According to BBC journalist Lizo Mzimba on Twitter, the first television trailer for the forthcoming Doctor Who special, "Planet of the Dead", will air on BBC One on Wednesday at 9 pm, just prior to "The Apprentice".

Trailers for the special have already appeared before live audiences at a Wales rugby match and at the "Story of Doctor Who" event at the Celtic Media Festival. However, Mzimba tweets, "You didn't hear this from me. But trailer is a brand new one. It's not the one shown at the Wales V Ireland Rugby or anywhere else."

The BBC Press Office has confirmed that the Doctor Who special Planet of the Dead will air during the week beginning 11th April. Although the series is listed as "unplaced" in the main press release, it also briefly appeared on the page for Saturday's programmes. Final airdate and time slot will be confirmed when the listings are sent to magazines at the end of next week.

Planet of the Dead features David Tennant as the Doctor, Michelle Ryan as Lady Christina and Lee Evans as Malcolm. It is written by Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts.

The BBC gives the following description for the special:

As noted in This Week in Doctor Who, the 2008 Christmas special comes to Canada in March when The Next Doctor is shown on the SPACE channel. The episode is scheduled to be shown on Saturday 14th March at 9pmEastern Time.

Previous episodes of the series have been shown on CBC. SPACE has also acquired the Canadian broadcast rights toTorchwood. The channel can be seen on satellite on Bell TV and Star Choice and is available on most Canadian cable systems.

BBC One magazine programme The One Show has put online its behind-the-scenes look at The Next Doctor from last Friday.

The four-and-a-half-minute video exclusive is presented by famed Tom Baker impersonator Jon Culshaw, who goes on set and interviews David Tennant and David Morrissey.

Click here to watch the extract. (NB: May not be available to view outside the UK.)

The official BBC Doctor Who website has posted a clip from the forthcoming Christmas special, "The Next Doctor", as the treat behind the door of day 21 on their "Adventure Calendar". The calendar counts down to Christmas with a variety of special material made available each day in December.

The new 50-second video clip, only available to UK users of the site, features the character of Miss Hartigan (Dervla Kirwan) interacting with the Cybermen.

The Next Doctor will make its Australian debut on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Sunday 25 January 2009 at 7.30pm on ABC1. This contrasts with previous years when the Christmas specials have debuted on ABC TV several months after the UK. This may also suggest that the ABC will 'fast-track' the other Doctor Who specials to be broadcast in the UK in 2009.

The ABC has also confirmed the Australian broadcast details of the 2008 Christmas special on its website.

Thanks to TV Tonight and the contributors to the Australian forums.

The official BBC press launch for the forthcoming Doctor Who Christmas special, "The Next Doctor", was held in London today. A somewhat lower-key affair than the corresponding events of previous years, the event has nonetheless managed to attract a good deal of media coverage on television, radio, online and in print. Readers are warned that any or all of the following links may contain spoilers for "The Next Doctor".

SFX Magazine have posted a spoiler-free review of the episode, which they describe as "not an out-and-out classic episode, but it is great Christmas entertainment. And it does have a few classic moments." OffTheTelly describes how outgoing BBC Controller of Fiction Jane Tranter implored journalists "to promise not to tell anyone else what to make of that. The ability of Doctor Who is to ask big questions and keep everybody guessing. Please enter into the spirit of that, and allow everyone to keep asking questions."

Gareth McLean, writing for The Guardian, describes the episode as "a lot better than last year – a lot – and not just because David Morrissey is a magnificent actor and a lot easier on the eye than Kylie Minogue. For a start, The Next Doctor is about something. It has a proper story (as opposed to a surfeit of CGI), some lovely sharp lines and self-referential moments that, mostly, aren't self-indulgent." Michael Deacon in The Telegraph says the episode is "a blizzard of action... Much of the plot is devoted to the relationship – at times amusing, at times poignant – between these two Doctors, as we begin to learn the life story of Morrissey’s character."

Writer Russell T Davies appeared in the last half-hour of BBC Radio 5 Live's Victoria Derbyshire programme to discuss the special, and also popped up on television on the BBC News channel's coverage of the press launch.

According to the Doctor Who Blog the version of Series Four season finale Journey's End that will air tonight on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation tonight at 9pm will be edited down to 44 minutes. The unedited 63 version of the episode will be available for viewing on the CBC website tomorrow morning, Saturday December 13th.

Visit www.cbc.ca/doctorwho to watch streaming episodes of Series Four of Doctor Who online (available from Canada only).

UPDATE - DECEMBER 13: The Doctor Who Information Network has posted a list on their website of what was edited out of Journey's End on the CBC.

The BBC Press Office has confirmed that The Next Doctor will air on BBC One on Christmas Day. It is scheduled to go out at 6pm and will last an hour.

Doctor Who At The Proms, which features highlights from the concert that took place at the Royal Albert Hall in London on July 27, will be broadcast on New Year's Day on BBC One. It starts at 1.50pm and, again, lasts an hour. The programme will include Music of the Spheres - the specially-filmed scene featuring the Doctor and the Graske, which was written by Russell T Davies.

The official BBC YouTube page has put online a trailer showing various highlights from the drama programming to be broadcast on BBC One this Christmas holiday season. Only available to viewers in the UK, the trailer shows various clips from the forthcoming Doctor Who Christmas special episode, "The Next Doctor", interspersed with highlights from various other programmes.

It should be noted that a shot some fans have mistakenly assumed to be of Billie Piper, seen peering through a letterbox, is in fact actress Sheridan Smith from the "Jonathan Creek" Christmas special.