The official BBC Doctor Who website has confirmed the UK DVD release ofThe Hand of Fear starring Tom Baker as the Doctor and Elisabeth Sladen - in her last episode as a regular on Doctor Who - as Sarah Jane Smith. The DVD is currently due out on 31 July 2006. The release will feature commentary by Baker, Sladen, Judith Paris (Eldrad), Bob Baker (writer) and Philip Hinchcliffe (producer); "Changing Times," a 50-minute documentary charting the special relationship between the Doctor and his companion Sarah Jane Smith; "Swap Shop," a very rare clip of Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen's appearance on the first ever edition of Noel Edmonds' Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, shown in October 1976; plus PDFs of the 1977 Doctor Who Annual and the Radio Times listings for The Hand of Fear, a photo gallery, continuity announcements, information text subtitles and easter egg.

Here's a quick recap of the major news items of the past few days; the rest of the press from the past eight days will be included in a proper (and quite large) TARDIS Report column on Sunday.

Latest Schedule Changes

The first showing of The Age of Steel this Saturday on BBC One is now confirmed in a 50-minute 6.35pm to 7.25pm timeslot, overlapping with CBBC's repeat of Totally Doctor Who 6 from 6.30pm that evening. Doctor Who Confidential follows immediately at 7.25pm on BBC Three, repeated on Sunday night/Monday morning at 3.25 am. A Cut Down version will be shown on Sunday 21st at 7.45pm and on Friday 26th at 9.45pm - both of these follow repeat showings of 'The Age of Steel' at 7pm and 9pm. There are also two more chances to see BBC Four's Time Shift documentary, Machine Men, on Friday 19th/Saturday 20th at midnight and 2.50am.

BBC Three's weekday evening repeats of Series Two begin on Monday 22nd at 7pm with New Earth (not The Christmas Invasion) and continue through to Rise of the Cybermen at 7pm on Friday 26th, ahead of that evening's 9pm repeat of The Age of Steel. There have been wildly different versions of BBC Three's schedule available from the Radio Times website and other online listings guides. The print version of Radio Times, however, lists five editions of Confidential Cut Down at 7.45-8.00pm each evening, covering first showings in this format of New New Doctor, Fear Factor and Friends Reunited, as well as Script to Screen and Cybermen. Since this is the schedule that seems to make the most sense, it's the one Outpost Gallifrey is using in our Broadcast Calendar on this page, although it obviously remains subject to change. It is not known whether these BBC Three repeats will include the red-button commentary now available on BBCi with the regular Sunday and Friday repeats.

Radio Times

This week's Radio Times selects The Age of Steel as its 'Drama of the Week', calling it "very possibly the best episode yet". A sequence from the episode is also Alison Graham's 'Moment of the Week', with her short write-up managing a fairly comprehensive spoiler for the scene in question. The magazine also previews the episode as "the best yet", commenting that David Tennant is "such a good actor. It's instructive to see how utterly at home he is in a role he's made his own. Frankly, it's impossible not to sigh in sheer admiration." The episode listing runs: "The continuation of last week's story. Terror mounts as the Cybermen seize London. Can a daring raid stop them in their tracks?" The accompanying 'Doctor Who Watch' feature is just one page this week, most of which focuses on Mickey Smith, with Noel Clark commenting that this is the episode "where his development really takes shape. He sees what he could become and he becomes it." The same page (and the magazine's cover, the seventh cover mention in eight weeks) promotes the latest selection of free stickers, which this week come glued to Mickey's face on the Doctor Who Watch page. There's also another letter, this time praising School Reunion and The Girl in the Fireplace as giving "a moving new dimension to an already timeless character." Finally, a three-page article on this year's BAFTA winners includes photos of and comments from David Tennant, Russell T Davies and Billie Piper. The Radio Timeswebsite has a number of photographs and video footage of the BAFTA-carrying stars at the after-show gathering. The site's Doctor Who section (link here) has been updated to include a Cybermen photo gallery and a competition running until 2 June to win Dalek posters and an iPod nano.

Blue Peter and Other TV Coverage

Monday's Blue Peter feature on the Cybermen can be seen online from the official site or from the Blue Peter site. Following that feature, K-9 made a very brief appearance on Tuesday's edition of Blue Peter to confirm that he will be accompanying presenter Gethin at the 'Bark in the Park' event - details at the Blue Peter website. In next Tuesday 23 May's edition, "Gethin investigates the real-life story of the invention which inspired the clockwork monsters" in The Girl in the Fireplace.

