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.

BBC America has confirmed the 2014 Christmas special, Last Christmas, will be broadcast on Christmas Day.

Canadian company Bell Media revealed today that its upcoming subscription on-demand video streaming service, code-named “Project Latte,” will give users in Canada access to 108 episodes of Doctor Who.

Project Latte, which launches next month, is aiming to be Canada’s premium subscription on-demand video streaming service, providing the most robust lineup of superior television content in the country. Project Latte will feature more than 10,000 hours of premium non-kids TV programming, with more than 350 unique TV titles. Designed to complement traditional television and available to all TV providers, to date Project Latte will be offered via set-top box to TELUS Optik TV, Bell Fibe TV, and Bell Aliant FibreOP TV subscribers at launch. The service will also be available via mobile apps, the web, game consoles, and smart TVs.

Doctor Who, which is the Number 1 series of all time on Canadian channel Space, reached new hights in the recently concluded eighth season, averaging 756,000 viewers weekly, making it the most-watched TV series on Canadian speciality television during its run.

Other shows included in Project Latte include Orphan Black, Utopia and all 726 episodes from the Star Trek franchise Mike Cosentino, Senior Vice-President, Programming, Bell Media said