Doctor Who dominates the nominations for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form Programme in the 2014 Hugo Awards.

Not only are the two episodes The Day of the Doctor and The Name of the Doctor nominated, but so is the docu-drama based on the origins of the show, An Adventure in Space and Time, and the spoof anniversary drama featuring Doctors 5, 6, 7 and 8, The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot.

Doctor Who's head writer and executive producer, Steven Moffat, said: Nominations Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

• An Adventure in Space and Time, written by Mark Gatiss, directed by Terry McDonough (BBC Television)
• Doctor Who: "The Day of the Doctor", written by Steven Moffat, directed by Nick Hurran (BBC Television)
• Doctor Who: "The Name of the Doctor", written by Steven Moffat, directed by Saul Metzstein (BBC Televison)
• The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, written & directed by Peter Davison (BBC Television)
• Game of Thrones: "The Rains of Castamere", written by David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, directed by David Nutter (HBO Entertainment in association with Bighead, Littlehead; Television 360; Startling Television and Generator Productions)
• Orphan Black: "Variations under Domestication" written by Will Pascoe, directed by John Fawcett (Temple Street Productions; Space/BBC America)

Doctor Who has been nominated for a Hugo most years since the series returned in 2005. Previous winners include Neil Gaiman for The Doctor's Wife, Steven Moffat for The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, The Girl in the Fireplace, Blink, and The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang and Russell T Davies and Phil Ford for The Waters of Mars. Last year, despite being nominated for three episodes, the show lost out to Game of Thrones when the awards were announced.

Also nominated this year is Queers Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the LGBTQ Fans Who Love It, edited by Sigrid Ellis & Michael Damian Thomas and published by Mad Norwegian Press, in the Best Related Work category, while The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who, written by Paul Cornell and illustrated by Jimmy Broxton, has been nominated for Best Graphic Novel.

Also nominated, in the Best Fancast category, is the podcast Verity!, named after Doctor Who's first producer and billed as Six Smart Women Discussing Doctor Who. The podcast is the first Doctor Who podcast to be nominated for the award. The producers told Doctor Who News: "We are thrilled to be nominated for our work during the anniversary year."

The 2014 awards will be presented at Loncon 3 - the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention - to be held at ExCeL in London between Thursday 14th and Monday 18th August, with the awards themselves being presented on Sunday 17th August.

Horror Channel's Who on Horror schedule in the UK has been released with classic Doctor Who episodes airing from Good Friday. The run will commence with the very first episode of Who in its original four parts on the Friday at 7pm before the Who on Horror themed weekend featuring stories from each of the first seven Doctors begins.


After the special weekend, episodes settle into a weekday showing from Monday after, with a story each from the First, Second and Third Doctor for the rest of April.


The full and future schedule can be found via This Week in Doctor Who.

Idents and commercials have been created depicting the cell animation advertised while billboards and posters promoting the campaign have been seen in London.


The arrival of Doctor Who on the Horror Channel reflects the science-fiction, action and fantasy genres seen on the channel's available line-up, including Xena: Warrior Princess, Wonder Woman and The Twilight Zone.

Director of Programming Alina Florea commented on the latest signing in a press release:
A special press launch took place yesterday at The Ivy in Leicester Square in the presence of the Fourth Doctor himself, Tom Baker. Doctor Who News was invited to the launch and a report of the day will be available soon.

UPDATE - 18th APRIL: Our report of the press launch, including pictures, can now be read here.

The actor, writer and comedian Toby Hadoke is to give the last performance of My Stepson Stole My Sonic Screwdriver for the foreseeable future next month, he has announced.

The show, which is as highly acclaimed as its antecedent Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf, will be staged on Monday 19th May at 7.30pm at Bollington Arts Centre, Wellington Road, Bollington, Cheshire, as part of the Bollington Festival.
Hadoke, who writes for Doctor Who Magazine and has been a moderator on classic Doctor Who DVDs, also said that work is under way on a DVD release of Moths and Stepson, both of which were filmed when he performed them as a double bill at the Garrick Theatre in the West End on 17th November last year. A release date is yet to be announced.

