This evening BBC News are reporting how David Tennant has been voted best ever Doctor Who in a survey carried out amongst 4,000 readers of Doctor Who Magazine.

The report quotes editor Clayton Hickman as saying: "This is an incredible result for David, and shows how quickly viewers have taken to him. The iconic image of Doctor Who has always been of Tom Baker in his floppy hat and long, multi-coloured scarf, but it looks like that's been replaced."

The poll results are quoted in the report as follows:

1. David Tennant - 28.2%
2. Tom Baker - 26.5%
3. Christopher Eccleston - 11.4
4. Jon Pertwee - 9.6%
5. Patrick Troughton - 8.8%

Doctor Who confirmed its continuing massive popularity with the British public by dominating the National Television Awards for a second year running. The show, where the awards are voted for by the public, won the coveted Most Popular Drama category and David Tennant and Billie Piper took the Most Popular Actor and Actress prizes.

This was a repeat performance of last year's success, the only change being that it was Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor taking the Most Popular Actor award in 2005.

This year's ceremony took place at the Royal Albert Hall where Tennant was presented with his award by Dame Julie Andrews.

Accepting the award he said: "I think if my eight-year-old self could see me at the Royal Albert Hall winning a prize for playing the Doctor on telly, he would need a stiff shot of Irn-Bru."

He added: "I love my job. I'm so chuffed that others seem to love it too.

"Thank you for tuning in, that's why we make it."

Backstage, Tennant said on a television interview: "Thank goodness I didn't let the side down, eh? That would have been a tragedy.

"It's difficult to come into something that's been such a great success. It's a bit daunting, whether you're going to do as good a job as Chris. It means a lot."

Representing the show at the ceremony were Tennant, Piper, Noel Clarke and Camille Coduri.

Online press coverage includes BBC News (with a second article here), The Guardian, ITV News, and the Reuterspress agency.

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)

Doctor Who was the main winner at tonight's prestigious industry awards, the BAFTA Awards (or British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards), taking all three of the awards for which it was nominated.Billie Piper and a Dalek accepted the award for Best Drama Series, as well as the Pioneer Audience Award for best television programme of 2005. Russell T Davies won the Dennis Potter Award for outstanding writing for television, which was presented to him by a kilted David Tennant. Davies is reported as saying, "We were told that bringing it back would be impossible, that we would never capture this generation of children. But we did it."

The BAFTA Awards ceremony will be televised from 9pm on Monday on ITV.


The show's success, alongside a number of other BBC successes, dominates much of the early coverage of the awards ceremony, with a two-minute report appearing on BBC News 24 and BBC One's evening news (also available online at BBC News); this report includes a brief clip of the Dalek arriving for the ceremony and David Tennant speaking to reporters on the programme's "cross-nation appeal". The Guardianappears to be making Doctor Who's awards front-page news, with "Doctor Who finally materialises on red carpet as TV series scoops drama prize" concentrating on the supposed previous lack of industry awards for the series, discussed by Russell T Davies in a recent Guardian podcast. (In fact, the series has won several industry awards, as previously reported by Outpost Gallifrey, although it missed out at the Royal Television Society Awards in March.)

In related news, actress Anna Maxwell Martin, who played ill-begotten employee Suki Macrae Cantrell in last season's The Long Game, won the Best Actress award for her role in BBC One's Bleak House, which also won the award for Best Drama Serial.

The results have also been reported in a second story by the Guardian, as well as The Independent, The Scotsman, The Times, Times Entertainment, The Sun, The Telegraph, This Is London, GMTV,icNetwork,NewsWire, Ireland Online, Breaking News, Irish Examiner, Evening Echo, Ananova, Newsquest.

ITV.com, ITN and Channel 4 News also cover the story but leads with the ITV network's only success of the evening, The X Factor.

TV, Radio Coverage: Tonight's evening news bulletin on BBC One at 10.30pm had a short report on the BAFTA winners towards the end of the fifteen-minute programme. There were no clips from the actual ceremony, only from the winning shows and behind-the-scenes and red carpet moments, the main event doubtless embargoed until the ITV1 broadcast tomorrow, but it was still a nice little report. Presented by reporter David Sillitoe, he opened by saying that Doctor Who was "the big winner" of the night, over a clip of the TARDIS crash-landing from The Christmas Invasion. There was a clip of David Tennant saying to the gathered press that the show had "a cross-nation appeal... unlike anything else I've ever been involved with." There was then coverage of some of the other winners, before Sillitoe finished by comparing the two main winners of the night, Doctor Who and Bleak House, describing them as "two dramas there were a gamble, but both proved that they could strike a chord with the public and the academy." The evening's triumphs for Doctor Who were also covered tonight on the BBC's news and sport talk station, Radio 5 Live, on The Weekend News programme, hosted by Lesley Ashmall and John Pienaar. The report, just after the 9.30pm news and sport bulletin at about 9.37pm. The report was from their man on the spot Colin Paterson, who opened by announcing Doctor Who as the big winner of the night. He happened to have Little Britain's Matt Lucas with him, who he asked about the show's success, although Lucas was somewhat bemused, not having been in the show as Paterson seemed to have thought he was, Paterson having assumed the comic was in it as he'd been in the premiere last year. Nonetheless, Lucas said he was glad that Doctor Who had won. Paterson mentioned that Russell T Davies had won the Dennis Potter Award for Outstanding Writing for Television, before moving onto rounding up the other winners.

