The Doctor's Wife has debuted in Australia to strong ratings. TV Tonight reports that the episode averaged 785,000 viewers in the five major capital cities. Again, it won its national timeslot, was the top-rating drama of the day and the fifth highest rating programme for the day overall. The corresponding Confidential Cutdown also rated a respectable 605,000 viewers in the five major capitals. These overnight figures do not include regional, rural and time-shifted viewers and hence significantly understate the actual national ratings.

Meanwhile, BBC Worldwide Australia have confirmed that Torchwood: Miracle Day will be fast-tracked to Australia debuting on UKTV Australia on Saturday 9 July 2011 at 8:30pm. Deirdre Brennan, Director of Television, BBC Worldwide Australia said:

Tying into the theme of the current story, the BBC have released a short interview with Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill, where the trio discuss their real-life experiences with doppelgangers:


Meanwhile the usual promotional trailers and preview scenes are available for the forthcoming sixth episode of Doctor Who, The Almost People - the second of the two-part adventure written by Matthew Graham.

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The Almost People will premiere on BBC1/BBC1HD at 6:45pm, 28th May in the United Kingdom; due to Memorial Day, SPACE and BBC America will broadcast the episode a week later at 8:00pm/9:00pm ET respectively, on the 4th June, the same day as ABC1 in Australia at 7:30pm.

Doctor Who fans in North America will have an extra long wait to watch the conclusion to this week's episode The Rebel Flesh.

The second part of the two part story will not be broadcast on BBC America or Canada's SPACE until Saturday June 4. The reason is the Memorial Day holiday weekend which takes place in the States next weekend. Memorial Day commemorates U.S. soldiers who died while on military service and unofficially marks the start of the summer holiday season. TV schedulers try to avoid planning any new programming over the weekend when a large number of people are away from home.

BBC America will be broadcasting a series of episodes from Matt Smith's time as the Doctor over the weekend. Both channels will show The Almost People, the conclusion to the two part story, on 4th June.

Full listings can be found in This Week in Doctor Who.

Audience measurement service Kantar Media have reported that the opening episode of the new series of Doctor Who, The Impossible Astronaut, was the most recorded British television event of all time (so far!).

Statistial analysis of the BARB data revealed that 4.11 million viewers 'time-shifted' their watching of the programme, either through VOSDAL ("viewing on same day as live") or during the following week. The final total audience recorded for the episode was 8.9 million, indicating that some 46% of the audience did not watch the programme "live".

The previous record for time-shifted viewing was held by the Christmas Day episode of the Matt Lucas/David Walliams mockumentary series Come Fly With Me.


Dalia Gereis, the Commercial Director for Kantar Media Audiences, said:

	Programme	Channel	Episode Date	Time Shifted viewing	Total Audience
1.	DOCTOR WHO	BBC1	23 Apr 2011	4.11m	8.86m
2.	COME FLY WITH ME	BBC1	25 Dec 2010	3.29m	12.47m
3.	THE X FACTOR	ITV1	02 Oct 2010	3.17m	13.49m
4.	EASTENDERS	BBC1	25 Dec 2010	2.7m	12.61m
5.	BRITAIN'S GOT TALENT	ITV1	01 May 2010	2.55m	11.84m
6.	THE ROYLE FAMILY	BBC1	25 Dec 2010	2.53m	11.29m
7.	CORONATION STREET	ITV1	10 Dec 2010	2.5m	13.46m
8.	WAKING THE DEAD	BBC1	03 Apr 2011	2.5m	7.21m
9.	WALLACE AND GROMIT	BBC1	25 Dec 2008	2.5m	16.15m
10.	STRICTLY COME DANCING	BBC1	11 Dec 2010	2.38m	11.57m

(with thanks to Helen Brocket, Eureka Communications)

The BBC have released details for Week 23, which includes the synopsis for the final episode before the Doctor Who takes its Summer mid-season break.

A Good Man Goes To War; will be broadcast on BBC1/BBC1HD on Saturday 4th June, with the time of broadcast yet to be confirmed.

The Story is written by Steven Moffat, directed by Peter Hoar and produced by Marcus Wilson.

The BBC have released a short video introducing the next episode of Doctor Who, The Rebel Flesh, which will be broadcast at 6:45pm on Saturday. It features writer Matthew Graham, director Julian Simpson, and Arthur Darvill (Rory).


 

BARB have now issued final ratings for the week ending 8th May making Doctor Who: The Curse of the Black Spot the 11th most watched programme of the week.

The show was once again the highest non-soap drama of the week with only EastEnders, Coronation Street and Britain's Got Talent rating higher.

The third episode in last year's series, Victory of the Daleks, also was ranked 11th for the week.

The Doctor's Wife had an Appreciation Index or AI of 87.

The score was the second highest of Saturday night on the four main channels with only The Comedy Genius of John Sullivan on BBC Two scoring higher.

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. A score above 85 is considered excellent.

On Sunday two programmes had higher overnight viewing figures than Doctor Who, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and Countryfile, pushing Doctor Who into 22nd place on overnight figures. Final figures will be released next week.

The BBC Three repeat had 0.57 million viewers.

Neil Gaiman, author of Saturday's Doctor Who episode, The Doctor's Wife, will be answering questions on the story, live on the Guardian blog on Monday afternoon.

Questions can be left via the comments section on the newspaper's website. The live chat takes place at 4pm UK time, 1500GMT.

Gaiman posted on twitter had received around 20,000 tweets after the episode. He said his favourite thing about the day was seeing TARDIS trending in the UK, US & Canada.


Update: the Q&A session may be found here.

Doctor Who: The Curse of the Black Spot had an official consolidated audience of 7.85 million viewers, according to figures released by BARB.

The programme has a 35.5% share of the total audience available at that time.

The number includes those who recorded the programme for viewing within seven days of its initial showing. The figure is much larger than the initially reported overnight figure. A full report for the week, which will reveal the shows position in the weekly charts will be released by BARB tomorrow.

The figures do not include those watching on iPlayer, where just under 1 million have accessed the programme within the first week of transmission.