A book that takes a tongue-in-cheek look at the era of the Seventh Doctor is to be brought out in July 2014 by Miwk Publishing, with the authors' profits going to the Alzheimer's Society.

Wallowing In Our Own Weltschmerz is being written by Andy Davidson, Chris Orton, Andrew Orton, Steven Duckworth, Robert Hammond and Matthew West – a fanzine collection of writers known as "Auton" – with the cover designed by Andrew Orton.

"Auton" dates back to 1989 and since then has produced "nineteen and a half" fanzines and two books.

(Editor's note: "Weltschmerz" is German for "world-weariness".)

The University of Chichester's Department of Media will be celebrating the BBC Radiophonic Workshop with a day of interviews, lectures, talks and panels, culminating in a rare opportunity to see the Workshop perform live.

Original team members Dick Mills, Paddy Kingsland, Peter Howell and Roger Limb, as well as archivist Mark Ayres, will be extensively interviewed about their lives and work at the event which takes place on Friday 11th April.

The day session will be followed by a visual show in surround sound, featuring new material to be played only at this event. There will also be an after-show party hosted by Brighton electronica night Synthesize Me, and a special performance by rising synth-pop duo the Vile Electrodes.

Tickets costing £65 are available from the official website.

Matt Smith will be playing football for England when he takes part in this year's Soccer Aid.

And he'll be facing a former nemesis in the shape of Michael Sheen - who provided the voice of the sinister House in The Doctor's Wife - at the charity event at Old Trafford on Sunday 8th June. Doors open at 5pm and kick-off is at 8pm, with the match being broadcast live on ITV.

It is being held in aid of the global children's charity UNICEF, with Smith signed up for Robbie Williams's England team. Meanwhile, Sheen is heading the opposing Rest of the World side. Joining Smith on the England squad will be Bradley Walsh, who appeared in The Sarah Jane Adventures story The Day of the Clown.

Before he became an actor, Smith's dream was to be a professional footballer, and he played for the youth teams at Northampton Town, Nottingham Forest, and Leicester City, but the spinal condition spondylosis wrecked his sporting hopes. However, he retains links to the game through his avid support for Blackburn Rovers, and the 2010 episode The Lodger saw the actor don a number 11 football shirt as the Doctor and lead fictional pub team The King's Arms to victory.

Williams, who is UNICEF's UK ambassador, said: And UNICEF UK executive director David Bull said: In the past six years, Soccer Aid has raised more than £12m to help children around the world.

Tickets for the match cost from £20 for adults and from £5 for under-16s and over-65s, with premium seats at £40 (plus booking fees), and can be bought via the Soccer Aid site.

Sheen features briefly in his kit in the promotional video below, while The Lodger guest star James Corden can also be seen cheering:


Other celebrities on the England team are Stephen Moyer, Jamie Theakston, Mark Owen, Jack Whitehall, Damian Lewis, Paddy McGuinness, John Bishop and Olly Murs, while Sheen's celebrity players will include James McAvoy, Nicky Byrne, Adam Richman, Patrick Kielty and Gordon Ramsay. Former professional footballers joining the England side are Teddy Sheringham, Jamie Redknapp, David Seaman, Paul Ince and Jamie Carragher, with Jaap Stam and Edwin van der Sar among those playing for Rest of the World.

UPDATE - 8th JUNE: Sadly, Matt Smith was unable to take part in the game because of an injury. In a statement, he said:

The actor Olaf Pooley is 100 years old today - making him the second person to have appeared in Doctor Who to become a centenarian.

Born in the Parkstone area of Poole in Dorset to an English father and Danish mother, he studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London and painting at the Chelsea School of Art - and is still an exhibiting painter.

His first full-time job was with Pinewood Film Studios' design department, and he then became a member of the BBC Radio Drama Repertory Company, with his prolific acting career also seeing him appearing in the West End, on film and on TV. He is one of just a handful of actors to have appeared in both the Doctor Who and Star Trek franchises.

Pooley had two roles in Doctor Who, both of them in the 1970 story Inferno, portraying Professor Stahlman and his parallel-Earth counterpart Director Stahlman in the seven-parter.

