, slurred speeches and stopping spoilers in his latest Production Notes...
• Astral America! DWM flies off to the USA and goes on the road with the cast and crew of The Impossible Astronaut in a behind-the-scenes report, featuring exclusive chats with stars Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill, and Alex Kingston, and director Toby Haynes...
• Cybermen, Yeti and Ice Warriors! It’s back to the 60s as Countdown to 50 takes a nostalgic look back at Series Five, the Second Doctor season that saw the show get darker and scarier than ever before...
• Welcome to the Pleasure Dome! Amy’s trapped in a psychedelic nightmare, while the Doctor lies helpless, a victim of the sinister Dark! The latest comic strip adventure, Forever Dreaming by Jonathan Morris with art by Adrian Salmon, reaches it startling conclusion...
• War! What is it good for? The Time Team go back to Number 10 Downing Street to watch the Ninth Doctor and Rose battle the Slitheen. Just what will they make of World War Three?
• Je T'Aime! There’s Kissing, Courtiers and Clockwork People as the Tenth Doctor has a dangerous liaison with Madame de Pompadour – The Fact of Fiction reveals everything you’ll ever need to know about 2006’s The Girl in the Fireplace...
• Time Meddlers? Should Doctor Who feature purely historical stories? Or should the adventures always feature sci-fi elements? There’s only one way to find out… by reading the opinions of Toby Hadoke and Johnny Candon as they engage in the latest Battle of Wits...

PLUS! A FREE giant-size, double-sided poster, all the latest official news, previews, reviews, competitions, more madness from the Watcher, another prize-winning crossword, and much, much more!


Doctor Who Magazine is available from all good newsagents and supermarkets from Thursday 5th May.

Doctor Who Magazine has issued a provisional schedule for the remaining stories to be released in the classic Doctor Who DVD range.

There are 24 stories that still exist and have yet to be released on DVD, all of which are expected to be available by the show's 50th anniversary in 2013.

Episode Two of the current series of Doctor Who, Day of the Moon, scored an Appreciation Index figure of 87, once again one of the highest figures of the weekend and putting the programme firmly into the excellent category.

The Appreciation Index, or AI is a measure of how much the audience enjoyed the programme. It is a score out of 100 based on responses from a 5,000 strong panel.

On BBC Three an additional 0.54 million viewers caught the Sunday repeat with 0.07 million watching on BBC HD.

Overall, with Sunday's figures now available, Doctor Who currently stands at 37th for the week, a position that should rise substantially when final figures are released next Monday.

Doctor Who broadcasting resource site BroaDWcast has now been updated to include details on broadcasting of the classic series in Canada, recognised as the third country in the world to broadcast the series with the first batch of Hartnell adventures from January 1965.

Other recent additions to the database include Nigeria, Zambia, Japan, Netherlands, and the Philippines.

(with thanks to Jon Preddle)

Hot on the heels of the BAFTA Television Award nominations (with Matt Smith up for the Best Actor award) come the nominations for the 2011 British Academy Cymru Awards; as with previous years Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures are represented in a number of categories:


Last year saw Make-up nominee Barbara Southcott win an award for her work in The End of Time; Doctor Who also won an award in Design for Ed Thomas/The Waters of Mars. The series was also nominated for Drama Series/Serial for Television, but lost out to its spinoff show Torchwood: Children of Earth, which also gained a Lighting award for Will Oswald. The Sarah Jane Adventures also received an award for Interactive.


The Award Ceremony takes place on Sunday 29th May at the Wales Millennium Centre.

The Impossible Astronaut had a final consolidated audience figure of 8.86 million viewers, a 43.3% share of the total TV audience, according to figures released by Barb.

The number includes those who recorded the programme for viewing within 7 days of its initial showing. The figure is over two million higher than the initial overnight reported rating. A full report for the week, which will reveal the shows position in the weekly charts will be released by Barb on Tuesday.

The figures do not include those watching on iPlayer, where over 300,000 accessed the programme within the first two days following transmission.

The Impossible Astronaut had roughly the same final audience as other new series openers, excluding those with a new Doctor. New Earth had 8.6 million, Smith And Jones 8.7m and Partners In Crime 9.1 million.

An additional 0.47 million watched the BBC Three repeat on Friday.

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Meanwhile in Australia the show was the fourth watched programme of the day with around 0.86 million viewers in the five capital cities. The rating similar to that achieved by A Christmas Carol, shown on Boxing Day. It was only outranked by news programmes.

Both the US broadcast on BBC America and the Australian broadcast on ABC1 of the new series of Doctor Who have included an additional introduction before the main opening titles. This has been presented in a form of a reprise through the eyes of Amy of her adventures with the Doctor to date.


(with thanks to Anthony Swan

5.4 million viewers tuned in to watch Day of the Moon in the UK yesterday, according to unofficial overnight figures.

The rating is a drop of a million on the series opener, not helped by the early timeslot and the sunny weather across the UK for the Bank Holiday weekend. However Doctor Who was still the second most watched programme on British television Saturday Night, with Britain's Got Talent once more topping the charts with 9.5 million. Nothing else on Saturday night achieved more then 5.0 million viewers.

Up against Doctor Who, New People Do the Funniest Things on ITV1 was watched by 1.9 million, up half a million on the programme shown last week.

Doctor Who inherited just 1.7 million viewers from its predecessor, Don't Scare the Hare, which, with an average of just 1.4 million viewers has lost a quarter of its viewers since last week, not surprisingly as the premier show achieved one of the poorest AI scores of all time. Doctor Who's audience peaked at 5.7 million for the last 15 minutes, with the BBC One audience dropping to 2.9 million as the programme finished.

Od the audience, 0.67 million watched on BBCOne HD.

Doctor Who is currently 35th for the week. although this position should change substantially when final figures are released and a top twenty place is still possible.

On BBC Three, Doctor Who Confidential had 0.36 million viewers, with an additional 32,000 watching on BBC HD, a drop of 200,000 on last week, not helped by the gap between the end of Doctor Who on BBC One and the start of Doctor Who Confidential on BBC Three.