Doctor Who News is offering readers the chance to win a copy of The Ark, starring William Hartnell as The Doctor.


We have three copies up for grabs of the DVD courtesy of 2|Entertain. To be in for a chance of winning the competition, simply answer this question:


During The Ark, the First Doctor is assisted by the invisible Refusians to defeat the Monoids; many years later the Third Doctor encounters more invisible beings in Planet of the Daleks - name this race.

Closing Date: Friday 4th March 2011

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Doctor Who have won in 5 categories at the 2011 SFX Awards.

Matt Smith beat ex Dcotor David Tennant to 'Best Actor'. Smith told SFX:
Karen Gillan won 'Best Actress'. She told SFX:

The show won 'Best TV Show' - which was accepted by Steven Moffat (see a video of his acceptance speech below) - and the 'Sci-Fi Phenomenon Award'.

Other awards for Doctor Who went to Character Options for their Eleven Doctors action figure set, which won 'Best Collectable, Model Or Toy'. Russell Tovey (Midshipman Alonso Frame, Voyage of the Damned and The End of Time, Part Two) won the 'SFX Cult Hero'.

Vincent And The Doctor lost 'Best TV Episode' to the final episode of Ashes to Ashes.

The ceremony took place at the SFX Weekender and the full list of winners and nominees on the night can be found on the SFX website.

Silva Screen have released the cover art and tracklisting for the soundtrack to A Christmas Carol. The album was originally due to be released in the UK on 21 February but has now been delayed until 21 March.


The music is composed by now Doctor Who composer of choice Murray Gold and performed by the excellent BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Crouch End Festival Chorus. The album will be released both physically (SILCD1360) and digitally (SILED1360). The TV episode was broadcast on Christmas Day at 6pm and featured Matt Smith as The Doctor, Karen Gillan as Amy Pond and Arthur Darvill as Rory Williams. They were joined by Michael Gambon as Kazran Sardick and Katherine Jenkins as Abigail Pettigrew.

The BBC has released some details about the upcoming series of Doctor Who, featuring Matt Smith - seen here from the new series trailer as the Doctor chained and sporting a considerable beard.

The actor commented:
It's also been confirmed that Smith has filmed special scenes, scripted by show runner Steven Moffat for the new interactive exhibition opening at London's Olympia next month, the Doctor Who Experience.

The Doctor Who News Page is offering winners the chance to win a copy of the first volume of K9, covering episodes one to thirteen of the first series.


We have three copies up for grabs of the DVD courtesy of Organic Marketing. To be in for a chance of winning the competition, simply answer this question:

In which David Tennant episode did K9 make his first appearance for over 20 years?

• Blink
• School Reunion
• The Christmas Invasion

Send your answer with your name, address and email to us at k9-competition@doctorwhonews.net, with the subject line K9 Competition.

Closing Date: Friday 11th February 2011



News links:
K9: UK DVD release update (22nd Dec 2010)

More details have emerged on the new set of Doctor Who Characters available this spring from Character Building.

Chris Elmer from the website Active Dad got a chance to play with the Characters at the 2011 London Toy Fair held at the Olympia Exhibition Centre in London.

Fans of the classic series will be delighted that each of the eleven incarnations of the Doctor is represented in toy form along with vast armies of Daleks, Cybermen and Weeping Angels.

Building sets featuring scenes from the series include the TARDIS Console Room Playset, the TARDIS Mini Set, the Cybermen Conversion Chamber Set, the Dalek Factory Set and the Time of Angles Mini Set .

The sets are not connected to LEGO, although the bricks and characters do fit together.

For more infomation check out ActiveDad.co.uk which also has a review of other Doctor Who Merchandise available at the Fair.

Doctor Who lost out in the 2011 National Television Awards on Wednesday evening, failing to win an award for the first time since the return of the series in 2005.

The series was beaten in the Best Drama Category by the BBC series Waterloo Road, the contemporary drama series set in a challenging comprehensive school. Matt Smith was nominated for Best Drama Performance, but the award went to veteran actor David Jason.

It was a disappointing night for Doctor Who's showrunner, Steven Moffat, whose other show Sherlock was nominated but failed to win an award.

Doctor Who did play a part in the proceedings when the show opened with a specially shot 3 minute sequence, written by Steven Moffat and staring Matt Smith as the Doctor, trying to get host Dermot O'Leary to the show on time:

Figures released by the BBC Press Office show that the Doctor Who Christmas Special: A Christmas Carol, was accessed over 700,000 times on the BBC iPlayer in the week after transmission.

The episode was the 8th most accessed programme in December, dispite only being available for the last week of the month. Overall December was a record month for the iPlayer with 89.7 million requests for TV Programmes.

Jana Bennett, BBC Director of Vision, said
Matt Smith's first full story as The Doctor, The Eleventh Hour, still holds the record for the most accessed programme ever on iPlayer, with 2.24 million requests, way ahead of the second placed Top Gear. Every single episode of Smith's first series was in the top thirty accessed programmes of the year, with Doctor Who taking seven of the top ten places. David Tennant's Swan-song, The End of Time: Part Two came in at number 33, with just over a million requests. A Christmas Carol was the 73rd most requested programme in 2010, but was also available for the first week of 2011.

In terms of overall programme totals, Doctor Who Series Five had 19.5 million requests. The most requested programme was EastEnders, with over 100 million requests, although spread over a much larger number of episodes.

Other series of Doctor Who faired well with repeats of Series 4 being requested over 2 million times. The most requested Doctor Who item on BBC Radio was the Radio Seven transmission of the reading of Doctor Who and The Giant Robot, which was requested over 200,000 times. In total there were over 32 million requests for Doctor Who connected programmes.

Steven Moffat has announced changes to the episode order for the 2011 series of Doctor Who.

Speaking to Doctor Who Magazine, the executive producer revealed he has shuffled the running order of the series with the Mark Gatiss penned story moving into the second half of the season, due in the Autumn.

The story was originally scheduled to run in the first part of the series due in the spring. The empty slot will now be filled by an episode written by Steve Thompson. Although new to Doctor Who, Thompson is an established writer who is best known for his work with Moffat as the author of the second Sherlock episode, The Blind Banker. He won the Arts Council's Meyer-Whitworth Award for new writing for his first play, Damages, in 2004.

Thompson's script will run as the third episode in the series, with the long awaited Neil Gaiman script moving into position four.

Moffat told the magazine the changes are purely to balance out the look of the series and to combat worries in the production team that there was "not enough outside" in the first half of the series.

BBC Worldwide have launched a channel for Classic Doctor Who on YouTube this evening with two exclusive clips from Meglos.

You can subscribe to the channel so you can catch all the exclusive content from the latest 2|entertain DVD releases. Just head to youtube.com/BBCclassicDoctorWho.

We reported last week that 2|entertain had announced plans to launch the channel in January. Today a press release was put out by the BBC Worldwide press office announcing the launch of the channel: