Final ratings are now available for The Girl in the Fireplace, the fourth episode of this new season (broadcast on 6 May). According to the BARB, with timeshifted viewings taken into account, the episode was watched by an average of 7.9 million viewers, making the program the thirteenth most-watched of the week on the list of top fifty programs, and sixth on the list of actual titles (as programs such as "Coronation Street" and "Eastenders" air several episodes). This is an upwards adjustment of approximately half a million additional viewers. Also noted: the BARB rankings for episode 4 ofDoctor Who Confidential which the BARB now reports as being viewed by 728,000 viewers, a slight rise of approximately 4,000 viewers.

This week's Programme Information from the BBC Press Office previews the episode The Impossible Planet with an interview with Will Thorp, guest starring as Toby in both this episode and the second-half airing the following week, "The Satan Pit". "Former Casualty and Strictly Come Dancing star Will Thorp is drawn to the dark side in the second, two-part story of this season's Doctor Who. In The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit he plays Toby, an archaeologist in a team of space explorers from Earth trapped on a planet in the orbit of a Black Hole. After leaving Casualty's Holby General, and honing his dancing skills on Strictly Come Dancing, Bristol-born Will could hardly believe his luck when he received a couple of scripts from Doctor Who executive producer and lead writer Russell T Davies and producer Phil Collinson. It didn't take much for him to decide to accept the part. 'I would have said 'yes' to it whatever [the part] was,' says Will. 'It was the fact that it was Doctor Who! I read the script and it was a fantastic part, especially as I had previously been playing a regular role of a cheeky chappy - he's an intense, moody guy. To be sent a couple of scripts doesn't happen that often, and certainly not for something like that. I feel really lucky to have got the role.' In the two-part story, penned by Matt Jones, the Doctor and Rose arrive on a desolate planet in the orbit of a Black Hole, and soon find themselves trapped with Will's character, Toby. 'Toby is a twenty-something uptight archaeologist, and he's one of a crew of space explorers,' explains Will. 'They've been on a mission in space, exploring certain planets, and they get stuck on this planet which is right next to a Black Hole. Bits of the planet are coming off and being sucked into the Hole, which make it impossible for them to leave, so they set up base there. They've made a space station, and have basically spent the last couple of years just exploring the planet, digging and seeing what is around. And it seems that there have been signs of life in the past - that there was a life form millions and millions of years ago.' The group come to realise that they are in danger, as something ancient beneath the planet's surface begins to awake, and it's soon a race against time for the Doctor and Rose to prevent them all from being sucked into oblivion. And for Will, the experience of working on Doctor Who was, indeed, almost out of this world. 'It was surreal, really! You're kind of sat there, with the Tardis in the corner, a couple of Cybermen stacked up… I had to keep on pinching myself to make sure it was real. It was like being in the playground,' Will says laughing. 'Can we play on the Tardis for 20 minutes before we do any work?' A massive Doctor Who fan, Will watched Tom Baker (the Fourth Doctor) as he grew up, and made sure that he tuned in for the series' return last year. 'I watched the very first episode and I thought it was great. When you bring back a series and it's been successful, there's a risk it can flop, but I think because it has someone like Russell T Davies, executive producer Julie Gardner and Phil Collinson behind it, what they managed to do, which is incredible, is that they captured the essence of Doctor Who. They won the Bafta recently, which was brilliant, and it will just go from strength to strength. Every episode in this series is a winner.' Currently, Will is on an 18-week national tour, performing in the play Strangers On A Train, a psychological thriller which was made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. But Will can't shake off the Doctor Who connection. 'Funnily enough, I'm working with Colin Baker [the Sixth Doctor] – he's in the play. So that was really strange - I finished seven weeks filming Doctor Who, I had one day off, started rehearsing the play, and I'm with one of the old Doctors. It was weird – a very small world'"

The Programming Information document for Saturday 3 June features details on the episode as noted below.

The BBC Shop has today unveiled packaging design for the DVD release of the The Complete Second Series later this year; click on the thumbnail for a larger version. Of note, the box is not the huge release of last year, instead a more streamlined shelf-space-saving version. The box will be out in November.