During his career, he wrote and appeared in the film The Corpse - entitled Crucible of Horror in the USA - which starred Michael Gough, and wrote, directed and appeared in The Johnstown Monster. He also wrote the screenplay for a film version of Bernard Taylor's The Godsend, which was directed by his future second wife Gabrielle Beaumont. Pooley's other writing credits include the 1982 TV film Falcon's Gold, while he was an uncredited writer on the 1985 sci-fi horror movie Lifeforce.

His TV guest appearances since the 1950s included roles in Dixon of Dock Green, Paul Temple, Jason King and MacGyver, as well as playing Lars Torvik in the first episode of The Sandbaggers.

In 1958, Pooley took part in the BBC radio play Ambrose In Paris, and he played Sebastian in a 1956 film production of The Tempest. Pooley had a major career in West End theatre, appearing in notable productions such as Noël Coward's Peace In Our Time as well as The Tempest and Othello, and he counted Sir Alec Guinness among his close friends.

He emigrated to the United States in 1986, where he continued his acting, also becoming a respected artist both there and abroad. In an interview, he said: "It is a privilege to be an artist and I am fortunate in this respect."

An avid reader, he keeps fit by taking a daily walk and doing calisthenics and makes sure that he eats healthily.

Examples of Pooley's artwork can be seen on the InHarmony Yoga website, and he will be displaying his paintings at an "open house" event at the Santa Monica Art Studios at 3026 Airport Avenue, Santa Monica, on Saturday 15th March between midday and 6pm.

The BBC is offering fans the chance to take part in a special masterclass in Cardiff with Neill Gorton, director of Millennium FX and the man behind the creation of many of the monsters and aliens on Doctor Who.

The event is part of BBC Radio 4 Character Invasion, a project that will let people spend the day with the nation's best-loved characters. On Saturday 29 March 2014 writers' creations will take over the airwaves, invading Radio 4's programmes throughout the day, beginning with Tweet of the Day and through Any Answers? and Loose Ends. There will be public events at all BBC sites producing radio drama.

The Cardiff masterclass with Gorton will offer an insight into how some of some of television's best-loved monsters and aliens from Doctor Who and Wizards vs Aliens are created using cutting-edge prosthetics, animatronics and special make-up FX.

Tickets will be allocated through a random draw. To be in with a chance you need to register your interest on the BBC website by 4pm on Thursday 13 March. You can apply for a maximum of four tickets per household. It should be noted, though, that as this is a free event, the allocation of tickets does not guarantee entry.

Additional Character Invasion events are taking place in Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, London and Salford.

Titan Comics has released more details about its forthcoming range of adventures featuring the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors, including the covers for the first issues.

As previously reported, the publisher secured the rights to bring out the series in a deal with BBC Worldwide Americas. The company has now said that the range will launch on Wednesday 23rd July with covers by Alice X Zhang.

The second arc will be by fellow series architect Robbie Morrison (Drowntown, Nikolai Dante, The Authority).
A series featuring the Twelfth Doctor will follow in due course.

A free Doctor Who exhibition is to open in Wellington this week as New Zealand prepares to welcome the Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular.

The Spectacular, hosted by Peter Davison, will see the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra perform music from the series during three shows at the TSB Bank Arena in Wellington over Friday 21st and Saturday 22nd February, with a big screen showing clips from the series while monsters roam the aisles and stage.

And to complement the musical event, an exhibition will be held at Capital E Central in the city. Opening on Friday, Doctor Who: Celebrating 50 Years of Adventures in Space and Time will have a display of original and replica props from the show's history, including the Fourth Doctor's scarf, the First Doctor's cane and a TARDIS. Visitors will also be able to go face to face with a Dalek and knit a section of an extra-long Fourth Doctor-esque scarf that will be created by fans throughout the duration of the display, which is staying in Wellington until Saturday 12th April.

The exhibition is a joint presentation by the New Zealand Festival and BBC Worldwide Australia and New Zealand, and Capital E director Stuart Grant said: Following performances in Melbourne and Brisbane in January and February - as well as in Sydney in 2012 - it is the first time the Symphonic Spectacular has been staged in New Zealand, and Helen Pendlebury, the head of live entertainment at BBC Worldwide Australia and New Zealand, said: A video promoting the Symphonic Spectacular is available to view: