After a year off, Doctor Who is back and so are we with our festive Predict the Ratings competition! This year readers have the chance to win a copy of this latest series of adventures featuring the Doctor, Graham, Yaz and Ryan on Blu-ray/DVD upon its release date (currently scheduled for March 2020).


The episode is broadcast in the UK on New Year's Day at 6:55pm on BBC One; ITV will broadcast Doctor Who's 'traditional' competition in the form of Emmerdale from 7:00pm, with BBC Two showing Masterchef: The Professionals Rematch 2019 (also at 7:00pm), Channel 4 halfway through The Lion King (6:00pm), and Channel 5 continuing The Two Ronnies: the Unseen Sketches (from 6:20pm). Last year's BBC prime time premiere was the return of Luther: this year it is the new adaptation of Dracula from the pen of Sherlock and of course Doctor Who writers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss.

For comparison, last year's New Year's Day special, Resolution, was watched by 7.13 million viewers, and achieved 14th place in the weekly chart. Its 7:00pm timeslot put it up against Emmerdale on ITV, The Snow Wolf: A Winter's Tale on BBC Two, Sister Act on Channel 4 and The Morecambe and Wise Show: Look Back in Laughter on Channel 5. Doctor Who easily won its timeslot, but was narrowly beaten later in the evening by old rival Coronation Street (7.17m), and Luther (9.10m); the annual New Year's Day fireworks exploded their way to the top of the chart with 12.39m.


To enter our competition, please send the following details to comp-ratings@doctorwhonews.net with the subject, "No Doctor, I expect you to ...":

• Your name and preferred email address
• Your country of entry (full details will be requested only if you are the winner)
• Your guess at the final viewing figure to the nearest 10,000 (eg.9.99m)
• Your guess at the final position in the chart (eg. 1st) - this will only be used in the event of a tie-break

Terms and Conditions:

• The competition closes at 08:00 GMT, 2nd January 2020
• Only one entry will be accepted per person.
• The competition is open worldwide
• BARB final figures are expected in early 2020, we will contact the winner once they have been published
• The prize is a copy of The Complete Series Twelve on either DVD or Bluray; we will confirm the format with the winner at time of notification.

Good luck and don't forget to watch the series opener yourself! See our guide for current schedules for the episode locally, and visit This Week in Doctor Who for the continuing adventures of all of the Doctors around the world!

The biggest Doctor Who Classic collection ever streamed in the UK comes to BritBox in the UK from Boxing Day.

From 26th December, 627 pieces of Doctor Who Classic content will be available on the service. This tally is comprised of a mix of episodes, spin-offs, documentaries, telesnaps and more and includes many rarely-seen treasures. Subscribers will be able to access this content via web, mobile, tablet, connected TVs and Chromecast.

BritBox is the digital video subscription service created by the BBC and ITV. The service aims to bring the very best in past, present and future British programming and award-winning content to viewers all in one place for £5.99 per month in HD. It launched in the United States in 2017 and the United Kingdom last November.

129 complete stories, which totals 558 episodes spanning the first eight Doctors from William Hartnell to Paul McGann, form the backbone of the collection.

The collection also includes four complete stories; The Tenth Planet, The Moonbase, The Ice Warriors and The Invasion, which feature a combination of original content and animation and total 22 episodes. The unaired story entitled Shada which was originally presented as six episodes (but has been uploaded as a 130 minute special), brings this total to 28.

A further two complete, solely animated stories - The Power Of The Daleks and The Macra Terror (presented in HD) - add 10 episodes.

Five orphaned episodes - The Crusade (2 parts), Galaxy 4, The Space Pirates and The Celestial Toymaker - bring the total up to 600. Doctor Who: The Movie, An Unearthly Child: The Pilot Episode and An Adventure In Space And Time will also be available on the service, in addition to The Underwater Menace, The Wheel In Space and The Web Of Fear which have been completed via telesnaps. Spin-off drama K-9 And Company, and documentaries More Than 30 Years In The TARDIS and Doctor Who: Doctors Revisited complete the collection.

BritBox will also be curating special Doctor Who Classic collections, including ‘New to Who’, featuring one key episode from each of the first seven Doctors as an introduction to the uninitiated. Further collections will be devoted to the most memorable monsters, with Cybermen, Daleks, The Master and Sontaran each getting the limelight. Regeneration episodes have also been collated.

Boxing Day also marks the start of a longer-term collaboration with the BBC, with a shared vision of making BritBox the ultimate home of Doctor Who Classic content in 2020 and beyond, and ensuring the widest collection of content available is presented in the best possible format and quality.

Reemah Sakaan, Group Director ITV SVOD, commented: Sally de St Croix, Franchise Director for Doctor Who at BBC Studios added

The writer and Script Editor Donald Tosh has died at the age of 84.

Donald Tosh was the last surviving writer from the era of the First Doctor. He served as Script Editor for 9 months, writing much of the 1966 story The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, rewriting the original script supplied by John Lucarotti. Later in the year, he rewrote much of the script of Brian Hayes classic story The Celestial Toymaker.

Donald Tosh had a long career in British Television. He was working at Granada Television in Manchester when he was asked to commission a twice-weekly series to compete with Emergency Ward 10, then the most popular show on the air. His solution was a new project called Florizel Street, created by a young man called Tony Warren. This later changed its name to Coronation Street.

In the early 1960's he moved to the BBC, working for Donald Wilson, then Head of Serials at the BBC. Against his better judgement, he was asked to script edit the soap Compact. He joined the show in the summer of 1965, staying until the spring of 1966 and overseeing the stories The Time Meddler, Galaxy 4, Mission to the Unknown, The Myth Makers, The Daleks' Master Plan, The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve and The Celestial Toymaker. While some scripts needed very little work, most needed major rewrites to get them into a form necessary for TV Production.