It may not necessarily win during the big national award ceremony, but Doctor Who has won five categories at theBAFTA Cymru awards, the BAFTA ceremony for television and film made in Wales. The program today won the awards for Best Drama Series, Best Drama Director, Best Costume Design, Best Make-up Design and Best Photography Direction. Series executive producer Russell T Davies also the Sian Phillips Award for Outstanding Contribution to Network Television. In a quote to BBC News, BBC Wales head of English programmes Clare Hudson says, "We are thrilled that the spectacular contribution made by Russell T Davies to television over the past few years has won him such a very special award."

In addition to Doctor Who's nomination in the Pioneer Audience Award for Best Programme (reported by OG on 13 March), Series One has been shortlisted for Best Drama Series in 2005's prestigious television awards by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). Also nominated in this category are Bodies (BBC Two), Shameless (Channel 4) and Spooks (BBC One); the results will be revealed in a televised ceremony on Sunday 7 May. The full list of nominations can be seen at the BAFTAwebsite, and the nomination has been reported by the BBC Doctor Whowebsite, BBC News and Media Guardian Media Guardian.

Doctor Who has been nominated for three prestigious Hugo Awards this year, according to an announcement made yesterday by the award's administrators and the 64th World Science Fiction Convention, L.A. Con IV. Taking three of seven slots in the "Best Dramatic Presentation: Short Form" category are the Doctor Who episodes Dalek written by Robert Shearman,Father's Day written by Paul Cornell, and The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, written by Steven Moffat. The three are running against an episode of the new "Battlestar Galactica" series, the Pixar animated short "Jack Jack Attack," and two live events, the stage play "Lucas Back in Anger" and the "Prix Victor Hugo Awards Ceremony," both performed at last year's World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, Scotland. (The latter was written by writers Paul McAuley and Kim Newman, both of whom have, coincidentally, written for Telos Publishing's Doctor Who novella range). The "Short Form" category was created out of the "Best Dramatic Presentation" category in 2003 to distinguish between films and television episodes, and describes a presentation lasting ninety minutes or less. The Hugo Awards, named for science fiction pioneer Hugo Gernsback, are the science fiction community's most prestigious awards, given out each year since the early 1950's; they will be presented at the Worldcon convention taking place this year in in Anaheim, California on August 26, with several of the writers expected to be in attendance.

The nominations for this year's Broadcasting Press Guild Programme Awards 2006 were published this morning, and Doctor Who is nominated five times in four categories. The shortlist for Best drama series contains just two shows, Doctor Who and Bleak House, while Russell T Davies is shortlisted for the Writer's award for Doctor Who and Casanova, against the writing team for The Thick of It Andrew Davies for Bleak House. Billie Piper is one of five nominees for the Best actress award, alongside Anna Maxwell Martin, who guest-starred in 'The Long Game' and is listed for her lead role in Bleak House. The shortlist for Best actor includes both of 2005's Doctors, with Christopher Eccleston nominated for Doctor Who and David Tennant for Doctor Who, Casanova and Secret Smile. The Awards will be presented on Friday 31 March; more details will be available at the Guild's website. This morning's (Thursday 2 March) Media Guardian carries registration-only reports on the nominations in "Timelords tussle for TV award" (story) and "Broadcasting Press Guild Programme Awards 2006" (story), and the announcement has also been picked up by the UK comedy guide, Chortle (link). (Thanks to Steve Tribe, Cliff Chapman)

Doctor Who has been nominated in the Best Drama Series category at this year's Royal Television Society Awards, according to the MediaGuardian today. The Awards, the winners of which will be announced at the Grovesnor House Hotel on March 14th, are one of the most prestigious in the British television industry, probably second only to the BAFTAs in terms of importance within the industry itself, with winners selected by a jury of industry professionals. There are three nominations in each category at the RTS awards, and Doctor Who's rivals for the Drama Series title are Channel 4's Shameless and BBC Three's Bodies. A full list of nominees is available at the RTS website. (Thanks to Paul Hayes, Steve Tribe, Scott Wortley)