As Outpost Gallifrey reported on 27 April, David Tennant has donated a signed script to a charity sale in a church in Scotland, and the story has since been covered in a number of press and online reports, including CBBC Newsround on Tuesday. The next day's BBC One edition of Newsround included a quick report on the story, played over clips from The Christmas Invasion.

Noel Clarke was scheduled to "takes time out to chat about his Doctor Who character" on GMTV's Entertainment Today from 8.35am on Friday 19 May.

The Age of Steel Pre-publicity

There have, so far, been no trailers for The Age of Steel on BBC television this week, although the episode (and its earlier timeslot) has been promoted by continuity announcers during several programme links.

The official website was updated on Tuesday lunchtime, its new flash-animated homepage accompanied by the sound of marching Cybermen and links to some of the series' spin-off websites (Cybus Industries and Vitex). The photo gallery for the Cybermen story has been expanded to 37 pictures, and a range of sounds are avaiable for download, as well as Tardisode 6 and a Fear Factor rating of 5 (Terrifying).

Guest star Roger Lloyd Pack has been interviewed by BBC Norfolk, including a slide-show from the episode this weekend.

BBC One's listings for the week say of The Age of Steel: "The Cybermen take control of London and start converting the populace. While Jackie falls under Lumic's control, the Doctor, Rose and Mickey are reduced to fugitives in a world of terror. A last, desperate attack on the Cyberfactory is their only chance - but will they all survive?" (Link here) The same site says of this week's Totally Doctor Who: "Camille Coduri, better known as Rose Tyler's mum, Jackie, is back for more juicy gossip. Plus Andrew Hayden-Smith joins us on the sofa to talk acting, presenting and Cybermen! The Companion Academy turns up the heat as the cadets are put through another testing task when they are told to Face Your Fears. Liz takes a trip to The Mill, where the amazing computer generated Doctor Who effects are brought to life. And we go totally behind the scenes to see how a BIG explosion can be done on a very small scale."

In this week's Heat magazine, reviewer Chris Longridge notes that: "You won't be too shocked to learn that the gang survive last week's cliffhanger. With Trigger from Only Fools and Horses poised to take over the city via his earpods (imagine what he could do with an earpod nano), the Doctor infiltrates his robofactory - formerly known as Battersea Power Station - while Mickey literally has a word with himself and bucks up enough to finally do something useful." He gives The Age of Steel 5 stars, and Heat places it at number 9 in its Top 10 Best TV Shows of the week.

Closer magazine writes that: "The Doctor, Mickey ad Rose are still stranded in parallel London, and those pesky Cybermen are still clunking around the capital, trying to "upgrade" the population. The Doctor and his merry band of resistance fighters must launch one last dangerous assault to save the day. It's a tough episode for Rose too as she sufers not one, but two, heartbreaking goodbyes."

Star magazine has The Age of Steel as one of their Picks of the Day - "In the conclusion of this two-part episode, the dreaded Cybermen are running amok in London. Jackie is already under Lumic's control. Meanwhile the Doc, Rose and Mickey are fleeing for their lives. Their only hope for survival is an attack on the Cyber factory."

Other Press Items

Broadcast Now reports that "BBC1 is the UK’s most creative channel, according to Broadcast’s first Creative Report, an analysis of the most acclaimed British programmes, producers and broadcasters over the last year." The report says that "the channel's dominance in the drama series category is fuelled by hits such as Doctor Who and Bleak House." Doctor Who takes third place (behind Sex Traffic and Little Britain) in its chart of the top 10 most creative programmes, and topping the list of most creative new programmes (first shown in 2005). The report surveyed 300 programmes, taking into account awards wins and nominations over the 12 months to May 2006.

Great news for all Russell T Davies fans and British viewers who grew up watching Children's BBC in the early 1990s. Davies's two highly-regarded children's fantasy serials, 1991's Dark Season and 1993's Century Fallsare due to be released on Region 2 DVD in the UK by 2entertain Ltd on July 17. Dark Season, Davies's first full drama script for television, co-stars a young Kate Winslet, while according to former Children's BBC presenter Andi Peters on BBC Four's Russell T Davies - Unscripted documentary in 2005, Century Falls was regarded as so potentially disturbing for younger viewers by BBC bosses that they forbade any repeat screening. Neither serial has been released on VHS or DVD before, and while Dark Season was repeated on BBC One in 1994 and the CBBC Channel in 2001, Century Falls has remained in the vaults since 1993.

