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.

The Curse of the Black Spot has debuted in Australia to excellent ratings. TV Tonight reports that the episode averaged 837,000 viewers in the five major capital cities. It won its national timeslot, was the top-rating drama of the day and the fourth highest rating programme for the day overall. The corresponding Confidential Cutdown also rated a solid 575,000 viewers in the five major capitals. Meanwhile, the previous week, Day of the Moon averaged 895,000 viewers in the five major capital cities. Again, it was the top-rating drama of the day and the fifth highest rating programme for the day overall. The corresponding Confidential Cutdown also rated an excellent 672,000 viewers in the five major capitals. The Impossible Astronaut averaged 865,000 viewers in the five major capital cities. Again, it was the top-rating drama of the day and the fourth highest rating programme for the day overall. The corresponding Confidential Cutdown also rated a strong 634,000 viewers in the five major capitals.

The BBC have now released trailers and previews for the forthcoming fifth episode of Doctor Who, The Rebel Flesh, the first of a two-part story written by Matthew Graham.

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The Rebel Flesh will premiere on BBC1/BBC1HD at 6:45pm, 21st May in the United Kingdom; then follows on SPACE in Canada at 8:00pm ET, BBC America in the United States at 9:00pm ET, and on ABC1 in Australia at 7:30pm on the 28th May.


 

5.9 million viewers watched episode four of Doctor Who: The Doctor's Wife, according to unofficial overnight figures.

The story, written by Neil Gaiman, attracted 28.6% of the overnight audience and was the third watched programme of the day. The most watched programme was The Eurovision Song Contest 2011 with 9.4 million watching which pushed Britain's Got Talent into second place.

Doctor Who once more drew many viewers to BBC One with the audience rising from 3.6 million to 5.9 million as the programme started and then dropping back from 6.2 million to 3.3 million when it finished.

Against Doctor Who, New Animals Do the Funniest Things on ITV1 had 3.2 million watching.

Doctor Who currently stands as the twentieth most watched programme of the week.

The overnight figure is based on the published timeslot, which was 6.30pm - 7.20pm and so is dragged down slightly by the following programme. Final ratings, based on the exact time broadcast, and including those who record the programme for later viewing, should be available next Sunday.

ON BBC Three / BBC HD Doctor Who Confidential had 716,000 watching, the highest rating of the series so far.

The BBC have released two videos by The Doctor's Wife writer Neil Gaiman, where he discusses scenes from the story that he enjoyed writing for the story, but ultimately were dropped from the final shooting script:

The BBC have released details for Week 22, which includes the synopsis for the sixth episode of the series, The Almost People; this is due to be broadcast on BBC1/BBC1HD on Saturday 28th May, with the time of broadcast yet to be confirmed. This is the second part of a story by Matthew Graham.