According to unofficial overnight figures, Saturday's episode on BBC One,Rise of the Cybermen was watched by an average audience of 8.6m, an audience share of 39.7% and comfortably ahead of the 3m viewers for the ITV1 competition, another showing of The X Men. Beginning 23 minutes later than scheduled, it was the highest-rated show of the day and looks likely to appear in the week's top ten, behind Coronation Street and EastEnders. The five-minute breakdowns for the evening show the effects of the overrunning football match earlier in the day, with most programmes gaining viewers around the time that the next programme was due to start - Strictly Dance Fever ended at 7.20 with an audience of 7.61m, which Rise of the Cybermen gradually increased to a peak of 9.65m in its own last few minutes; that audience, however, immediately dropped to 6.51m when Doctor Who finished. The 9.65m peak is far short of the 11.3m that were watching the climax of the FA Cup Final - that match's average figure of 6.55m takes into account the entire Match of the Day programme that ran from 1pm, not just the match itself, although a proportion of the 11 million viewers had presumably switched on for the scheduled evening news. Rise of the Cybermen was watched by 0.6m more people than Father's Day on the same weekend in 2005, continuing Series Two's improved performance against last year's ratings success.

The audience Appreciation Index (AI) for the episode was 86. This is not only the highest of the second series, it is also among the highest for Doctor Who since the series return - only The Parting of the Ways (89) scored higher.

Meanwhile, Saturday's edition of Doctor Who Confidential on BBC Three was the top-rated multichannel programme of Saturday, with an audience of 712,500 (4% audience share). Sunday's repeat of Rise of the Cybermen on BBC Three was watched by a further 624,900 viewers (3.9% audience share), peaking at 758,000 viewers in its last five minutes, and was third-placed in the multichannel top ten for the day, while Sunday's Confidentialrepeat scored 331,100 viewers (1.9% audience share). (Thanks to 'Shaun Lyon,' Andy Parish)

Rise of the Cybermen Publicity

As well as this week's Tardisode for Episode 5, a 20-second trailer for Saturday's episode debuted last Saturday night on the Doctor Who media player on the official website, as part of its update for "The Girl in the Fireplace". Composed almost entirely of footage shown in Episode 4's 'Next Time' trailer, this trailer was first broadcast on BBC One on Sunday afternoon and has been shown frequently throughout the week. Mid-week, it gained an extra line of text noting the series' BAFTA-winning success this week.

The Radio Times for 13-19 May, published on Tuesday 9 May, featured Doctor Who's fifth cover in just over a year (see OG News, May 10), with a five-page Doctor Who Watch feature with several photographs of the new Cybermen design and comments from Neill Gorton (special make-up and prosthetic effects) and Edward Thomas (production designer). "We wanted to bring the Cybermen into the 21st century ... and give them a uniformity that they didn't have previously," says Gorton. "Russell T Davies was adamant they had to look like steel ... We ended up doing it as 'cold-cast metal': you take a powdered metal, add it to a resin and brush that into your moulds, then put fibreglass behind that." Edward Thomas reveals that "The whole design concept of the episode was that it was going to be Art Deco, so we kept the very Art Deco lines [for the Cyberman design] ... it all has to feel as if it clips together." The actors playing Cybermen wear a Lcra suit underneath the cyber-costumes, and actor Paul Kasey says that "It took about half an hour [to put it all on], the first time. By the end of the shoot I'd got it down to about ten minutes." Also shown are a couple of the initial alternative designs for the new-look Cybermen. Writer Tom MacRae is interviewed, commenting, "We've gone to the root of what's scary, which is that they come and they take you and they don't kill you, but they turn you into one of them. That's the story." Alison Graham selects Rise of the Cybermen for her moment of the week: "It's the noise that attracts everyone's attention. The steady thud, thud, thud of metallic feet crunching inexorably towards a country house where Britain's powerful people are enjoying a party ... They're back, and they're terrifying." Graham also previews the episode as one of Saturday's choices: "Gripping though all this is, the real interest of tonight's episode is the return of the Doctor's old foes ... There's a big build-up to their first appearance ... If anything, they're more scary [now], and there's a geniune dread as they clump, clump, clump towards the Doctor and Rose, ready to take over the world." According to Saturday's listings, "The Tardis is trapped on a parallel Earth and an old enemy is about to be reborn." Also noted in the magazine is a Blue Peter feature on Monday 15 May at 5pm, "How [show presenter] Gethin played a Cyberman in Doctor Who", which is previewed more fully in the Kids' TV section. There's also a letter following up on last week's correspondent, correcting the idea that K9 mark 3 was not built by the Doctor.

A trailer for the episode has also been broadcast on BBC radio since midweek. It shares several scenes with the TV trailer, but also includes a brief piece of Cyberspeech. It can be heard via Radio 4's Listen Again on the BBC's Today programme for Wednesday May, about 1 hour 30 minutes in, for six days after broadcast (you can find it here).

