What a busy couple of weeks its been. Despite Series 5 of Doctor Who having finished, hardly a day goes by without some sort of Who-related news popping up.

For a fuller round-up, remember to look in on Doctor Who in the Media, but, to whet your appetite, here's a summary.

On Sunday, BBC 1 premiered the long-awaited first episode of Sherlock (see our earlier story), Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss's updated version of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. It stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes, Martin Freeman as Dr John Watson and Rupert Graves as Inspector Lestrade. Cumberbatch has created a bit of a stir in the last few days by suggesting, first, telling Digital Spy that he may well be appearing in several episodes Doctor Who, and, then, according to the Sun that he considered becoming the eleventh Doctor before Matt Smith was cast in the role.

Again, according to the Sun, Matt Smith is eager to leave Doctor Who to pursue a career in Hollywood. However, this has been denied by both Moffat, to BBC News, and Karen Gillan, during her visit to Veuve Clicquot Gold Cup Final at Cowdray Park Polo Club! For a less sensational take on this, see this story and this story on Digital Journal.

Nicky Wire, of the Manic Street Preachers, caused a bit of a stir when he blogged on the band's website that he was writing a Doctor Who script. He's since clarified on Twitter that it's fan fiction and not a BBC commission.

Russell T Davies has been speaking to SFX about the fourth series of Torchwood and has also dealt with the rumours surrounding a Johnny Depp as the Doctor Hollywood movie! This story covers the original "exclusive" and RTD's debunking of it.

Finally, there was plenty of press coverage surrounding the start of filming of the 2010 Christmas special (see this Gallifrey Base story), guest-starring Sir Michael Gambon and Katherine Jenkins, including here, here and here.

Happy times and places!

For the third month running Doctor Who has topped the monthly iPlayer request charts with the final four episodes of the series being the top four requested programmes for June.

Top of the list was The Pandorica Opens with over 1.3 million requests during the month, followed by The Lodger, Vincent and the Doctor and The Big Bang all with over a million requests. The highest programme, not related to Doctor Who, was Top Gear with 0.88 million requests. During the month Doctor Who had 6.35 million requests in total, shared between 13 episodes, just behind EastEnders which had 7 million requests for one of the 22 episodes available.

Figures for the year so far, give Doctor Who the top nine places in the download charts, and 14 of the top twenty places. The Eleventh Hour tops the list with over 2.1 million requests, by far the highest requested programme in the BBC iPlayer history. Because the whole series was on iPlayer from transmission date until July, the early episodes of the series were available for much longer and therefore had higher iPlayer figures. The final two episodes of the series will get a boost when the July figures are available.
Full ratings for the series can be found in Gallifrey Base.

To mark the season finale of Doctor Who in Canada on Saturday, July 24th SPACE Channel and the program InnerSPACE are planning a special edition in front of a live studio audience. The InnerSPACE Live Doctor Who season finale and after-show will take place at 299 Queen Street West in Toronto, Ontario. The broadcast will take place from 9pm - 11pm ET. The special broadcast includes a panel discussion, interviews and a live web chat and will be hosted InnerSPACE's Teddy Wilson.

Fans in Toronto interested in attending being a part of the live studio audience call 416-384-LIVE (5483) to reserve tickets. For more information on the broadcast or the after-show please visit the SPACE Channel website. Those able to be a part of the live audience are requested to arrive by 8:15pm. You must have a ticket to attend the live show. Those not able attend can watch both the Doctor Who season finale and InnerSPACE after-show across Canada on SPACE starting at 9:00pm ET on Saturday July 24th, 2010.

Matt Smith's debut series has concluded in Australia. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation's decision to 'fast-track' the latest series of Doctor Who has been vindicated by excellent ratings, the series receiving its highest consistent Australian ratings since its return in 2005 (and probably ever). The series averaged 928,000 viewers in the five major capital cities over thirteen weeks (these figures also do not include regional, time-shifted and iView viewers) and was normally the ABC's top-rating program of the day. TV Tonight reports that The Big Bang averaged 976,000 viewers in the five major capital cities, again despite stiff competition from the commercial networks. Yet again it was the ABC's top-rating program of the day, rating higher than its popular Sunday 7pm news and Little Dorrit, being the ninth highest rating program for the day overall. The corresponding Confidential Cutdown also rated an exceptional 732,000 viewers in the five major capitals.

Final figures are now available for the BBC HD showing of Doctor Who: The Big Bang and give the episode an official rating on the channel of 0.58 million viewers. This, along with the previously reported figure of 6.12 million viewers on BBC One, gives the episode a total rating of 6.7 million viewers. Full details for the week are still not available, but it is likely this will make Doctor Who the 10th most watched programme of the week.