Various sources are reporting that on Saturday, ITV suffered the worst audience share in its history. Says the MediaGuardian (http://media.guardian.co.uk/overnights/story/0,,1775328,00.html subscription link): "Saturday's FA Cup final has been dubbed the greatest ever and the BBC1's near three hours of nailbiting live football helped condemn ITV1 to its worst ever daily audience share. ITV1 had a share on Saturday of just 11.8%, half a percentage point lower than its previous record low on July 2 last year, when BBC1 was showing live coverage of Live 8... Overall, BBC1 had an all-day share of 36.4% against ITV's 11.8%. Channel 4 came third, with 8.1%, followed by BBC2, 7.4%, and Channel Five, with 5.2%."

Says BBC News Online's coverage: "An ITV1 spokesman said: 'A big sporting occasion like the FA Cup Final will often cause a ratings blip.' A BBC One spokesman said: 'We are delighted that the thrilling FA Cup Final and the Cybermen's return to Doctor Who proved a winning combination to BBC One viewers.' Some 8.6 million watched Doctor Who. Last week, ITV announced plans to axe a string of programmes in a bid to refresh its main channel's schedule."

(Thanks to Paul Engelberg, Paul Hayes, Peter Weaver, John Bowman)

Ratings for the tenth episode of the first season of the new series, The Doctor Dances, on US television on the Sci Fi Channel, have come in: the telecast had a slightly improved household rating this week of 1.09 with an average of 1.4 million viewers, up nearly a quarter of a million viewers from the previous week's season low. Season-to-date, Sci Fi reports that Doctor Who is currently averaging a 1.30 household rating and an average audience of 1.5 million viewers for the season.

Final ratings are now available for The Girl in the Fireplace, the fourth episode of this new season (broadcast on 6 May). According to the BARB, with timeshifted viewings taken into account, the episode was watched by an average of 7.9 million viewers, making the program the thirteenth most-watched of the week on the list of top fifty programs, and sixth on the list of actual titles (as programs such as "Coronation Street" and "Eastenders" air several episodes). This is an upwards adjustment of approximately half a million additional viewers. Also noted: the BARB rankings for episode 4 ofDoctor Who Confidential which the BARB now reports as being viewed by 728,000 viewers, a slight rise of approximately 4,000 viewers.

This week's Programme Information from the BBC Press Office previews the episode The Impossible Planet with an interview with Will Thorp, guest starring as Toby in both this episode and the second-half airing the following week, "The Satan Pit". "Former Casualty and Strictly Come Dancing star Will Thorp is drawn to the dark side in the second, two-part story of this season's Doctor Who. In The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit he plays Toby, an archaeologist in a team of space explorers from Earth trapped on a planet in the orbit of a Black Hole. After leaving Casualty's Holby General, and honing his dancing skills on Strictly Come Dancing, Bristol-born Will could hardly believe his luck when he received a couple of scripts from Doctor Who executive producer and lead writer Russell T Davies and producer Phil Collinson. It didn't take much for him to decide to accept the part. 'I would have said 'yes' to it whatever [the part] was,' says Will. 'It was the fact that it was Doctor Who! I read the script and it was a fantastic part, especially as I had previously been playing a regular role of a cheeky chappy - he's an intense, moody guy. To be sent a couple of scripts doesn't happen that often, and certainly not for something like that. I feel really lucky to have got the role.' In the two-part story, penned by Matt Jones, the Doctor and Rose arrive on a desolate planet in the orbit of a Black Hole, and soon find themselves trapped with Will's character, Toby. 'Toby is a twenty-something uptight archaeologist, and he's one of a crew of space explorers,' explains Will. 'They've been on a mission in space, exploring certain planets, and they get stuck on this planet which is right next to a Black Hole. Bits of the planet are coming off and being sucked into the Hole, which make it impossible for them to leave, so they set up base there. They've made a space station, and have basically spent the last couple of years just exploring the planet, digging and seeing what is around. And it seems that there have been signs of life in the past - that there was a life form millions and millions of years ago.' The group come to realise that they are in danger, as something ancient beneath the planet's surface begins to awake, and it's soon a race against time for the Doctor and Rose to prevent them all from being sucked into oblivion. And for Will, the experience of working on Doctor Who was, indeed, almost out of this world. 'It was surreal, really! You're kind of sat there, with the Tardis in the corner, a couple of Cybermen stacked up… I had to keep on pinching myself to make sure it was real. It was like being in the playground,' Will says laughing. 'Can we play on the Tardis for 20 minutes before we do any work?' A massive Doctor Who fan, Will watched Tom Baker (the Fourth Doctor) as he grew up, and made sure that he tuned in for the series' return last year. 'I watched the very first episode and I thought it was great. When you bring back a series and it's been successful, there's a risk it can flop, but I think because it has someone like Russell T Davies, executive producer Julie Gardner and Phil Collinson behind it, what they managed to do, which is incredible, is that they captured the essence of Doctor Who. They won the Bafta recently, which was brilliant, and it will just go from strength to strength. Every episode in this series is a winner.' Currently, Will is on an 18-week national tour, performing in the play Strangers On A Train, a psychological thriller which was made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. But Will can't shake off the Doctor Who connection. 'Funnily enough, I'm working with Colin Baker [the Sixth Doctor] – he's in the play. So that was really strange - I finished seven weeks filming Doctor Who, I had one day off, started rehearsing the play, and I'm with one of the old Doctors. It was weird – a very small world'"

