Doctor Who is to be honoured with a special tribute to be shown at Sunday's BAFTA television award ceremony.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts will be marking the programme's 50th Anniversary year by showing a video montage celebrating the long history of the show.

Current companion Jenna-Louise Coleman will also attend the ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall in London and will present one of the night’s awards.

Amanda Berry OBE, Chief Executive of BAFTA, said:
Steven Moffat, Doctor Who’s Lead Writer and Executive Producer, said the production team would be sending Daleks to patrol the red carpet:
Doctor Who won the main BAFTA award for Best Drama Series in 2006 and has won many BAFTA Craft Awards since the series returned in 2005.

Big Finish have released details on the latest adventures for the Doctor and his companions in May ...

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Sunday 12th May sees the broadcast of two four-part Peter Davison stories, Earthshock and Snakedance on Australian and New Zealand television. They are screening as part of the 50th Anniversary season of Doctor Who on the UKTV channel.

Earthshock is scheduled to screen in both countries at 2:40pm. Snakedance is scheduled in New Zealand at 4:20pm and in Australia at 4:30pm. New Zealand has an additional screening on Monday 13th May at 2:40am and 4:20am respectively.

Earthshock was first broadcast in Australia in 1982 and in New Zealand in 1983. Snakedance was first broadcast in both countries in 1983.


The UKTV billing describes the stories as follows:

Earthshock: In the 26th century, a party of soldiers led by Professor Kyle & Lt. Scott investigate the death of a palaeontologist murdered by androids while studying dinosaur remains in a cave.

Snakedance: The Tardis lands on Manussa where Tegan once again gets possessed by the Mara, who plan to break into the physical world.

UKTV is showing stories throughout the year in the lead-up to the anniversary in November. The stories are two of a set of six stories featuring Peter Davison's Doctor due to be broadcast during May. The rest of the month's line up includes: Frontios and Resurrection of the Daleks (19 May), and The Caves of Androzani (26 May).

Up-and-coming broadcasts from both 20th and 21st Century series of Doctor Who can be found via UKTV's Doctor Who sections for Australia and New Zealand.

Full ratings data for the week ending 28th April 2013 is now available and gives Doctor Who: Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS an official rating of 6.5 million viewers, a share of 30.2% of the total television audience.

Once ITV HD and +1 figures are factored in, Doctor Who just slipped out of the top twenty as the 21st most watched programme on British Television for the week.

On BBC One, Doctor Who was the seventh most watched programme of the week and it was the third most watched programme of Saturday, behind the two reality shows Britain's Got Talent and The Voice.

On ITV the drama starring David Tennant, Broadchurch, had 10.46 million watching once HD and +1 figures are included, and was the second most watched programme of the week.

Figures do not include iPlayer viewings, figures for which will be available later.

The last episode of the current series is to have a prequel, it was announced this afternoon.

Entitled She Said, He Said, it has been written by showrunner Steven Moffat and will feature Jenna-Louise Coleman as Clara and Matt Smith as the Doctor.

According to the show's official website, it will be one of the longest prequels the show has had and will look at "how little Clara knows about the Doctor . . . and vice versa."

The minisode will be made available from the official website and via the BBC's Red Button service straight after Nightmare in Silver ends in the UK this coming Saturday at 7.45pm. Series finale The Name of the Doctor airs in the UK on Saturday 18th May, with the time still to be confirmed.

Based on these final figures, Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS was the highest rating ABC program of the day and the ninth highest rating program of the day overall (it was also the ninth highest rating program based on its overnight figures of 725,000 viewers). These ratings do not include regional viewers.

France4 are to premiere Series 7 Part 1 over two days from the end of the month.

The 25th May sees the channel kick off with L’Asile des Daleks at 8:45pm, followed by Des dinosaures dans l’espace and La ville de la miséricorde. Then, the 1st June sees the broadcast of L’invasion des cubes, again at 8:45pm, followed by Les anges prennent Manhattan and last year's Christmas Special, La dame de glace.

In addition, the channel will be presenting the mini-story Pond Life on their Studio 4.0 website over the course of 20th-24th May.

BBC America has chosen Earthshock to represent the Fifth Doctor in its Doctor Who: The Doctors Revisited celebratory season.

A documentary entitled The Doctors Revisited: The Fifth Doctor will air on Sunday, May 26 at 8pm Eastern/7pm Central, followed by the four-part story that reintroduced the Cybermen after an absence of nearly seven years.

The documentary will see Peter Davison, Steven Moffat, Hugh Bonneville, Sarah Sutton, and Mark Strickson discussing the Fifth Doctor. It will also feature other as-yet-unspecified contributors.

Earthshock first aired in 1982. As well as the return of the Cybermen, it featured the death of the Doctor's companion Adric, the only long-term television companion to die since the First Doctor's era.

BBC America is paying tribute to the programme's 50th anniversary by showing a story per Doctor per month.

The writer of the fifth in the Puffin Books series of e-books has been revealed to be Patrick Ness, the multi-award winning author of the Chaos Walking trilogy.


Born in Virginia, USA Patrick Ness spent his upbringing in the states of Hawaii, Washington and California before moving permanently to the UK. He is the author of the Chaos Walking trilogy which established him as one of the most original and exciting writers of today. The trilogy has won many awards including the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, the Costa Children’s Book Award, the Booktrust Teenage Prize and the CILIP Carnegie Medal. Patrick’s sixth book A Monster Calls received high critical acclaim and is the winner of the Children’s Book of the Year Award at the Galaxy National Book Awards, the Red House Children’s Book Award and the UKLA Children’s Book Prize. In June 2012, A Monster Calls became the first book ever to win both prestigious CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals. His highly anticipated new novel for adults, The Crane Wife, was inspired by a Japanese folk tale and just published by Canongate in April 2013. A daring new YA novel More Than This is forthcoming later this year from Walker (Candlewick in the US).

Ness commented:

A video of the author will be released on YouTube by BBC Worldwide later in the month, with the book itself coming out on the 23rd May.

This weekend's adventure for the Doctor and Clara will be Nightmare in Silver, written by Neil Gaiman and directed by Stephen Woolfenden. The episode will premiere on BBC One in the United Kingdom on Saturday at the later time of 7:00pm.


This weekend sees the FA Cup Final taking place on ITV, which kicks off at 5:15pm - in principle the game should be over as Doctor Who starts, though extra time could eat into the schedule. BBC2 will be showing Dad's Army from 7:05pm and then The Culture Show from 7:35pm, Channel 4 finishes up a marathon run of Come Dine With Me followed by the News from 7:15pm, and Channel 5's film Jesse Stone: Night Passage finishes at 7:10pm, followed by NCIS.


Internationally, Nightmare in Silver will be broadcast in the United States and Canada on BBC America and SPACE respectively at 8:00pm ET the same evening, and then on Sunday it can be watched in Australia via ABC at 7:30pm, Poland via BBC Entertainment at 6:00pm, and South Africa via BBC Entertainment at 7:00pm. Meanwhile, New Zealand viewers will see Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS this Thursday on PRIME at 8:30pm.

See This Week in Doctor Who for more details on scheduling and repeats.