Actors Frazer Hines and Tony Selby plus script editor and writer Eric Saward and visual effects designer Mike Kelt will be the special guests at the BFI screening of The Two Doctors.

The event, which takes place on Saturday 15th June to mark the Sixth Doctor's era, is the latest in the organisation's Doctor Who At 50 season and will start at 2pm.

The screenings have proved overwhelmingly popular, selling out as soon as tickets have been made available, although the BFI has introduced a ballot system to help make ticket allocation fairer.

Returns are always a possibility, though. As such, at the time of posting this news item four tickets were available via the event link. Stand-bys and other returns may also be available on the day.

Big Finish have announced that their licence to make Doctor Who audio adventures has been extended to December 2016.

Executive producer Jason Haigh-Ellery said:

Fellow executive producer Nicholas Briggs observed:

Line producer David Richardson added:

The First Doctor's TARDIS console built for An Adventure In Space And Time - the forthcoming drama about Doctor Who's genesis - is to get its first public display at next month's Comic Con in Paris, the BBC announced today.

Writer Mark Gatiss will also be at the event, where he will take part in a panel session and will be signing autographs. In addition, clips from Doctor Who episodes Gatiss has written for and appeared in will be shown.

Other Doctor Who attractions at the Comic Con - the fifth to be held in France - will be a screening of Revenge of the Cybermen in French as well as a gallery display marking 50 years of the show.

After appearing at the French Comic Con, which runs from 4th to 7th July and is being held at the Paris-Nord Villepinte Exhibition Centre, the console will be installed at the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff for the duration of the summer.

The 90-minute drama is due to be broadcast on BBC Two later this year, following a première at the BFI in London.

For the second month running Doctor Who was the most requested programme on the BBC iPlayer, with the series finale, The Name of the Doctor being accessed 1.90 million times.

Doctor Who also took third place in the list with Nightmare in Silver having 1.73 million requests and fifth place with The Crimson Horror having 1.71 million requests.

The other places in the top ten we taken by five episodes of The Apprentice and two editions of The Voice.

Earlier Doctor Who episodes were still available during the month with Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS adding 0.59 million requests to its April total, while other episodes each added around 0.2 million requests.

The most requested Doctor Who story of the year remains as The Bells of Saint John which has a total of 2.5 million requests and is the sixth most requested programme of the year. The top four places are held by Top Gear with Africa coming in fifth.

NB: The request figures refer to download and streaming requests only and don't necessarily reflect the total number who watched the whole episode. However the BBC does estimate the unique number of viewers watching each episode within a week of transmission via it's Live + 7 figures.

Live+7 Viewing Figures	First Day	Repeats	Timeshift	iPlayer	Live +7
The Bells of Saint John	6.15m - 63%	0.39m - 4%	2.29m - 23%	0.95 - 10%	9.78m
The Rings of Akhaten	5.48m - 63%	0.28m - 3%	1.98m - 23%	0.90 - 10%	8.65m
Cold War	5.57m - 68%	0.18m - 2%	1.67m - 20%	0.76 - 9%	8.28m
Hide	4.97m - 65%	0.27m - 4%	1.63m - 21%	0.77 - 10%	7.64m
Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS	4.86m - 65%	0.28m - 4%	1.54m - 21%	0.79 - 11%	7.47m
The Crimson Horror	4.61m - 61%	0..32m - 4%	1.83m - 24%	0.83 - 11%	7.59m
Nightmare in Silver	4.73m - 61%	0.29m - 4%	1.87m - 24%	0.89 - 11%	7.78m
The Name of the Doctor	5.45m - 63%	0.28m - 3%	1.99m - 23%	0.92 - 11%	8.64m

The figures show Doctor Who is timeshifted far more than most BBC programmes. Around 62% of the audience watch Live or within one day, compared with the BBC average of 87% watching Live. Around 23% of the viewers timeshift using a PVR compared with the BBC average of 6%, while 11% now watch via the iPlayer, compared with the BBC average of 2%.

Earlier this week, Doctor Who was the subject of an opinion poll conducted by YouGov, one of the UK's main opinion polling agencies, frequently quoted by the media in relation to political polling. The survey (results here), conducted on Monday and Tuesday, quizzed 1974 British adults on whether or not they were interested in the series. The 31% who expressed an interest were then asked various questions about their favourite Doctors, their political opinions and what sort of actor they would like to see cast as the Twelfth Doctor.

David Tennant was the favourite Doctor of the survey, by some considerable margin - 43% of those who expressed an interest in the series choosing him as their favourite, with Tom Baker in second place with 16%. Tennant was also the most popular choice with supporters of the four political parties noted in the survey - Conservatives, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the UK Independence Party.

On the subject of who should be the Twelfth Doctor, YouGov's own summary article on their website points out that over half of those who said they were interested in the series felt that the next Doctor should be played by a male actor. "British" and "character actor" were also traits which were strongly supported by those surveyed by YouGov.

The poll and its results have been picked up in various places online, with articles relating to it from sites such as Wales Today and the New Statesman.

Over the course of this week everybody has had an opinion over who should be the next Doctor, it seems! Debates about whether the next owner of the TARDIS should be played by a woman popped up in several newspapers on Monday, picked up by shows like Lorraine (ITV) and The Wright Stuff (Channel 5). The Daily Star ran a front page item on Paris Jackson (daughter of the late singer Michael) being in the running on Wednesday, and Thursday saw more comment on Russell Howard's Good News (BBC3) and 10 O'Clock Live (Channel 4) - with the latter offering up David Mitchell himself. The ongoing speculation even led to politics show This Week running a Doctor Who-themed introduction. As reported yesterday, star Jenna-Louise Coleman has been inundated by questions as to who it might be, but she replied that "it's going to be a long, long search."

Meanwhile, bookmakers have consistently presented the favourite for the role to be Ben Daniels all week, with the actor's odds hovering around the 2-1 mark (though dropped to evens mid-week). However, a surprise newcomer appeared from Wednesday in the form of Skins and The Thick of It actor Chris Addison (which may have been due to this tweet from Paloma Faith), who has since then remained second favourite at 3-1. The other favourites tend to differ between bookmakers, with David Harwood 7-2 from Ladbrokes, Richard Armitage 37-13 from Betfair, and Chiwetel Ejiofor 10-1 from Coral, 13-1 from Paddy Power, and 16-1 from SkyBet. Of the other favourites reported at the beginning of the week, both Russell Tovey and Rory Kinnear had slipped to a 16-1 average.

For a feminine incarnation, Billie Piper and Jennifer Saunders averaged 25-1, with Sue Perkins (subject of a publicised campaign over the last couple of months) at 33-1, Olivia Coleman between 20-1 (Paddy Power) and 50-1 (Ladbrokes), Helen Mirren between 25-1 (Ladbrokes) and 80-1 (Coral), and Miranda Hart between 33-1 (Paddy Power) and 80-1 (Coral). Odds on a female twelfth Doctor hovers at 7-1 with Paddy Power and Coral), and 5-1 from William Hill (the male odds given by the first two are 1-20 and 1-16 respectively!).

Other names with favourable odds include: Damien Moloney (Being Human) at 14-1, Alexander Vlahos (Merlin) at 16-1, Andrew Scott (Sherlock) at 16-1, Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) at 16-1/20-1, Daniel Rigby (Eric and Ernie) at 20-1, and James Frain (True Blood) also at 20-1.

Character have launched their new range of 3.75" figures:

Explaining the change of figures from the previous 5" collection, Character said:


In addition to the individual figures, Character have also created two "Timezone Playsets", themed around "Cold War" and "Dalek Invasion":

1983 - In the cold waters of the Southern Arctic Ocean, a Russian submarine returning from patrol takes on board a suspicious cargo, and the Doctor is reunited with one of his oldest foes. [order]

2075AD and the Daleks have invaded Earth once more and the future of the human race hangs in the balance. [order]

Jenna-Louise Coleman was one of the people honoured to speak to the Queen during a visit by the Monarch to the BBC's new Broadcasting House, which she officially opened today. After passing by the resident Dalek, the Queen was then introduced to the actress - next to the TARDIS!

Coleman later spoke to BBC News about her experience:
And did she ask who the next Doctor might be?
The full interview with BBC News can be watched in the United Kingdom via their website.

The BFI is to show the BBC's long-lost behind-the-scenes report on Daleks - Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. that was recovered last year.

The feature, lasting about five minutes, was originally included in the edition of teen culture programme A Whole Scene Going broadcast on 16th March 1966 and will be shown on the big screen at BFI Southbank on Wednesday 3rd July during a compilation of reports from various productions.

The BFI event is entitled The Location Report and is itself part of the wider Broadcasting The Arts: Television Looks At Film strand being run by the organisation. Tickets go on sale to the public on Tuesday 11th June.

Although the master tape was wiped by the BBC, a copy of this particular edition of A Whole Scene Going ended up as part of a Welsh villager's collection of films that was eventually sold on. A timecoded and watermarked extract from the programme is available to view via the Tim Disney Archive, with the Dalek film report excerpt starting at 1 min 16 sec.

An official Doctor Who online store has been launched in Australia by BBC Worldwide.

Offering more than 400 products and with free delivery across the country, the BBC Worldwide Australia e-commerce site will also have new and exclusive products added to it as soon as they become available.

Items currently include gadgets from vortex manipulators to a nano-recorder injector, clothing from Dalek and TARDIS bathrobes to the Fourth Doctor's 12ft scarf, toys including a talking plush TARDIS, an inflatable Dalek, action figures, and the Adipose stress toy, as well as DVDs.

Other features of the site include the ability to search products by Doctor as well as price bracket, recommendations based on browsing, and the opportunity to sign up to a Doctor Who newsletter. An express delivery service is also available.

The launch of the e-commerce site follows last month's success of the Doctor Who pop-up shop in Newtown, Sydney, which BBC Worldwide said saw fans lining up for more than three hours for the opening day on 9th May. It closed after 25 days, with a lot of the products selling out. Now many of those products are on the new online store.

BBC Worldwide ANZ partnered with C8 Group for the fulfilment operations and customer service. It also designed and built the site in collaboration with C8 Digital.

Elie Mansour, BBC Worldwide ANZ's manager for licensed consumer products, said: Laurie Macolino, the director of C8 Group, added: