
Special screenings at the BFI this year to celebrate Doctor Who's 50th anniversary are proving to be a massive success, with the first two events selling out before the first one has even taken place.
To mark the show's golden milestone,
BFI Southbank is showing a story per Doctor as well as digitally-restored prints of the two Dalek films starring
Peter Cushing, with question-and-answer panels featuring special guests at each session.
This coming Saturday sees a big-screen showing of
An Unearthly Child to start the season, with the second event on the programme - a screening of
The Tomb of the Cybermen - taking place on
Saturday 9th February. However, in both instances BFI members, who are entitled to priority booking, have snapped up all the tickets for both shows ahead of them going on sale to the general public. Tickets for
Tomb were due to go on public release on
Tuesday 15th January.
Despite the overwhelming popularity of the events, there are no plans to slot in extra screenings. BFI programmer
Justin Johnson told
Doctor Who News:
We're delighted and a little overwhelmed at the scale of demand for the BFI's Doctor Who 50th anniversary events. They were designed to be 12 one-off events so we won't be replicating them. However, BFI Live will be filming the introductions and appearances by special guests, which means that they will be available on our website for anyone to enjoy long after the event.

The guests at this Saturday's screening will be the Unearthly Child herself, aka
Carole Ann Ford, director
Waris Hussein, actors
William Russell and
Jeremy Young,
Donald Tosh (the only surviving script editor from the William Hartnell era),
Brian Hodgson of the Radiophonic Workshop, vision mixer
Clive Doig,
Jessica Carney (William Hartnell's granddaughter and biographer), and
Mark Gatiss, who is writing a BBC Two docudrama about the show's genesis, called
An Adventure In Space And Time, which will debut at the BFI in November.
The guest line-up for the screening of
The Tomb of the Cybermen has yet to be announced. March will see the première of the colour-restored story
The Mind of Evil ahead of its release on DVD. The remaining stories are still to be announced.
In addition to priority booking, BFI members receive discounts on ticket prices as well as exemption from booking fees. The BFI currently has a special offer with annual membership at £30 (down from £40). The offer expires at the end of February - click
here for more details.