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:

BARB have now issued the official ratings for the Week Ending 26 December, confirming A Christmas Carol has a final rating of 12.11 million viewers. Once figures for those watching on HD are factored in, the programme finished fourth for the week, behind EastEnders, Coronation Street and the new Matt Lucas and David Walliams comedy, Come Fly With Me.

Only eight other Doctor Who episodes have ranked fourth or higher in the weekly charts, including Matt Smith's first story, The Eleventh Hour.

Thank you to all those who entered our Christmas Competition.

The standard was high with over 25% of answers within half a million of the correct answer.
The highest guess was an optimistic 15.48 million and the lowest a pessimistic 7.4 million.

Only one person, Peter Hart of Oxford in the United Kingdom, correctly guessed the exact number of 12.11 million.

He wins an Eleventh Doctor Christmas Adventure Set and as a bonus for guessing the exact number we will be sending a DVD of A Christmas Carol.

We have five runners up who also win an Eleventh Doctor Christmas Adventure Set.

• Chris Chalmers of London (12.10 million)
• Russell Reinke of Lake Wales, Florida (12.12 million)
• Kevin James Kirby of Camarillo, California (12.12 million)
• Lyndsey Robinson of Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire (12.08 million)
• Sharon Vincent of Carterton, Oxfordshire (12.14 million)

Doctor Who: The End of Time, Part One is being offered as a free download as part of iTunes UK's "12 Days of Christmas". The episode, also available in HD, will only be free for 24 hours on 4th January.

Click here to download from iTunes.

Doctor Who returns to Italy next month, when the state broadcaster RAI brings the show to their entertainment channel RAI 4 available on digital terrestrial television in Italy and digital satellite television through Tivù Sat.

The channel has acquired all five series of modern Doctor Who as well as the specials. Day and time of broadcast are, at present, still under development but the channel has confirmed via their Facebook page that the series will start sometime in January.

The first three series were previously shown on satellite television in Italy and RAI will be using the same dubbed transmission tapes when they show the series. The fourth and fifth series will be new to the country. The translation is being handled by BBC Worldwide.

For a full roundup of Doctor Who around the world, see our sister site This Week In Doctor Who.

The BBC has released the fourth Episode in The Adventure Games Series: Shadows of the Vashta Nerada in the United Kingdom.

The game was expected on Christmas Day, but today has been made available to download from the BBC Website.

The game is written by Phil Ford - author of the first 'gamisode' in the series, City of the Daleks and is available in a Windows and a Mac version.

As with the previous games, Shadows of the Vashta Nerada will be available for purchase worldwide on the PC platform at a later date from Direct2Drive, who will release both this and the third game TARDIS together as a bundle; however, the Mac version will not be available outside the UK.

The Doctor Who Confidential preview of A Christmas Carol is now available via the Red Button service on Freeview and Sky/Virgin media.

The preview is Day One of a video blog by Charlie McDonnell, who explores the Doctor Who set. Further segments are expected at 6pm each day, leading up to the broadcast of the episode itself on Christmas Day.

The schedule for the red button service is listed here.


The preview is also available on the BBC's YouTube Channel:

The Doctor Who News Page is offering readers a chance to win the Eleventh Doctor Christmas Adventure Set which is released next week, in our Christmas Competition.

The set includes two 5-inch action figures: The Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond with police uniform and also features a non-electronic TARDIS with opening front doors.

Five Gift sets are up for grabs.

To be in with a chance of winning, simply tell us your prediction for the total BBC One audience, to the nearest 10,000 viewers, for the Christmas Day showing of A Christmas Carol.

Just to clarify, we are looking for the final confirmed audience as published by BARB in January. This figure includes those who record the programme and watch it within one week and it includes those watching on BBC One HD. It does not include those watching on iPlayer.

Please also give your estimate for the final figure for the BBC Three/BBC HD Christmas Day showing of Doctor Who Confidential. This figure will be used as a tie breaker in the event of a draw for the prize. In the event of a further draw the winner will be chosen at random.

To help you estimate the figure, ratings for the previous episodes of Doctor Who transmitted on Christmas Day were:

1965 - 5.50pm - The Feast of Steven - 7.90 million
2005 - 7.00pm - The Christmas Invasion - 9.84 million
2006 - 7.00pm - The Runaway Bride - 9.30 million
2007 - 6.50pm - Voyage of the Damned - 13.31 million
2008 - 6.00pm - The Next Doctor - 13.10 million
2009 - 6.00pm - The End of Time Part One - 12.04 million

Entries should be sent to the Doctor Who News Page at doctorwhocompetitions@gmail.com - please include your answers, name, address and daytime contact number.

Only one entry is allowed per person.

Entries must be received by 6pm, 25th December 2010 UK Time.

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In the meantime, there are a number of other Doctor Who related competitions online that you might also wish to enter, listed below:

Site	Closing Date	Competition
Toxic Magazine	15th Dec	Win a Nintendo DS and a copy of Evacuation Earth, with the game for five runners up. Registration required, and restricted to under-18s
National Geographic	15th Dec	Win Evacuation Earth with a DSi. This one is open to under 16s
Radio Times	21st Dec	Win a Nintendo Wii console, and a copy of Return to Earh; simply answer 15 questions on television trivia
Love Offers	22nd Dec	Win a sonic screwdriver from Doctor Who
Fortean Times	22nd Dec	Win one of three sonic-screwdrivers
DrWho Online	31st Dec	Win one of three copies of The Complete Series Five boxed set to win.
Eye of Horus	10th Jan	Win one of ten copies of Meglos.
Love Offers	12th Jan	Win one of five copies of Return to Earth.
Webuser	12th Jan	Win one of five copies of Return to Earth Wii games to win.
Whovian Net	n/a	Win one of three copies of the official 2011 Calendar when they reach 1000 Twitter Followers
Eye of Horus	31st Jan	Win one of ten copies of The Mutants.