This week's edition of Broadcast, the trade magazine, carries details of the top-performing UK television shows of the past twelve months, saying that "reality shows may have dominated the schedules but the big ratings stories were to be found in drama, with the triumphant return of Doctor Who, and in comedy, as Little Britain took the nation by storm." The paper notes, "To make an impact in primetime, where one in five viewers now watches multichannel TV, terrestrial TV has had to fight harder than ever for its audience. According to Ofcom, almost 70% of UK households have multichannel." In the Drama category, Doctor Who still tops the table for the year with the 10.81m (44.84%) audience for 'Rose' on 26 March, and Broadcast argues that this success "opened the door for more drama in primetime Saturday night". In fact, these end-of-year charts confirm that Doctor Who remained in its prime spot throughout the year, the programmes and figures at the top of the charts remaining essentially unchanged since March. The magazine has also compiled a chart of the Top 100 shows of 2005, the first ten of which (and two other items of interest) are:


Not bad for a television series that the BBC retired in 1989 and took 15 years to bring back to weekly television (in a time slot dominated by the #29 entry on the list.) Full details are available (to registered members) at theBroadcastNowwebsite. (Thanks to Steve Tribe)

Issue #365 of Doctor Who Magazine is due out this week, on Thursday 5 January. The press blurb and cover illustration is below; click on the thumbnail for a larger version. (With thanks to Tom Spilsbury at DWM)

Issue 8 of the fan magazine Black Scrolls is now available; the issue features "The Tom Baker Show", this time lampooning "Warriors Gate" while satirical tabloid "Sol3" makes a return to Black Scrolls, packed with regular favourites; writer Chris Boucher discusses his scripts for Doctor Who, this time turning out attention to "Face of Evil"; coverage of "The Caves of Androzani" with new interviews with Maurice Roeves (Stotz) and John Normington (Morgus); the "I Luv Caves" featurette, with various ramblings on the story's characters, from the likes of Steve O’Brien (SFX) and Craig Hinton; the exhaustive behind-the-scenes story of "The Flood," DWM's Cyberman story, featuring interviews with writer Scott Gray, artist Martin Geraghty, colourist Adrian Salmon and editor Clay Hickman; and a CD featuring multimedia material such as the Black Scrolls interview with Maurice Roeves which was professionally recorded on video, an audio interview of John Normington and the back catalogue of issues 1 to 7 of the magazine. More details and ordering available at www.timeschampion.com.

Issue #364 of Doctor Who Magazine is due out this week, on Thursday 8 December. The press blurb and cover illustration is below; click on the thumbnail for a larger version. (With thanks to Tom Spilsbury at DWM)

Radio Times will feature the year's third Doctor Who cover this year with the issue that goes on sale on 3 December. This follows the earlier covers this year, both at the start of the series as well as the Dalek cover that was released with the airing of the episode "Dalek". Click on the thumbnail for a larger version. Meanwhile, the press release for the Radio Times cover is below. (Thanks to the BBC Press Office; special thanks to Martin Hoscik at UNIT News who helped out when the release went missing!)

More about "The Christmas Invasion" has been revealed in the latest issue of SFX Magazine by Russell T Davies. "I love the title," he tells the magazine. "What else could you call it? It will be a great, adventure that's really big in scale. It will be Christmassy – there's nothing I like more than a Christmas special set at Christmas! There's a big story in it for Rose as well as a massive threat to the Earth going on beneath the surface, so Christmas as usual!" Says the article, "With the Doctor still suffering the after-effects of his regeneration, the TARDIS returns to Earth, arriving back at Rose’s council estate. The festive period is just beginning, but the Doctor, recuperating in his pyjamas, is too ill to enjoy it, while his companion attempts to come to terms with the fact that her best friend has changed his identity. But as Rose shares some quality time with her family and friends (Camille Coduri is back as Jackie Tyler, along with Noel Clarke as Mickey), an alien force is stirring. The Sycorax invasion is beginning... So what else can we expect from the story? 'I can tell you that the words 'Arthur Dent' are said in the Christmas special,' reveals Davies, rather teasingly. 'It's got scary Christmas trees, Santa attacks, there's an invasion, and the Doctor stays in bed for a long, long time,' Billie Piper recently told the press. 'I am carrying most of the show.'"

The Mirror says that Billie Piper is "at the centre of a tug-of-love between the BBC and ITV... Since quitting the hit sci-fi show - as revealed by The Mirror last week - 23-year-old Billie has already been snapped up for two major new projects, one with each of the main channels. For ITV1, she will don a ribboned bonnet to play priggish Fanny Price in a new adaptation of Jane Austen's most controversial novel, Mansfield Park. ... Meanwhile, BBC bosses have got a secret project waiting in the wings for her. Our insider tells us: 'This is very, very different to Doctor Who. Billie has proven herself at the BBC, first with The Canterbury Tales, then as Rose in Doctor Who, and recently in Much Ado About Nothing. The camera loves her. She has the sort of face which comes across really well on screen. Any critic who claims she is only good at playing ditzy characters is wrong - there were some very dark scenes in Doctor Who which she handled really well. All her performances have been brilliant. We can't wait to work with her again.'" Of course, this is forgetting the fact that she's still working on the show... take this for what it's worth.

More reports of the lighting of Cardiff at icWales, Ham High News; the lighting also gets coverage on CBBC Newsround and the official site has a brief report and a link to a new, permanent clip from Wales Today on the Media Player (the Wales Today programme itself being only briefly available online).

Is Ross Kemp (who plays Grant Mitchell in "EastEnders") soon to be a guest star in the new series? The showbiz correspondent on HeartFM Radio seems to think so, noting in an 'exclusive' that he might be in the series, but we haven't heard anything about it elsewhere.

The official Doctor Who website has been updated with a Christmas theme today.

In The News has picked up the David Beckham story from yesterday; other print-only media to pick it up includes the Press Association and Newsquest Media Group (so expect it in a variety of papers by next week!) Also, Playbillmentions a December 19 holiday concert in which John Barrowman is slated to appear.

(Thanks to Steve Tribe, Paul Engelberg, Stephen James Walker and Chris Howell of The Great Link)

The editors of Doctor Who Magazine have sent us the cover illustrations and press blurbs for their two forthcoming Doctor Who specials, In Their Own Words (with interviews from past issues of DWM) and Endgame (the next comic strip compilation). The press releases and covers are below; click on the thumbnail for a larger version. (Thanks to Tom Spilsbury/DWM)

Issue 363 of Doctor Who Magazine is now available, and we have a large-size version of the cover illustration (click on the thumbnail for a larger version) and the press release, below (with thanks to Tom Spilsbury):