Matt Smith and Karen Gillan are to become guest presenters on BBC Radio 1 as part of the Top 10s of 2010, where celebrities from both the music and entertainment world will present their ten favourite tracks from the year.

The duo's broadcast will be on Christmas Eve, between 8:00-9:00am, and will be available to listen to through all the usual BBC media facilities.

Read the BBC Press release for more details about the Top 10s of 2010.

A short film about Verity Lambert and her struggle to get Doctor Who made will broadcast online in early December.

The film is written by two film students from the University of Central Lancaster. Thomas Cowell and Joey Guy have produced the ten minute biopic which will focus on the key stage of production for the very first episodes of Doctor Who between August and December 1963. More details about the production of this film can be found here.


You can follow updates at Thomas Cowell's blog.

The actress Ingrid Pitt has died at the age of 73.

Ingrid Pitt had two roles in Doctor Who. She played the role of Galleia in the 1972 third Doctor story The Time Monster. Galleia was Queen of Atlantis and the wife of King Dalios. In 1984 she returned to the series to play Solow in the fifth Doctor story Warriors of the Deep. During the eighties she also co-wrote a Doctor Who story The Macros with her husband Tony Rudlin which, though it never progressed into a televised production at the time, was later produced by Big Finish as part of their Lost Stories series.

Pitt was best known for her work in horror films of the 1960s and 1970s. She was born in Poland on 21 November 1937 as Ingoushka Petrov. She had a German father and a Jewish mother and as a result she and her family were imprisoned in a concentration camp during the second World War. In 1965 she made her film debut in Doctor Zhivago, playing a minor role. In 1968 she co-starred in the low budget science fiction film The Omegans and in the same year played in Where Eagles Dare opposite Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood.

Her work with Hammer Film Productions elevated her to cult figure status. She starred in The Vampire Lovers, and Countess Dracula, as well as having a small part in the cult film The Wicker Man. She founded her own theatrical touring company and starred in successful productions of Dial M for Murder, Duty Free, and Woman of Straw.

Pitt made her return to the big screen in the 2000 production The Asylum. The film starred Colin Baker and Patrick Mower. In 2003, Pitt voiced the role of 'Lady Violator' in Renga Media's production Dominator. The film was the UK's first CGI animated film.

She died earlier today at a hospital in south London after collapsing a few days ago.

A Doctor Who News iPhone application will be donating 100% of its profits to the Make-A-Wish Foundation from today until the 23rd December 2010.

WhoNews was created by Paul Gee and offers time ordered news from over 30 websites including The Doctor Who News Page. For a full list of features please click here.

Doctor Who is 47 today!

The first-ever episode of Doctor Who, An Unearthly Child, was broadcast on this date in 1963.

The official Doctor Who site has a small feature to celebrate the show's 47th anniversary, including a clip featuring the original TARDIS crew of William Hartnell, Carole Ann Ford, William Russell and Jacqueline Hill.

BBC Archive has a feature on The Creators of Doctor Who.

AOL Television has put up an ultimate guide slide-show so "you can reminisce about all those wonderful Doctor Who filled times and characters".

Digital Journal has a piece, "Happy 908th Birthday, Doctor Who", about the confusion surrounding the Doctor's actual age.

The third Doctor Who DVD release of 2011 has been confirmed as the First Doctor story The Ark. This will be released in the UK on 28 February with a release in the US and Canada following a week later on 8 March. A release in Australia is expected soon after.

The first release of the year is the Fourth Doctor story Meglos, which following its previously announced release in the UK on 10 January and in the US and Canada on 11 January, has now been confirmed for an Australia release on 20 January helping to fulfill the desire of 2|entertain to release all titles worldwide within a much smaller timeframe.

The second release will be the Third Doctor Story The Mutants released in the UK on 31 January and in the US/Canada on 8 February.

As part of the catch up, the Fourth Doctor story, The Seeds of Doom, released in the UK in October, will be released in the US/Canada on 8 March.

For full details see our release schedule.

This week sees the launch of Road Safety Week, organised by charity Brake in order to promote awareness of being safe on the roads. The theme for this year is 'Kids say slow down', and involves thousands of participants from schools, companies, emergency services and community groups.
As part of this week, a poll was undertaken by Kwik-Fit Insurance to see which celebrity children would most like to see as their local lollipop man/woman. Some 3000 children were surveyed between the age of seven and fourteen, of which 27% were in favour of The Doctor supervising their crossing of the road!

The runners-up were singer Cheryl Cole (21%), official Children in Need record singers JLS (12%), and footballer David Beckham (also 12%).
Managing Director of Kwik-Fit Insurance, Brendan Devine, said:


This isn't the first time the Doctor has been associated with road safety, of course; back in 1976 Jon Pertwee featured in the Splink! road safety campaign for the Green Cross Code (you can watch the advert and read all about it on the BBC News site).

The latest Nerdist Podcast which features an interview and chat with Matt Smith has been released.

Smith talks briefly about a new monster that appears in Episodes 1 and 2 of Series 6 which Smith says "is on par with The Weeping Angels" and is part of a story arc from Series 5. Other topics discussed include Smith's audition to play The Doctor, his early career before the Who role, playing with Orbital at Glastonbury earlier this year and his short stories that he wrote about The Doctor and Albert Einstein.

Smith recorded the podcast with the host Chris Hardwick on the same day the two of them were guests on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

Please note that this podcast does contain some strong language.

The Sarah Jane Adventures continues its strong run on the digital Children's channel CBBC with final figures for the fifth story, Lost in Time, showing the series at the top of the weekly charts.

According to BARB, part one of the story had 0.98 million watching with part two getting 0.68 million viewers, slightly down on the previous week.

The Alien Files had 0.48 million watching.

Lost in Time was repeated later in the week on BBC One and figures for these showings will be available later this month.

Final Ratings - Series Four
-	-CBBC-	-BBC Two-	-BBC One-	-Total-
The Nightmare Man - 1	0.59m	0.28m		0.87m
The Nightmare Man - 2	0.67m	0.38m		1.05m
The Vault of Secrets - 1	0.73m		0.43m	1.16m
The Vault of Secrets - 2	0.61m		0.49m	1.10m
Death of the Doctor - 1	0.92m		0.48m	1.40m
Death of the Doctor - 2	0.96m		0.47m	1.43m
The Empty Planet - 1	0.99m		0.51m	1.50m
The Empty Planet - 2	0.81m		0.58m	1.39m
Lost in Time - 1	0.98m		TBC	TBC
Lost in Time - 2	0.68m		TBC	TBC

The BBC have now released details for programmes being broadcast over the Christmas period, including the forthcoming Doctor Who story, A Christmas Carol:


No time or date have been published for the story at present.