The Programming Information document for Saturday 3 June features details on the episode as noted below.

The BBC Shop has today unveiled packaging design for the DVD release of the The Complete Second Series later this year; click on the thumbnail for a larger version. Of note, the box is not the huge release of last year, instead a more streamlined shelf-space-saving version. The box will be out in November.

Today's edition of Blue Peter on BBC One featured yet another Doctor Who item, demonstrating once again the strong support the show is receiving from Children's BBC's flagship show. The first feature on the programme, it opened with the presenters showing some of the large amount of mail they have been receiving from their viewers regarding Doctor Who, and they showed various children's drawing of Daleks and so forth that had been sent into them in recent weeks. Then presenter Gethin Jones talked about the Doctor having faced all kinds of monsters down the years, while a few brief clips from the classic series were shown. He then said that the Doctor's latest enemies were his old foes the Cybermen, and this linked into a pre-recorded item of Jones on-set in Cardiff for the shooting of Rise of the Cybermen / The Age of Steel, in which he was to have a guest appearance as one of the Cybermen.

Brief interview clips of Jones talking to some of the actors were then shown, starting with his CBBC colleague Andrew Hayden-Smith, who plays Jake. Jones asked him if he'd learned any Welsh (Jones being a Welshman) while he was shooting in Cardiff, and Hayden-Smith replied that he had learned one phrase -- "Doctor Pwy", Welsh for Doctor Who. Billie Piper was next, and she said she thought the Cybermen were terrifying, before David Tennant discussed some of the background of the creatures, with some brief clips of 1960s Cyberman episodes being shown as he did so. After Jones had finished speaking to him, Tennant turned directly to the camera and assured the Blue Peter viewers that when Jones was a Cyberman the Doctor would "get him!" The rest of the feature was taken up with Jones's experiences as a Cyberman, being fitted out for his costume, rehearsing how to walk and finally shooting a scene from The Age of Steel... He received praise from producer Phil Collinson for his performance, and finally a brief clip of the finished scene was shown. (Thanks to Paul Hayes)

According to unofficial overnight figures, Saturday's episode on BBC One,Rise of the Cybermen was watched by an average audience of 8.6m, an audience share of 39.7% and comfortably ahead of the 3m viewers for the ITV1 competition, another showing of The X Men. Beginning 23 minutes later than scheduled, it was the highest-rated show of the day and looks likely to appear in the week's top ten, behind Coronation Street and EastEnders. The five-minute breakdowns for the evening show the effects of the overrunning football match earlier in the day, with most programmes gaining viewers around the time that the next programme was due to start - Strictly Dance Fever ended at 7.20 with an audience of 7.61m, which Rise of the Cybermen gradually increased to a peak of 9.65m in its own last few minutes; that audience, however, immediately dropped to 6.51m when Doctor Who finished. The 9.65m peak is far short of the 11.3m that were watching the climax of the FA Cup Final - that match's average figure of 6.55m takes into account the entire Match of the Day programme that ran from 1pm, not just the match itself, although a proportion of the 11 million viewers had presumably switched on for the scheduled evening news. Rise of the Cybermen was watched by 0.6m more people than Father's Day on the same weekend in 2005, continuing Series Two's improved performance against last year's ratings success.

The audience Appreciation Index (AI) for the episode was 86. This is not only the highest of the second series, it is also among the highest for Doctor Who since the series return - only The Parting of the Ways (89) scored higher.

Meanwhile, Saturday's edition of Doctor Who Confidential on BBC Three was the top-rated multichannel programme of Saturday, with an audience of 712,500 (4% audience share). Sunday's repeat of Rise of the Cybermen on BBC Three was watched by a further 624,900 viewers (3.9% audience share), peaking at 758,000 viewers in its last five minutes, and was third-placed in the multichannel top ten for the day, while Sunday's Confidentialrepeat scored 331,100 viewers (1.9% audience share). (Thanks to 'Shaun Lyon,' Andy Parish)

Rise of the Cybermen Publicity

As well as this week's Tardisode for Episode 5, a 20-second trailer for Saturday's episode debuted last Saturday night on the Doctor Who media player on the official website, as part of its update for "The Girl in the Fireplace". Composed almost entirely of footage shown in Episode 4's 'Next Time' trailer, this trailer was first broadcast on BBC One on Sunday afternoon and has been shown frequently throughout the week. Mid-week, it gained an extra line of text noting the series' BAFTA-winning success this week.

The Radio Times for 13-19 May, published on Tuesday 9 May, featured Doctor Who's fifth cover in just over a year (see OG News, May 10), with a five-page Doctor Who Watch feature with several photographs of the new Cybermen design and comments from Neill Gorton (special make-up and prosthetic effects) and Edward Thomas (production designer). "We wanted to bring the Cybermen into the 21st century ... and give them a uniformity that they didn't have previously," says Gorton. "Russell T Davies was adamant they had to look like steel ... We ended up doing it as 'cold-cast metal': you take a powdered metal, add it to a resin and brush that into your moulds, then put fibreglass behind that." Edward Thomas reveals that "The whole design concept of the episode was that it was going to be Art Deco, so we kept the very Art Deco lines [for the Cyberman design] ... it all has to feel as if it clips together." The actors playing Cybermen wear a Lcra suit underneath the cyber-costumes, and actor Paul Kasey says that "It took about half an hour [to put it all on], the first time. By the end of the shoot I'd got it down to about ten minutes." Also shown are a couple of the initial alternative designs for the new-look Cybermen. Writer Tom MacRae is interviewed, commenting, "We've gone to the root of what's scary, which is that they come and they take you and they don't kill you, but they turn you into one of them. That's the story." Alison Graham selects Rise of the Cybermen for her moment of the week: "It's the noise that attracts everyone's attention. The steady thud, thud, thud of metallic feet crunching inexorably towards a country house where Britain's powerful people are enjoying a party ... They're back, and they're terrifying." Graham also previews the episode as one of Saturday's choices: "Gripping though all this is, the real interest of tonight's episode is the return of the Doctor's old foes ... There's a big build-up to their first appearance ... If anything, they're more scary [now], and there's a geniune dread as they clump, clump, clump towards the Doctor and Rose, ready to take over the world." According to Saturday's listings, "The Tardis is trapped on a parallel Earth and an old enemy is about to be reborn." Also noted in the magazine is a Blue Peter feature on Monday 15 May at 5pm, "How [show presenter] Gethin played a Cyberman in Doctor Who", which is previewed more fully in the Kids' TV section. There's also a letter following up on last week's correspondent, correcting the idea that K9 mark 3 was not built by the Doctor.

A trailer for the episode has also been broadcast on BBC radio since midweek. It shares several scenes with the TV trailer, but also includes a brief piece of Cyberspeech. It can be heard via Radio 4's Listen Again on the BBC's Today programme for Wednesday May, about 1 hour 30 minutes in, for six days after broadcast (you can find it here).

Wednesday's regular update to the official site introduced a noisy Cybermen flash animation to the homepage, with a picture gallery of 13 photos, mostly publicity shots of Cybermen. Also, the BBC homepage has a Cyberman on the front, along with various links to Doctor Who items.

The episode preview on Totally Doctor Who on Thursday (repeated Saturday, 6.30pm, CBBC) comprised a fairly long continuous scene, with Lumic unveiling a Cyberman - which speaks to him and correctly identifies him.