Wednesday's regular update to the official site introduced a noisy Cybermen flash animation to the homepage, with a picture gallery of 13 photos, mostly publicity shots of Cybermen. Also, the BBC homepage has a Cyberman on the front, along with various links to Doctor Who items.

The episode preview on Totally Doctor Who on Thursday (repeated Saturday, 6.30pm, CBBC) comprised a fairly long continuous scene, with Lumic unveiling a Cyberman - which speaks to him and correctly identifies him.

The CBBC Newsround site now features several new promotional pieces on Rise of the Cybermen. A behind-the-scenesarticle appeared on Thursday, and includes an interview with Cyber-actor Paul Kasey. Lizo's weekly episodepreviewwas posted on Friday afternoon - it includes some possibly mild spoilers for later in the series, as well as some conversation with Russell T Davies, mostly confined to dismissing certain theories about the series' story arcs as "Nonsense!" Intriguingly, most of said theories appear to have originated with Davies himself, in various interviews! At the same time, aquizquiz on the Cybermen debuted at Newsround's Doctor Who mini-site (http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/specials/doctor_who/default.stm).

On the review side, Heat magazine's reviewer Chris Longridge awards Rise of the Cybermen the max five stars and writes that: "We've been lucky enough to have nothing but one-off eps so far this series, but now we have to cope with one of those cliffhanging two-parters that make us every bit as frustrated as they did when we were kids. We join the Tardis as it crash-lands on an alternative Earth, where Zeppelins are the only mode of transport for the well-to-do. Mickey is London's most wanted terrorist and Rose's dad is alive - and successful enough to have his own annoying catchphrase. As you may have read elsewhere, the big threat comes from the Cybermen - an old enemy of the Doctor's who are essentially humanoid Daleks, but instead of shouting "Exterminate! Exterminate!", prefer the altogether wackier, "Delete! Delete!" (Come on, chaps, you could have tried a bit harder there.) But where do these robo-bastards come from? Well, the episode contains a coded warning about the prevalence of a popular media accessory called an "earpod". Are they trying to tell us something?" Heat places this week's episode at number 3 in their week's Best TV Shows.

Closer comments that: "The monsters in this series of Doctor Who have been a bit namby-pamby so far.So tonight it steps up a level, when the Doc stumbles upon an old enemy, in fact he stumbles on about 100 of them. Enter the Cybermen, who are very, very scary. Rose, the Doc and Mickey land the Tardis back in London - but not London as we know it. this is the big smoke in a parallel world. The two-parter ends on a real cliffhanger, and while Roger Lloyd-Pack is brilliant as the baddie, to us he will always be Trigger from Only Fools and Horses." (reviewer: Hannah Wright).

New magazine has this week's episode at number 5 in their Top Ten Picks and writes: "The Doctor and Rose come face to face with an old enemy when they travel to a parallel Earth. There, they meet an army of Cybermen created by evil genius John Lumic. It's an emotional experience for Rose, because int his world her dad is still alive. Concludes next week." (reviewer: David Bell)

Reveal writes: "Since being handed the keys to the Tardis last year by Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant has become a firm favourite with fans of the sci-fi series. So far in this run, he's seen the return of Sarah Jane and K-9, and fought several particularly nasty baddies. In this first of a two-part adventure, hwoever, he faces his toughest challenge yet as he takes on some of his deadliest ever foes. The Time Lord and his intrepid sidekick arrive back in the rpesent day to find history has been dramatically altered, with Rose amazed to learn her father is still alive in this alternative reality. She must quickly put her elation to one side, though, as the Cybermen are planning to take over the world. Roger Lloyd-pack guest stars." The magazine gives this episode 4 stars and it's their Must See - Pick of the Day.

Star magazine gives Rise of the Cybermen four (out of 5) stars and it's their Pick of the Day. "After the Daleks, the Cybermen were teh most legendary of the Doctor's foes back in the early days. They get a revival in this mammoth two-parter. The Tardis crashes and ends up trapped in an alternative world - one where Rose's father is still alive, she is a Yorkshire terrier and the wealthy live in Zeppelins! Her father is entangled with a powerful businessman, whose enterprises involve downloading information into peoples' heads. He's dying and the only way to save himself - and spare the world from pain - is to create Cybermen, immortal, unfeeling types." (reviewer: KH) (the magazine also has this ep at number 3 in their top 10 terrestrial TV shows)

