Jenny poses for a picture but there's something that she's missed,
Vastra isn't painting pictures - she's writing out a list!

The actor Ian Fairbairn has died.

Ian Fairbairn was a veteran actor on British television, appearing in a variety of programmes during the 1960s to 1980s, including Emergency Ward 10, Z Cars, The Onedin Line, Shoestring, The Professionals and Last of the Summer Wine.

He first appeared in Doctor Who in 1967 playing Questa, a human who lived in a colony secretly ruled by Macra, in the first Episode of The Macra Terror. He returned to the series in 1968, playing Mark Gregory, a researcher for International Electromatics in three episodes of The Invasion.

In 1970 he appeared in the third Doctor story Inferno as Bromley, a technician who became the first person to mutate into a Primord. His final apperance in the series was in 1976 when he played Doctor Chester, a medical doctor stationed at the South Bend base in Antarctica, in the third episode of The Seeds of Doom.

Even though the Half-Face Man isn't always good,
We're lucky that he's here today to light our Christmas pud!

The BBC have confirmed that the Doctor Who Christmas Special, Last Christmas will premiere on BBC One at 6:15pm on Christmas Day.

Additional cast members and their characters have also been confirmed for the hour-long special: Michael Troughton (The New Statesman, Breathless) will play Professor Albert, Faye Marsay (The White Queen, The Bletchley Circle) will play Shona, Maureen Beattie (Finding Bob McArthur, The Decoy Bride) will play Bellows and Natalie Gumede (Coronation Street, Strictly Come Dancing) will play Ashley Carter; they join Dan Starkey as Ian, Nathan McMullen as Wolf. The episode stars Peter Capaldi as the Doctor, Jenna Coleman as Clara, and Nick Frost as Santa Claus.

Although a dinosaur's breath isn't known for being pleasant,
At least this one has coughed us up a delightful Christmas present!

Big Chief Studios have announced that they will be releasing copies of the Stuart Manning designed posters, celebrating Series 8 of Doctor Who, as a collection of high-quality prints.

The set of posters were commissioned especially for publication in the Radio Times, released weekly in time for each episode. The posters were all individually designed in a retro style with particular attention paid to create striking imagery combined with period typography.

This art will be available to order very soon and will be sold separately as Limited Edition Art Prints, as well as a portfolio collection.

Ordering will be via the Big Chief Website.

Day One



The Doctor's built a snowman for a nice Christmas surprise,
Using a few items which you may just recognise.

This December Titan Comics is teaming up with The WHO Shop to celebrate the store​'​s 30th Birthday with a special Doctor Who Comics Christmas triptych cover variant. Only available to purchase at The W​HO​ Shop.

This special image featuring​ the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors was created by artist Lee Sullivan (Transformers, Thundercats, 2000AD) and ​runs across three ​Doctor Who comic issues this December​: ​Tenth Doctor #5, Eleventh Doctor #5 and Twelfth Doctor #3​ .

BBC One this evening began its countdown to the Christmas season with a special trail broadcast after tonight's edition of Strictly Come Dancing, reminding viewers of some of the Christmas programmes they have enjoyed on the channel in previous decades.

The trail, which is available on the official BBC YouTube channel, features examples of some of the channel's previous festive station idents, clips from various Christmas specials down the years... and William Hartnell, the First Doctor!

The Feast of Steven, the seventh episode of The Daleks' Master Plan in 1965, was the first Doctor Who episode to be broadcast on Christmas Day. Famously, at the conclusion of the episode, the Doctor turns to directly address the audience, breaking the fourth wall to wish: "...a Happy Christmas to all of you at home!" (Contrary to an oft-stated fan myth, this was a scripted line and not an ad-lib from Hartnell). A recreation of the scene was made as a DVD extra for An Adventure in Space and Time, and can also be viewed on the BBC's official YouTube channel, here.

The new BBC Christmas trail features the audio of Hartnell's line taken from the episode, which no longer exists in visual form, played over footage of Hartnell as the Doctor looking directly into the camera as he faces down one of the eponymous adversaries in The War Machines.

The trail also uses the TARDIS sound effect over some of the old Christmas idents to give the impression of going back in time, and features clips from more recent Doctor Who Christmas specials such as The Christmas Invasion and Voyage of the Damned.

Christmas Day television is a peak viewing time in the UK, with special editions of popular programmes gathering large audiences, and much competition to see which shows will end up at the top of the ratings. Doctor Who's next Christmas special, Last Christmas starring Peter Capaldi, is expected to be broadcast on Christmas Day in the evening, at a time yet to be confirmed. This is the tenth year in a row that Doctor Who has been accorded the prestige of a Christmas Day broadcast.

Figures showing the Live+7 performance of Doctor Who Series 8 are now available.

The LIve+7 figure is calculated by the BBC to try to get an accurate estimate of the total unique audience for an episode of a programme. Unlike official BARB figures the Live+7 uses data to include those who watched one of the broadcast repeats of the episode and those who watched the episode on iPlayer all within 7 days of the original transmission.

On average only 62% of the total audience of Doctor Who watch the programmme live or, as a recording, on the same day as broadcast, compared with an average of 86% across all BBC programmes. Around 24% timeshift the recording compared with an average of 6%, while 4% watch one of the repeats compared with an average of 6%. Around 9% watch on iPlayer, the BBC average being 2%.

Live +7 figures give a fairly consistent ratings across the series, with almost 10.8 million tuning in for the twelfth Doctor's debut. The average rating drops to around 8 million for the rest of the series with Death in Heaven finishing with around 8.8 million watching.