The CBBC Newsround site now features several new promotional pieces on Rise of the Cybermen. A behind-the-scenesarticle appeared on Thursday, and includes an interview with Cyber-actor Paul Kasey. Lizo's weekly episodepreviewwas posted on Friday afternoon - it includes some possibly mild spoilers for later in the series, as well as some conversation with Russell T Davies, mostly confined to dismissing certain theories about the series' story arcs as "Nonsense!" Intriguingly, most of said theories appear to have originated with Davies himself, in various interviews! At the same time, aquizquiz on the Cybermen debuted at Newsround's Doctor Who mini-site (http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/specials/doctor_who/default.stm).

On the review side, Heat magazine's reviewer Chris Longridge awards Rise of the Cybermen the max five stars and writes that: "We've been lucky enough to have nothing but one-off eps so far this series, but now we have to cope with one of those cliffhanging two-parters that make us every bit as frustrated as they did when we were kids. We join the Tardis as it crash-lands on an alternative Earth, where Zeppelins are the only mode of transport for the well-to-do. Mickey is London's most wanted terrorist and Rose's dad is alive - and successful enough to have his own annoying catchphrase. As you may have read elsewhere, the big threat comes from the Cybermen - an old enemy of the Doctor's who are essentially humanoid Daleks, but instead of shouting "Exterminate! Exterminate!", prefer the altogether wackier, "Delete! Delete!" (Come on, chaps, you could have tried a bit harder there.) But where do these robo-bastards come from? Well, the episode contains a coded warning about the prevalence of a popular media accessory called an "earpod". Are they trying to tell us something?" Heat places this week's episode at number 3 in their week's Best TV Shows.

Closer comments that: "The monsters in this series of Doctor Who have been a bit namby-pamby so far.So tonight it steps up a level, when the Doc stumbles upon an old enemy, in fact he stumbles on about 100 of them. Enter the Cybermen, who are very, very scary. Rose, the Doc and Mickey land the Tardis back in London - but not London as we know it. this is the big smoke in a parallel world. The two-parter ends on a real cliffhanger, and while Roger Lloyd-Pack is brilliant as the baddie, to us he will always be Trigger from Only Fools and Horses." (reviewer: Hannah Wright).

New magazine has this week's episode at number 5 in their Top Ten Picks and writes: "The Doctor and Rose come face to face with an old enemy when they travel to a parallel Earth. There, they meet an army of Cybermen created by evil genius John Lumic. It's an emotional experience for Rose, because int his world her dad is still alive. Concludes next week." (reviewer: David Bell)

Reveal writes: "Since being handed the keys to the Tardis last year by Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant has become a firm favourite with fans of the sci-fi series. So far in this run, he's seen the return of Sarah Jane and K-9, and fought several particularly nasty baddies. In this first of a two-part adventure, hwoever, he faces his toughest challenge yet as he takes on some of his deadliest ever foes. The Time Lord and his intrepid sidekick arrive back in the rpesent day to find history has been dramatically altered, with Rose amazed to learn her father is still alive in this alternative reality. She must quickly put her elation to one side, though, as the Cybermen are planning to take over the world. Roger Lloyd-pack guest stars." The magazine gives this episode 4 stars and it's their Must See - Pick of the Day.

Star magazine gives Rise of the Cybermen four (out of 5) stars and it's their Pick of the Day. "After the Daleks, the Cybermen were teh most legendary of the Doctor's foes back in the early days. They get a revival in this mammoth two-parter. The Tardis crashes and ends up trapped in an alternative world - one where Rose's father is still alive, she is a Yorkshire terrier and the wealthy live in Zeppelins! Her father is entangled with a powerful businessman, whose enterprises involve downloading information into peoples' heads. He's dying and the only way to save himself - and spare the world from pain - is to create Cybermen, immortal, unfeeling types." (reviewer: KH) (the magazine also has this ep at number 3 in their top 10 terrestrial TV shows)

BBC Books Sales and Audiobooks News

All three Tenth Doctor novels have spent the past fortnight in the top six of the Top 20 Fiction Heatseekers chart, published by trade magazine The Bookseller. This week, The Resurrection Casket remains at number 6, while The Feast of the Drowned has moved up one place to number 4, and The Stone Rose has slipped from number two to number three. As The Bookseller notes, this was a week that saw "a feast of new entries" in the chart, but the Doctor Who sales have remained steady at around 3,000 copies of each book per week. The total sales for the three novels in the past four weeks are: The Stone Rose 12,923; The Feast of the Drowned 10,836; and The Resurrection Casket 10,699, still substantially ahead of sales figures for the initial Ninth Doctor releases in May 2005.