BBC Books Sales and Audiobooks News

All three Tenth Doctor novels have spent the past fortnight in the top six of the Top 20 Fiction Heatseekers chart, published by trade magazine The Bookseller. This week, The Resurrection Casket remains at number 6, while The Feast of the Drowned has moved up one place to number 4, and The Stone Rose has slipped from number two to number three. As The Bookseller notes, this was a week that saw "a feast of new entries" in the chart, but the Doctor Who sales have remained steady at around 3,000 copies of each book per week. The total sales for the three novels in the past four weeks are: The Stone Rose 12,923; The Feast of the Drowned 10,836; and The Resurrection Casket 10,699, still substantially ahead of sales figures for the initial Ninth Doctor releases in May 2005.

The next batch of novels expected in the autumn (see OG News, 21 April) are also due to be released on audiobook, according to listings at Amazon.co.uk. There is no news yet of who will be reading them, but Amazon lists all three CDs for release on Monday 2 October.

BBC Books' contribution to the Quick Reads literacy initiative, I Am a Dalekby Gareth Roberts, is now beginning to appear in shops in the UK, a little ahead of its official publication date of 18 May.

The Girl in the Fireplace Post-publicity

The official site update after Saturday's episode The Girl in the Fireplaceincluded a larger number of video diaries than have featured over the previous three weeks: there are interviews with Sophia Myles (Reinette), Louise Page (Costume Designer), and a horse (the horse), as well as features on the making of the clockwork men and the eye camera. This week's new game, via Mickey's 'Defending the Earth' official spin-off website (http://www.whoisdoctorwho.co.uk), is called 'Tick Tock' and involves defeating clockwork men to locate missing crystals from various eighteenth-century locations. As usual, it is preceded and followed by short video messages from Mickey Smith.

The commentary this week was by writer Steven Moffat and actor Noel Clarke. Available for download from the official site, it was also a red-button extra on the BBC Three repeats on Sunday and Friday evenings - now a regular BBCi extra, and listed as such in the Radio Times.

Added to the CBBC Newsround site on Thursday was an interview with Jessica Atkins, who played the young Reinette in The Girl in the Fireplace.

This week's Totally Doctor Who interviewed Camille Coduri (Jackie Tyler), Jessica Atkins and Sheelagh Wells (Make-up Designer), and had behind-the-scenes features on the fire extinguisher/ice gun used to stop the clockword droids and the costumes used for the episode.

The episode was enthusiastically reviewed by Slade's Noddy Holder on the Mark Radcliffe show on BBC Radio 2 on Thursday evening at about 11.30pm. (This should also be available on Listen Again on the BBC Radio Player).

Series Two Repeats (Already)

According to the Radio Times website, BBC Three will be running consecutive weekday repeats of The Christmas Invasion and the first three episodes of Series Two from Monday 22 May at 7pm, with a 7.45-8.00pm cut down Confidential after each episode. This scheduling is clearly provisional - The Christmas Invasion is shown incorrctly as running at 45 minutes, and the same Confidential episode is listed for all four evenings.

Other Media Items

Wednesday's Marina Hyde column in The Guardian newspaper references the episode Tooth and Claw in a piece discussing the recent revelations of Liberal Democrat MP Mark Oaten about his private life, titled Never mind battling demons and consulting a shrink. "This failure to assume anything puts me in mind of a recent episode of the majestic Doctor Who," writes Hyde, "in which the Doctor, Rose and Queen Victoria are en route to Balmoral, and use the house of a highland lord as a staging post. Little do they realise that the owner's wife has been taken prisoner and his staff replaced by psychotic, shaven-headed men, who force him to act as if nothing is amiss. Towards the end of the episode, when the day has been saved, his lordship asks the Doctor why he didn't realise sooner that something was up. 'Well,' comes the cheeky reply, 'your wife was away, you were surrounded by bald, athletic men... I just thought you were enjoying yourself.' Ah, beware the simple answer, Doctor! As the Time Lord eventually discovered, the wife and servants were in fact being held hostage by a werewolf-worshipping cult. If only Mr Oaten had cared to name the psychiatrist he has been seeing for all these years, I would call him and moot the possibility that the MP and his family were in the thrall of some terrible evil - possibly lupine - and advise him to flag down the Tardis without delay."

