The annual Portal Awards have been announced by Airlock Alpha, with Doctor Who once more well represented within the various categories.

Best Actor sees Matt Smith nominated for his role as The Doctor; he will face competition from Andrew Lincoln (The Walking Dead), Sean Bean (Game of Thrones), Joshua Jackson (Fringe), and Eddie McClintock (Warehouse 13). This award was won overwhelmingly by David Tennant last year with some 68% of the vote (with second place going to John Barrowman with 10%!).

Similarly, Best Actress sees co-star Karen Gillan pitted against Lena Headey (Game of Thrones), Anna Torv (Fringe), Paula Malcomson (Caprica), and Summer Glau (The Cape). Gillan lost out last year to Eve Myles for her portrayal as Gwen Cooper in Torchwood: Children of Earth.

Doctor Who itself is nominated for Best Television Series, which it won last year (Torchwood came second). This year sees it up against Fringe, Game of Thrones, Stargate: Universe and The Walking Dead. Also, The Doctor's Wife has been nominated in the Best Television Episode category, facing episodes from Fringe, Stargate: Universe, Game of Thrones and Caprica.

Alex Kingston has been nominated for Best Television Special Guest, an award she won last year for The Time of Angels; this time her role in Day of the Moon is being recognised, and she faces competition from another Doctor Who guest, Michael Gambon for A Christmas Carol. Christopher Lloyd and Leonard Nimoy are also nominated for Fringe, plus Michael Rosenbaum for Smallville.

The late Elisabeth Sladen has been nominated for the Gene Roddenberry Award which honours lifetime achievement; the other nominees are H.G. Wells, J.J. Abrams, Rick Berman and Gene L. Coon.


The full list of categories are available from Airlock Alpha, and fans will be able to vote from the 25th June until 24th July.

Sam Hodges, Head of Communications for BBC1, Fiction, Daytime and HD at the BBC has confirmed on Twitter this afternoon that Doctor Who has indeed been commissioned for a further fourteen episodes, with Matt Smith continuing in the role. Head writer Stephen Moffat re-iterated:
No details on how the next series will be broadcast have been revealed at present, though Doctor Who Magazine confirmed that one will be the now traditional Christmas Special for 2011. Meanwhile the Guardian has reported a BBC spokesperson as saying:

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The news comes after UK satirical publication Private Eye commented on Twitter that details on the state of Doctor Who production appear in their latest issue; coupled by an interview with Matt Smith in Saturday's Mirror about his Hollywood aspirations, this had promoted widespread speculation in fandom over the series' future.

Doctor goes up against Doctor in the 2011 Constellation Awards, with both Matt Smith and David Tennant nominated for their role as The Doctor in the Best Male Performance - Television category.

The Awards, now in their fifth year, are Canada's premier awards rewarding excellence in science fiction film and television. Because they cover programmes broadcast in 2010, both the Tenth and Eleventh Doctor's are eligible. Tennant for his performance in The End of Time - Part Two, and Smith for his performance in last year's Christmas special, A Christmas Carol. David Tennant was given last year's award for his performance in The Waters of Mars. Also nominated is Tony Curran for his portrayal of Vincent Van Gogh in Vincent and the Doctor.

Karen Gillan is nominated for Best Female Performance - Television for her role in Amy's Choice and faces Katherine Jenkins nominated for A Christmas Carol.

Doctor Who is also nominated in the Best Science Fiction Television Series category, a category it has one three times before although it lost out in last year's awards to Supernatural, which has also been nominated for 2010.

Murray Gold earns a nominaton for Doctor Who's music in the Best Technical Accomplishment category, with Steven Moffat and Richard Curtis both being nominated for Best Overall 2010 Science Fiction Film or Television Script, Moffat for The Eleventh Hour and Curtis for Vincent and the Doctor.

For a full list of nomanees see the awards website.

The awards will be announced at a Ceremony on July 16, 2011 at the Sheraton Parkway Toronto North hotel.

After the controversy raised by Scottish media last weekend over the commercial sale of replicas of the Doctor's coat, Canada's premier news agency Postmedia investigated further from the perspective of the country where replica producer AbbyShot Clothiers are based.

BBC Worldwide spokesperson Emma Finlay clarified that AbbyShot approached them with the proposal:
The agency also confirmed that the adapted jacket worn by Matt Smith for the current series was not a Chinese replica as intimated in the earlier reports, but was actually tailored into a warmer version for the actor by a Saville Row shop - though using a substitute for true Harris Tweed. The replica being produced by AbbyShot is a wool-acrylic blend based on that design.

Last year, AbbyShot received a Canadian SME Innovator of the Year award from Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters. The company specialises in making screen-accurate representations of popular iconic clothing seen on television and in movies.

Matt Smith will join Matt Baker (Aliens of London) and Alex Jones in the studio for tonight's One Show on BBC One at 7.00pm.

Following transmission the show will available in the UK on the BBC iPlayer for the next seven days.

The BBC Doctor Who website have revealed that a "previously unseen clip" from The Almost People will premiere on tonight's One Show and will be made available to watch immediately after on their website.

Today's Sunday Mail has reported that the jacket worn by Matt Smith's Doctor in the current series of Doctor Who is a Chinese remake of the Harris Tweed one from last series.