The next batch of novels expected in the autumn (see OG News, 21 April) are also due to be released on audiobook, according to listings at Amazon.co.uk. There is no news yet of who will be reading them, but Amazon lists all three CDs for release on Monday 2 October.

BBC Books' contribution to the Quick Reads literacy initiative, I Am a Dalekby Gareth Roberts, is now beginning to appear in shops in the UK, a little ahead of its official publication date of 18 May.

The Girl in the Fireplace Post-publicity

The official site update after Saturday's episode The Girl in the Fireplaceincluded a larger number of video diaries than have featured over the previous three weeks: there are interviews with Sophia Myles (Reinette), Louise Page (Costume Designer), and a horse (the horse), as well as features on the making of the clockwork men and the eye camera. This week's new game, via Mickey's 'Defending the Earth' official spin-off website (http://www.whoisdoctorwho.co.uk), is called 'Tick Tock' and involves defeating clockwork men to locate missing crystals from various eighteenth-century locations. As usual, it is preceded and followed by short video messages from Mickey Smith.

The commentary this week was by writer Steven Moffat and actor Noel Clarke. Available for download from the official site, it was also a red-button extra on the BBC Three repeats on Sunday and Friday evenings - now a regular BBCi extra, and listed as such in the Radio Times.

Added to the CBBC Newsround site on Thursday was an interview with Jessica Atkins, who played the young Reinette in The Girl in the Fireplace.

This week's Totally Doctor Who interviewed Camille Coduri (Jackie Tyler), Jessica Atkins and Sheelagh Wells (Make-up Designer), and had behind-the-scenes features on the fire extinguisher/ice gun used to stop the clockword droids and the costumes used for the episode.

The episode was enthusiastically reviewed by Slade's Noddy Holder on the Mark Radcliffe show on BBC Radio 2 on Thursday evening at about 11.30pm. (This should also be available on Listen Again on the BBC Radio Player).

Series Two Repeats (Already)

According to the Radio Times website, BBC Three will be running consecutive weekday repeats of The Christmas Invasion and the first three episodes of Series Two from Monday 22 May at 7pm, with a 7.45-8.00pm cut down Confidential after each episode. This scheduling is clearly provisional - The Christmas Invasion is shown incorrctly as running at 45 minutes, and the same Confidential episode is listed for all four evenings.

Other Media Items

Wednesday's Marina Hyde column in The Guardian newspaper references the episode Tooth and Claw in a piece discussing the recent revelations of Liberal Democrat MP Mark Oaten about his private life, titled Never mind battling demons and consulting a shrink. "This failure to assume anything puts me in mind of a recent episode of the majestic Doctor Who," writes Hyde, "in which the Doctor, Rose and Queen Victoria are en route to Balmoral, and use the house of a highland lord as a staging post. Little do they realise that the owner's wife has been taken prisoner and his staff replaced by psychotic, shaven-headed men, who force him to act as if nothing is amiss. Towards the end of the episode, when the day has been saved, his lordship asks the Doctor why he didn't realise sooner that something was up. 'Well,' comes the cheeky reply, 'your wife was away, you were surrounded by bald, athletic men... I just thought you were enjoying yourself.' Ah, beware the simple answer, Doctor! As the Time Lord eventually discovered, the wife and servants were in fact being held hostage by a werewolf-worshipping cult. If only Mr Oaten had cared to name the psychiatrist he has been seeing for all these years, I would call him and moot the possibility that the MP and his family were in the thrall of some terrible evil - possibly lupine - and advise him to flag down the Tardis without delay."

The website of the Belfast Telegraph newspaper is carrying a news story about David Tennant having visited the city recently, and taking in a Derry City football match while he was there. He was evidently visiting as part of the making of his forthcoming episode of the BBC geneology show Who Do You Think You Are?, and has a connection to the Derry City football team - according to the article, "His grandfather Archie McLeod was a record goal-scorer for the side in the 1930s." Derry City's Chairman, Jim Roddy, is quoted as saying that "He is a quiet, decent fellow and very proud of his roots - I think he was very humbled by the whole experience."

Outpost Gallifrey will feature a recap of the rest of the week's press coverage (nothing major, but mentions here and there) in our next TARDIS report.