His most accomplished work was probably for the story The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve., set in the French court of 1572. The script had been supplied by John Lucarotti, but on reading it Tosh realised it would need to be completely rewritten. Tosh left the show in March 1966 after an argument over the scripts for The Celestial Toymaker, which had been rewritten while he was on holiday. He told the DWAS magazine The Celestial Toyroom, that he did regret leaving the series as quickly as he did. After Doctor Who worked on shows such as Sherlock Holmes and Ryan International, but left Televsion in the 1970's. He worked for a time for English Heritage and became Head Custodian of Sherborne Old Castle in Dorset.

BBC Studios have announced the forthcoming release of Doctor Who's fifth series of adventures for the 21st Century in a limited edition Steelbook:


The steelbook is due to be released on 10 February 2019, and is available to pre-order in the UK from Amazon.

The BBC has announced that television stars Anjli Mohindra and Laura Fraser are set to guest star in upcoming episodes of Doctor Who.

Previously starring as Rani Chandra in the CBBC Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures, Anjli is no stranger to the Whoniverse but as she takes on a new character, it’s safe to say she’ll be worlds away from her usual appearance…

Starring in a separate episode, Laura has previously starred in various dramas including the hit BBC show, The Missing and more recently Better Call Saul.

On appearing in Doctor Who, Anjli Mohindra says: Laura Fraser adds: Matt Strevens, Executive Producer, says: Doctor Who will return to BBC One on New Year’s Day at 6.55pm. The new series will begin with a two-parter entitled Spyfall, with part two airing on Sunday 5 January.

The latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine features exclusive previews of the new season, due to launch on New Year's Day.

Every issue of the festive Doctor Who Magazine includes:

• A Giant Double-sided Poster
• A Thirteenth Doctor Art Card

Other highlights include:

• An exclusive, in-depth interview with showrunner Chris Chibnall, plus his latest Production Notes.
• The directors of Series 12 speak exclusively to DWM.
• Exclusive previews of the first new-series episodes: Spyfall Parts One and Two.
• Tosin Cole (who plays Ryan Sinclair) answers questions from the TARDIS Tin.
• An Advent in Space and Time: six decades of festive TV and radio highlights.
• DWM revisits the Doctor Who pantomimes of the 1980s.
• The final part of a candid interview with former script editor Andrew Cartmel.
• Broadcaster Ian Collins recalls playing a Haemovore in 1989’s The Curse of Fenric.
• An exclusive preview of the Season 26 Blu-ray box set.
• The Fact of Fiction explores the 2012 Christmas Special The Snowmen.
• DWM’s fiendishly tricky Christmas Quiz.
• Part Four of Mistress of Chaos, a new comic-strip adventure featuring the Thirteenth Doctor and her friends.
• Audio and book reviews, previews, news, prize-winning competitions and much, much more!

On sale from Thursday 12 December 2019 £6.99 (UK)

The actress Wendy Williams has died at the age of 84.

Wendy Williams played Vira in the highly acclaimed 1975 story The Ark In Space. Her performance as the revived human, struggling to adjust to the reality of the Wrin invasion. was a tour de force, developing real chemistry with the newly regenerated Fourth Doctor played by Tom Baker.

Wendy Williams was born in Cheam in Surrey, just south of London. Her first television appearance was in the 1954 play A Party for Christmas.

Over the next forty years, she became a regular on British Television, appearing in many popular series. Her first main role was as Lady Lizzie Eustace in the 1959 series The Eustace Diamonds. she played Frances Graham in Knight Errant Limited and Margaret Hale in North and South. Roles followed in The Further Adventures of the Musketeers, Thirty-Minute Theatre, The Regiment, Crossroads, Z-Cars, Dominic, When the Boat Comes In and Angels.

In 1976 she played Barbara in the Terry Nation series Survivors and later appeared in Poldark as Lady Basset. in 1981 she joined the cast of Tenko as Vicky Armstrong. The following year she played Lady Brandon in the Barry Letts production of Beau Geste.

Wendy Williams was married to Doctor Who director Hugh David until his death in 1987.

The BBC have now confirmed Doctor Who will return on New Years Day with the first part of the new series, Spyfall.


Update 3rd Dec: time of broadcast is confirmed as 6:55pm on BBC One. A new, longer trailer for the premiere has now been released:

The BBC have released the first official trailer for the next series of Doctor Who, due to air from New Year's Day.


The trailer was launched across the BBC's social media channels at 3pm, before its television premiere on BBC One as the lead-in to Strictly Come Dancing at 7pm.

The BBC has announced that Stephen Fry and Sir Lenny Henry CBE will both appear in the first episode of the new series of doctor Who.

The TV legends will both be present when the TARDIS lands once more, with Jodie Whittaker reprising her role as the Thirteenth Doctor.

Stephen Fry is best known as the former host of the quiz show QI. His acting roles include a Golden Globe Award–nominated lead performance in the film Wilde, Melchett in the BBC television series Blackadder, the title character in the television series Kingdom, a recurring guest role as Dr Gordon Wyatt on the crime series Bones, and as Gordon Deitrich in the dystopian thriller V for Vendetta.

Lenny Henry is a British stand-up comedian and actor who shot to fame after appearing on the 1975 talent show New Faces. He co-founded the charity Comic Relief.

The two men are armed with a wealth of acting, comedy and writing credentials both are more than equipped to come face to face with the Time Lord and her friends. It is not known if they are playing friend or foe.

Speaking ahead of his Doctor Who appearance Stephen Fry said Sir Lenny Henry CBE added Chris Chibnall, Showrunner said