The website of the Belfast Telegraph newspaper is carrying a news story about David Tennant having visited the city recently, and taking in a Derry City football match while he was there. He was evidently visiting as part of the making of his forthcoming episode of the BBC geneology show Who Do You Think You Are?, and has a connection to the Derry City football team - according to the article, "His grandfather Archie McLeod was a record goal-scorer for the side in the 1930s." Derry City's Chairman, Jim Roddy, is quoted as saying that "He is a quiet, decent fellow and very proud of his roots - I think he was very humbled by the whole experience."

Outpost Gallifrey will feature a recap of the rest of the week's press coverage (nothing major, but mentions here and there) in our next TARDIS report.

(Thanks to Paul Engelberg, Paul Hayes, Peter Weaver, John Bowman, Chuck Foster)

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)

According to several sources, BBC Video may be releasing The Hand of Fear starring Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen (in her final performance in the classic series until "The Five Doctors") on DVD in the UK on 24 July, followed by The Mark of the Rani starring Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant with Anthony Ainley and Kate O'Mara on 4 September. This is after the release of Inferno starring Jon Pertwee on 5 June and in-between select releases of Series Two DVD sets on 10 July (Volume 3), 7 August (Volume 4) and 18 September (Volume 5). This information was recently communicated to various dealers of Doctor Who merchandise by BBC Worldwide, though it still remains unofficial and unconfirmed in the meanwhile.

This week's Programme Information from the BBC Press Office previews the episode The Idiot's Lantern on 27 May with an interview with Mark Gatiss on page 11 of the Features article (note: PDF file); the article includes at least one picture spoiler. Says Gatiss on how the story came about, '[Lead writer] Russell [T Davies] asked me to do a Fifties story. It was originally meant to be much more rock 'n' roll but everyone loved the notion of the Coronation – it's one of those big, gettable 'front-of-the Radio-Times' ideas so we settled on 1953. I've always loved old TV and the early BBC days at Ally Pally so it was lovely to use all that – and very appropriate to have a monster that gets at you via your telly! It's a very atmospheric episode and Euros [Lyn], the director, has shot it in a semi-noirish, Fifties style which is terrific.' Gatiss says his writing on the series is 'a dream come true. Last year it was so unreal, this year everyone's found their feet a lot more, I think, but because the show's an established hit there's that extra pressure to top the success. It's just brilliant to be part of a vibrant, modern show that's still absolutely the Doctor Who we grew up with and loved.' Gatiss notes that he loves 'the historical stories. They were always my favourites in old Doctor Who. I'm hoping that the 'Gatiss by gaslight' becomes an annual fixture! I wouldn't rule out doing a modern-day story but I do have so much fun popping back in time. Having said that, I didn't know as much about the Fifties as I do about Victoriana so I had to do quite a bit of research, but that was delightful. So many people remember the Coronation. I talked to my Dad and some older friends and they all have a version of the 'everyone crowded into one room' story which is at the heart of the episode.' He notes that 'You have to be much more aware of the feel of the whole season. You don't want the leads to be jarringly different in each story just because there's a different writer. What's great about this season is that there's so much variety, with lots of different types of adventure: scary, funny, sad and some that are very, very moving.'

The Programming Information document (also PDF) for Saturday 27 May shows the episode returning to the 7pm timeslot. Details on the episode are noted below.

Final viewing figures for the season's third episode, School Reunion(broadcast on April 29), are in: according to the BARB, with timeshifted viewings taken into account, the episode was watched by an average of 8.31 million viewers, the twelfth most watched programme of the week and the fifth highest ranking television show. This is an upwards adjustment of approximately 700,000 additional viewers. Also, BBC3 repeat of "School Reunion" on Friday night May 5 was watched by 430,900 viewers (2.8% audience share), seventh for the evening on the non-terrestrial channels, peaking at 471,200 viewers. Interestingly, the earlier repeat of "School Reunion" on Sunday April 30 achieved a massive Audience Appreciation Index (AI) score of 89.

Meanwhile, the latest transmitted episode this season, The Girl in the Fireplace broadcast last Saturday (May 6), achieved another high initial AI figure of 84, the second-highest ranking of Saturday evening. The Sunday evening (May 7) repeat of the episode on BBC3 was watched by 686,000 viewers (3.5% audience share) according to Viewingfigures, peaking in the five-minute intervals at the end of the transmission to 878,000 viewers, ranked fifth in the non-terrestrial channels for the evening. The installment of "Doctor Who Confidential Cut Down" that immediately preceded it had 299,000 viewers (1.8% audience share). The AI ranking for the Saturday night episode of "Confidential" (May 6) was 82. (Thanks to 'Shaun Lyon,' Andy Parish)