Doctor Who has dominated the 2010 Portal Awards, held by Airlock Alpha part of the BlipNetwork.

Doctor Who was named Best Series/Television with 65% of the vote beating Torchwood into second place.

David Tennant was overwhelmingly voted Best Actor/television with a massive 68% of the vote, beating John Barrowman who was in second place with 10% of the vote.

Bernard Cribbins won Best Supporting Actor/Television for his portrayal of Wilfred Mott in The End of Time with 59 percent of the vote. The End of Time was itself voted Best Episode/Television.

Alex Kingston was voted Best Special Guest for her portrayal of River Song in Time of Angels.

The award for Best Actress/Television went to Eve Myles for Torchwood - Children of Earth, beating Karen Gillan into second place

The Gene Roddenberry Award for lifetime achievement was given to Russell T Davies for his work on Doctor Who and Torchwood.

This was the 11th year for the Portal Awards, which started in 1999 as the SyFy Genre Awards. An international nominating committee generated a list of five nominees for each category and readers then had 30 days to vote.

Doctor Who has won seven awards over the years, and is third to Star Trek: Voyager (18 wins) and Farscape (eight wins).

Full list of winners.

David Tennant's acclaimed performance as Hamlet Prince of Denmark comes to PBS Wednesday evening as part of the Great Performances series. Immediately following the broadcast, the film will be available online in its entirety on the Great Performances Web site.


Hamlet aired in the UK on Boxing Day 2009 to an audience of more than 900,000. In an article in The Observer, Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote: “Like many people, I had my love of Shakespeare reawakened by David Tennant’s TV portrayal of Hamlet over Christmas.”

Tennant made his debut in October as the host of MASTERPIECE CONTEMPORARY on PBS. His many other credits include his recent portrayal of Barty Crouch Junior in the big-screen blockbuster Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Tennant has also received numerous awards from the theatre community for his lead roles in several Shakespearean productions and other classic plays.

Veteran stage and screen actor Sir Patrick Stewart reprises his 2009 Laurence Olivier Award-winning role of Claudius in the screen version, which is directed by Gregory Doran, who also returns to reprise his stage direction of the production. Co-produced by Illuminations Television and the RSC for the BBC, in association with Thirteen for WNET.ORG and NHK, the adaptation recreates the tone and atmosphere of the stage production in a film-style interpretation shot in HD on location at St. Joseph’s College in Mill Hill, London. The production is produced for television by John Wyver and Sebastian Gran.

Check local listings here.

The Telegraph is to give away a series of Doctor Who Audio adventures starting next weekend with an early release of Matt Smith reading a brand new adventure for the Eleventh Doctor, The Runaway Train. It is understood this will be in the paper on Saturday 24th April.

The news comes from Doctor Who author Peter Anghelides, whose own story, Pest Control, featuring the Tenth Doctor and read by David Tennant, will be the second story released on the 25th and 26th April.

The promotion is part of a deal with BBC Audiobooks. Commissioning Editor Michael Stevens says
Other stories included are: Slipback, the Colin Baker story originally heard on BBC Radio 4 in 1985; Genesis of the Daleks and Exploration Earth featuring Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen; and finally Mission to the Unknown, the soundtrack of the 1965 story, which was the one Doctor Who television episode not to feature the Doctor or any of his companions.

This article asks: “Is this the Doctor Who general election? And are Labour hoping that some of the popularity of the show will rub off on them?” The forthcoming UK general election and Doctor Who do seem to be becoming evermore interlinked.

The new issue of Radio Times, harking back to its 30 April to 6 May issue from 2005 (opposite), shows the Daleks in the colours (blue, red and yellow) of the three main UK political parties, David Tennant, earlier this year, declared his support for the UK’s Labour Party and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the party’s current leader. Earlier this week, the Labour Party turned to the Doctor and a son of the Doctor in it’s campaign to win re-election in the contest.

The first party-election broadcast of the campaign premièred on YouTube before airing on UK television channels. In the Labour Party broadcast, The Road Ahead, the third Doctor Jon Pertwee’s son, Sean Pertwee, appeared, while the tenth Doctor David Tennant provided the voice-over.

See our earlier story about this week’s Radio Times and the interview with Brown, who reveals that Tennant is his favourite Doctor, and that he saw him recently in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

In recent months, both Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat have separately warned against David Cameron’s Conservatives winning the election, fearing the future of the BBC would be under threat. Citing Moffat’s comments, the Daily Mirror claimed that Saturday’s episode, The Beast Below, featured a message blasting the Tories:

In February, the Sunday Times claimed that writers wove anti-Tory propaganda into Doctor Who scripts in the 1980s.

As for the Liberal Democrats, their candidate for Blaenau Gwent, Wales, is one Matt Smith!

David Tennant has topped Daniel Craig to become the Best Dressed Man of 2009, according to Hello Magazine. In the online poll, the former Doctor pulled in over a third of the votes, with 35.4% of the 10,254 voters, a clear 12% majority over the current James Bond star's 23.3%.

Tennant recently lost out in Hello's Most Attractive Men poll, coming in at fifth place.

Official figures released by BARB reveal Doctor Who The End of Time, Part Two was watched by 12.27 million people and was once more the most watched programme of the week on British television.