Final figures for the whole series show that, despite recent press speculation, Doctor Who is still achieving remarkable ratings for the BBC and remains one of its most successful products. Once consolidated figures are published then the five series of the show, shown since the return in 2005, have all achieved remarkably similar average ratings of around 8 million viewers. Matt Smith’s first series just out-rates David Tennant’s first two series but comes behind Tennant’s last series. The variable earlier start times given to Series 31 compared to recent series appear to have resulted in more of the audience recording the show for later viewing, meaning lower overnights, but balanced when final consolidated figures are published

In terms of Chart position, once HD figures are included, Doctor Who has finished in the weekly top twenty throughout the series, with seven episodes finishing in the top ten. The high was 3rd place for The Eleventh Hour and the low was 20th for The Lodger, shown against World Cup football. The average chart placing was 12th, which again is higher that achieved by three of the previous four series.

One of the big successes of the recent series has been the take up on iPlayer. This year was the first time the whole series has been available during its run. Over 2 million have now accessed The Eleventh Hour and it has become by far the highest accessed programme in the BBC iPlayer history. The iPlayer simply measures those who have accessed the programme and no data is available to covert this figure to ratings in the conventional sense. However the figure does give an indication of how popular the programme is with the audience.


Full ratings for the series can be found in Gallifrey Base.

The 'fast-tracked' Doctor Who continues its strong ratings in Australia. TV Tonight reports that The Pandorica Opens averaged 890,000 viewers in the five major capital cities, again despite stiff competition from the commercial networks. Yet again it was the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's top-rating program of the day, rating higher than its popular Sunday 7pm news and Little Dorrit (the latter which only averaged 645,000 viewers in the five major capitals) being the eleventh highest rating program for the day overall. The corresponding Confidential Cutdown also rated an excellent 670,000 viewers in the five major capitals.

Final figures for the final episode of the recent series of Doctor Who, The Big Bang, are partially available from BARB, with the BBC One showing getting 6.12 million viewers.

This was enough to make it the ninth most watched programme of the week for BBC One.

Final figures for BBC HD have not yet been released and will hopefully be available later in the week, at which time a final chart position can be calculated.

The final audience for the Sunday repeat of The Big Bang was 0.72 million.

Full ratings for the series so far can be found in Gallifrey Base.

It's a week today since Series 5 (or Series 1 or Series 31, depending on which counting system you subscribe to) ended in the UK, yet it seems only yesterday that we were all eagerly anticipating Matt Smith and Steven Moffat's first season of Doctor Who.

Viewers in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere still have the anticipation of what's to come (assuming you haven't seen the episodes over the Internet already and, assuming you haven't spoilered yourself with the deluge of articles appearing everywhere!).

And a lot's happened in the seven days since the end of The Big Bang in the UK, when we found out that the crack in time ... oops, spoilers!

But - be warned! - a hefty dose of salt may be needed before reading some of what follows ...

Matt joined Orbital on stage at Glastonbury for "Dr Who", their rendition of the show's theme tune. Meanwhile, he had to put up with a lot of nonsense from the British tabloid press concerning so-called "falling ratings" - which doesn't actually appear to stand up to much scrutiny - and William Hill slashing the odds on him remaining on the show.

Then, apparently, Moffat's script for the 2010 Christmas Special went missing and several of the writers for next year were announced (see Digital Spy).

On a positive note, as we reported on Wednesday, Barbara Kidd, who previously worked on Who episodes involving Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker and Peter Davison, is returning to the show for the 2011 series.

The monster line up for the Doctor Who Live tour details were confirmed and Neil Gaiman Tweeted that he'd completed his Who script.

And, then there are the "facts" that Matt wants both Eric Cantona and Ian McKellen to appear in the show as baddies! See this article for more details.

Last, but not least, is the revelation that Johnny Depp has "definitely" signed up to play the Doctor in a big-budget Hollywood movie, written by Russell T Davies and featuring the Daleks and the Ebola virus! The BBC subsequently clarified otherwise.

There are masses of stories relating to this rumour, but this one on Digital Journal at least takes a more sober and detailed look, including on the history of Doctor Who movies, proposed and actual.

Happy times and places!

UPDATE 12 July 2010
BARB have updated the figures sent to broadcaster to include a missing episode of EastEnders, moving Doctor Who down to fifth place on BBC One and Tenth place overall.


Final figures for Episode Twelve of Doctor Who, The Pandorica Opens, show the story was watched by 7.57 million viewers.

On BBC One it is understood the programme got 6.94 million watching, enough to make it the fourth most watched programme of the week for BBC One, just being beaten by three matches in the Fifa World Cup.

As previously reported an additional 0.635 million watched on BBC HD and when added together the programme totalled 7.58 million viewers with an audience share of 37 percent.

A full top thirty is not available as figures have not been released for all channels, However we understand Doctor Who finished the week as the 9th most watched programme on British Television.

The final audience for the Sunday repeat of The Pandorica Opens was 0.52 million and the final audience for Saturdays Doctor Who Confidential, including BBC HD, was 0.85 million viewers.

Full ratings for the series so far can be found in Gallifrey Base.

Final ratings data for the BBC One showing of Doctor Who, Episode twelve The Pandorica Opens, has been delayed due to data processing problems at BARB. The final data is now not expected for several days, and will appear on the news page as soon as it is available.

However final data for BBC HD is available and it gives the HD showing of The Pandorica Opens a final rating of 635,000 viewers. This is the highest rating ever achieved by BBC HD.