A BBC spokesperson told the paper that: "the tweed changed because they needed a warmer jacket for outside filming"; back in June 2010, Smith himself told the Sun newspaper: A spokeswoman for BBC Worldwide told the paper that the decision to drop Harris Tweed was taken by programme makers, adding: "we've had no input into the jacket design." Ann MacCallum, Managing Director of the Isle of Lewis mill which makes Harris Tweed said: "the BBC told me Matt wanted something different for the new series."

Lydia Walton, a spokesman for Harris Tweed Scotland said: Western Isles MP Angus MacNeil told the Mail:
The BBC has granted a license to AbbyShot Clothiers, a Canadian company who make screen-accurate TV and movie clothing, who will sell the the official replica jacket through various affiliates. AbbyShot has previously made the official replica of the tenth Doctor's coat and the red leather jacket worn by Martha Jones.

Fashion expert Tessa Hartmann said:

The replica is currently available to pre-order from the Forbidden Planet website.

Matt Smith has been nominated for the British Academy Television Award (BAFTA) for Best Actor for his performance as the Eleventh Doctor in the 2010 series of Doctor Who - the first time in the programme's history that one of its leads has been nominated for this prestigious award. He is up against Benedict Cumberbatch (for BBC One's Sherlock, created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss), former Comic Relief Doctor Jim Broadbent (for Channel 4's Any Human Heart) and Daniel Rigby (for BBC Two biopic Eric and Ernie).

The BAFTA Awards are the most prestigious awards given in the British television industry, analogous to the Primetime Emmy Awards in the United States. The winners of most of the categories, including the one in which Smith is nominated, are decided by a jury of industry experts. Doctor Who last triumphed at the main ceremony in 2006, when the first season of the new series, starring Christopher Eccleston, won the Best Drama Series category, and the programme also took home the viewer-voted Audience Award, and Russell T Davies was given the honorary Dennis Potter Award for achievement in television writing. The 2008 series, starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate, was also nominated for the Best Drama Series category at the 2009 awards, but lost out to BBC One's British version of Wallander.

The series and its personnel have, however, won several awards at the BAFTA Cymru and BAFTA Craft Awards ceremonies since Doctor Who returned to the screens in 2005, including the Best Writer Award for Steven Moffat in 2008. The winners of this year's main BAFTA Awards will be announced at a ceremony on Sunday 22nd May, at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London. BBC News has a report on the nominations.

Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill will be making an in-store appearance this Friday (8th) at the Barnes & Noble store in Fifth Avenue, New York, to sign copies of The Complete Series 5 boxed set.


Last year, Matt, Karen and Steven Moffat went to New York for a publicity tour to promote Series 5. They attended a 'Meet the Cast' event at the Apple store in SoHo. It is not yet known if there will be a similar tour while the team is in New York this time around.

This week's issue of the Radio Times sees Matt Smith feature on the cover for the first time this year as he returns to Saturday evening - though in this case "The Naked Doctor" is representing his new role as the gay icon Christopher Isherwood in the BBC Drama Christopher and His Kind, which will be broadcast on BBC2/BBCHD this coming Saturday at 9:30pm.

In an interview with the magazine, the actor compares Isherwood’s experiences in 1930s Berlin to those of his time-travelling alter ego, the Doctor:

The new issue of the Radio Times is available in the shops from today.


You can also read an interview with Matt Smith on his role via the BBC Press Office.

Matt Smith tells Now Magazine that he isn't worried about being type-cast: "playing the Doctor hasn't prevented Christopher Eccleston or David Tennant from taking on other parts." He also commented on the length of Karen's Gillan skirts in the series: "I know those short skirts caused a furore but I say bring them on. I see nothing wrong with celebrating women and their sexiness. There's absolutely nothing exploitative or demeaning about it."

Karen Gillan made a special appearance on Monday at her old haunt the Eden Court Theatre in Inverness, where she was called onto the stage to help clean it and then get gunked in goo as part of the show's "grotty totty". Says theatre marketing manager Laurie Piper: "all the way through the show the writer, Iain Laughlan, incorporated 23 Dr Who jokes, so some audience members might have had an idea what was going on. When Karen was called on to the stage, the kids loved it and everyone was delighted. She did it in great spirit." The actress recently became Arts Education Ambassador at the theatre. [Aberdeen Press and Journal]

John Barrowman has had to pull out of his pantomime Aladdin (SECC, Glasgow); the theatre reports: "In terms of future performances, as time goes on it is a case of evaluating his health prior to a performance to see if he is match-fit. John is genuinely disappointed at not being able to make the performances he has missed due to the flu virus – he is a professional who will always perform should he be able to. He is doing everything he can to make a full recovery." Meanwhile, his role is being played by his cousin Greg Barrowman. [Glasgow Evening Times, Herald Scotland]

Former Doctor David Tennant came fourth in a poll of the "most sexy celebrity in glasses", carried out by the College of Optometrists. He was beaten by fashion designer Gok Wan, actor Johnny Depp and comedian Alan Carr.

Finally, the New Years Honours list sees a couple of Doctor Who guest stars honoured: Burt Kwouk (Lin Futu, Four to Doomsday) is to be awarded an OBE and actress Sheila Hancock (Helen A, The Happiness Patrol) will receive a CBE for services to drama. [more details and video for Hancock at BBC News]