The figures were finally released Monday, after a delay caused by the implementation of a new data collection system. These final ratings are more accurate than the initial overnight figures, and include those who recorded the programme to watch within seven days of transmission. The figures for BBC One give The End of Time a rating of 11.79 million viewers, second for the week behind the episode of EastEnders which directly followed the regeneration. However, unlike EastEnders, Doctor Who was simulcast on the BBC HD channel, where it was watched by an extra 480,000. If these figures are added to the BBC One number it gives Doctor Who a total of 12.27 million, enough to push the programme to the number one spot for only the third time in its 47 year history.

It makes The End of Time, Part Two the 3rd highest rated episode since the series returned in 2005. Overall the episode has the 25th highest rating in the series history.

The edition of Doctor Who Confidential, looking back at the Tenth Doctor, got a final rating of 1.21 million viewers on BBC Three with an additional 150,000 watching on BBC HD. It was the second highest rated programme on Multi Channel for the day.

As well as being the end of David Tennant as the Doctor, The End of Time also brings to an end the stewardship of Russell T Davies and Julie Gardner. Speaking after the launch of the series in 2005, the then BBC head of drama commissioning, Jane Tranter, spoke about her hopes for the series and the audience it would attract. "I told myself I'd be completely and utterly thrilled if it got 6.5 million" she said, "but there was a little voice inside whispering '4.5 million".

The fact that every single episode since the relaunch has exceeded her highest aspirations show how tremedously successful the series has become. Not only bringing large numbers of viewers to BBC One, but also drawing people towards new services such as BBC Three, the BBC iPlayer and , in the last year, BBC HD. If the number of viewers who watched the End of Time on all platforms is calculated, the total stands at around 16 million, roughly the same as the highest rating ever achieved by the classic series, 16.1 million for City of Death in 1979.

Over the last five years 60 episodes have been transmitted making a grand total of 756 since the series began in 1963. Of those sixty 10 have made the top five programmes of the week, something only one episode from the classic series ever achieved. Twenty Six episodes, over half of those made by the team, made the top ten, with only two episodes falling outside the top twenty.

The top rating story of the era was Voyage of the Damned, the Christmas story from 2007, with 13.3 million viewers, the lowest rating story was The Satan Pit with 6.1 million.

Full ratings data and audience analysis for all sixty episodes can be found in the ratings threads in the Transmission section of Gallifrey Base

The BBC has confirmed our story from yesterday that David Tennant and Catherine Tate will return to Radio 2 on Saturday morning when they once more stand in for Jonathan Ross.

It will be the third time the duo have stood in for the presenter, hosting the three hour radio show. This weeks guests include Anthony Head, who appeared in the Series 2 story School Reunion playing Mr Finch, Ricky Gervais and the rock band La Roux.

We understand the programme was recorded on Friday and will not be live. Radio 2 can be heard around the world via the BBC Website. The programme begins at 1000 GMT.

Update. The programme has now aired and can be heard for the next seven days on the BBC iPlayer.

David Tennant has attended the Radio Times Covers Party in London. The annual event is open to all those who have appeared on the cover of the UK listings magazine over the year. In 2009 Tennant appeared on three covers as the Doctor. A full report on the party is available on the Radio Times website, along with a short video shot at the occasion.

A tweet from drummer William Bowerman implies David Tennant and Catherine Tate will once more host Jonathan Ross's Radio show this weekend. This has not been confirmed by the BBC who still have Ross listed as presenter on their website.

Entertainment Weekly is reporting that NBC have put David Tennant's US pilot Rex is Not Your Lawyer on hold. There were reports that it was under consideration to fill a 10pm slot this spring, to help fill the space on the network caused by moving the Jay Leno show out of primetime.

However it now appears the network has passed, for now, on the show, with the sets being dismantled this week. There is a possibility that the show will be commissioned in the fall and sets are being stored in case that happens.

NBC have not commented on the story.

Doctor Who has once again been successful at the National Television Awards (NTAs), held at the O2 Arena in London this evening and broadcast live on ITV1 in the UK. This was the 15th running of the ceremony, at which television programmes and personalities are given awards voted on by the British public.

The programme has now won the Drama category at every NTA ceremony since 2005, although the awards were not held in 2009. This year it won the audience vote ahead of BBC One stablemate Casualty, Channel 4's Shameless and ITV1's The Bill. The award, presented by England football captain John Terry, was collected by David Tennant, Bernard Cribbins, June Whitfield and Elisabeth Sladen, with Cribbins delivering the acceptance speech. He thanked and praised Tennant and the production team, which he named as the best he has ever worked with in British television.

David Tennant later took the award for Drama Performance, beating competition from Philip Glenister (for BBC One's Ashes to Ashes), David Jason (ITV1's A Touch of Frost) and David Threlfall (Shameless). Tennant also won this category at the 2008 ceremony, and had taken victory in one of its predecessors, the Most Popular Actor category, in 2006 and 2007 - in 2005 this had been won by his predecessor Christopher Eccleston for his role as the Ninth Doctor.

Tennant was presented with his award by Sarah Brown, wife of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. In his acceptance speech, Tennant thanked the audience and praised the incoming team of Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Steven Moffat. He spoke about how much he loves the programme and has done so since childhood, and how he is looking forward to watching as a fan again, not knowing what is going to happen next.

Tennant also presented the award for "Star Travel Documentary" to Stephen Fry earlier in the ceremony. Fry, who guest-starred in the 2001 Doctor Who website audio drama Death Comes to Time, was also later presented with an Outstanding Contribution Award for his work in British television.



A BBC News report and media articles on the event may be found at Doctor Who in the Media.