(Thanks to Paul Engelberg, Paul Hayes, Peter Weaver, John Bowman, Chuck Foster)

As we noted early in the week, Doctor Who was one of the awards announced in the BAFTA coverage as shown on ITV, coming up about forty minutes into the show which was hosted by Bad Wolf guest voice Davina McColl. Kevin Whately and Amanda Holden announced the nominees in the Drama Series category, and the clip shown of Doctor Who was of thousands of Daleks flying through space from The Parting of the Ways. Here's a recap of what transpired:

Billie Piper, Phil Collinson, Julie Gardner and Russell T Davies came on stage to accept the award after the winner was announced, with David Tennant applauding from back at the show's table. Gardner did the acceptance speech on their behalf, thanking Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper and particularly Davies as well as everyone else who makes the show. When she mentioned Davies, his name got a large round of applause from the audience. Then suddenly from the wings - and much to the audience's delight - a Dalek appeared. Oddly, given that press and last night's news coverage had shown a regular gold Dalek gliding down the red carpet, this Dalek, although new series style in construction, was painted jet black. It angrily announced, with the familiar Nick Briggs voice, that "all BAFTAs will be surrended to the Daleks!", before Kevin Whately foiled it by placing his hand over its eye. The Dalek protested that it could not see, and then sternly warned them not to touch the Dalek. Gardner, clearly quite amused by the creature's presence, admitted that they wouldn't have been there without the Daleks.

One hour into the show the winner of the Pioneer Audience Award was announced, the nominees for which had been shown in two groups of four clips earlier in the evening between other awards. This award was announced by the Chairman of Pioneer, who simply stood there and didn't say anything, and much-loved British television actor Sir David Jason. Jason ran briefly through the nominees, and compared Doctor Who to Strictly Come Dancing - "one is about a spry but eccentric one million year old man and his sexy sidekick, the other is about a flying police box." After Jason, following some initial struggles with the envelope, announced Doctor Who as the winner, Billie Piper accepted the award on her own, the theme tune playing loudly through the hall as she walked to the stage. Grinning and describing the award as "a treat!" she enthused about how much the award meant to the cast and crew and how grateful they were, before wishing everyone else a "great evening".

Finally, around one hour twenty minutes into the ceremony, David Tennant came on stage. After speaking briefly about Dennis Potter, he said how any writer who receives an award presented in Potter's name must be very special. He then said how he was proud to count Davies as a boss and a friend, and then outlined the writer's career and achievements to date. There then followed a collection of clips of Davies's work since The Grand, interspersed with clips of actors and colleagues enthusing about his work. They included Julie Gardner, Nina Sosanya (Casanova), Anthony Cotton (Queer as Folk), Lesley Sharp (Bob & Rose and The Second Coming), Matt Lucas (Casanova), Nicola Shindler (founder of Red Production Company), David Liddiment (former Director of Programmes at ITV) and Billie Piper. Said Tennant, "Dennis Potter understood that television was an art form that was new and unique. His writing was consistently fresh, often controversial and always stimulating. Television drama would never be the same again after him. Any writer who gets a BAFTA presented in his name has to be something very special indeed. It is safe to say that tonight's winner is just that. He is one of the most unique voices in television today. I am delighted to describe him as my boss, but I'm proud as punch to call him a friend. It is Russell T Davies. ... A self-confessed Doctor Who enthusiast, Russell achieved the apparently unachievable – revitalising and updating a television icon that many thought was beyond redemption. But he injected the series with a heart, a wit and an imagination that made a forty year-old concept fresher than just about anything else around it. Russell's great friend, the writer Paul Abbott, said: 'the humanity and wit that Russell crams into the tiniest corners of human behaviour sets him far far above the professional typists masquerading as writers in this industry'. The exceptional quality of his output is only achieved by a working day that would leave most Calvinists shrinking in shame. He is the finest inspiration any friend and colleague could wish for, and he's given me two of the best roles that I could ever hope to get, so it is a great, great privilege for me to be chosen tonight to present the Dennis Potter Award to a man so fabulously deserving." Tennant then introduced a montage of clips followed by introducing Davies, who came to the stage to great applause and hugged Tennant. He thanked the Academy for "an honour beyond words". He said there were too many people to thank it was like "drowning in a sea of faces in your head". He thanked his agent and his boyfriend, and then thanked his friend Sally Watson, not a member of the television industry, but who once told him "why don't you write like you?" when he worried about comparing himself to other writers. He claimed it was the best piece of advice he had ever been given.

(Thanks to Paul Hayes)