The Doctor's Wife had an Appreciation Index or AI of 87.

The score was the second highest of Saturday night on the four main channels with only The Comedy Genius of John Sullivan on BBC Two scoring higher.

The Appreciation Index, or AI is a measure of how much the audience enjoyed the programme. It is a score out of 100 based on responses from a 5,000 strong panel. A score above 85 is considered excellent.

On Sunday two programmes had higher overnight viewing figures than Doctor Who, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and Countryfile, pushing Doctor Who into 22nd place on overnight figures. Final figures will be released next week.

The BBC Three repeat had 0.57 million viewers.

Neil Gaiman, author of Saturday's Doctor Who episode, The Doctor's Wife, will be answering questions on the story, live on the Guardian blog on Monday afternoon.

Questions can be left via the comments section on the newspaper's website. The live chat takes place at 4pm UK time, 1500GMT.

Gaiman posted on twitter had received around 20,000 tweets after the episode. He said his favourite thing about the day was seeing TARDIS trending in the UK, US & Canada.


Update: the Q&A session may be found here.

Doctor Who: The Curse of the Black Spot had an official consolidated audience of 7.85 million viewers, according to figures released by BARB.

The programme has a 35.5% share of the total audience available at that time.

The number includes those who recorded the programme for viewing within seven days of its initial showing. The figure is much larger than the initially reported overnight figure. A full report for the week, which will reveal the shows position in the weekly charts will be released by BARB tomorrow.

The figures do not include those watching on iPlayer, where just under 1 million have accessed the programme within the first week of transmission.

The Curse of the Black Spot has debuted in Australia to excellent ratings. TV Tonight reports that the episode averaged 837,000 viewers in the five major capital cities. It won its national timeslot, was the top-rating drama of the day and the fourth highest rating programme for the day overall. The corresponding Confidential Cutdown also rated a solid 575,000 viewers in the five major capitals. Meanwhile, the previous week, Day of the Moon averaged 895,000 viewers in the five major capital cities. Again, it was the top-rating drama of the day and the fifth highest rating programme for the day overall. The corresponding Confidential Cutdown also rated an excellent 672,000 viewers in the five major capitals. The Impossible Astronaut averaged 865,000 viewers in the five major capital cities. Again, it was the top-rating drama of the day and the fourth highest rating programme for the day overall. The corresponding Confidential Cutdown also rated a strong 634,000 viewers in the five major capitals.

The BBC have now released trailers and previews for the forthcoming fifth episode of Doctor Who, The Rebel Flesh, the first of a two-part story written by Matthew Graham.

---

 
The Rebel Flesh will premiere on BBC1/BBC1HD at 6:45pm, 21st May in the United Kingdom; then follows on SPACE in Canada at 8:00pm ET, BBC America in the United States at 9:00pm ET, and on ABC1 in Australia at 7:30pm on the 28th May.


 

5.9 million viewers watched episode four of Doctor Who: The Doctor's Wife, according to unofficial overnight figures.

The story, written by Neil Gaiman, attracted 28.6% of the overnight audience and was the third watched programme of the day. The most watched programme was The Eurovision Song Contest 2011 with 9.4 million watching which pushed Britain's Got Talent into second place.

Doctor Who once more drew many viewers to BBC One with the audience rising from 3.6 million to 5.9 million as the programme started and then dropping back from 6.2 million to 3.3 million when it finished.

Against Doctor Who, New Animals Do the Funniest Things on ITV1 had 3.2 million watching.

Doctor Who currently stands as the twentieth most watched programme of the week.

The overnight figure is based on the published timeslot, which was 6.30pm - 7.20pm and so is dragged down slightly by the following programme. Final ratings, based on the exact time broadcast, and including those who record the programme for later viewing, should be available next Sunday.

ON BBC Three / BBC HD Doctor Who Confidential had 716,000 watching, the highest rating of the series so far.

Back in March, the BBC announced their Script to Screen competition, which opened for entries on 23rd April to tie in with the return of Doctor Who to television.

The aim of the competition is to submit a three minute script that can be acted out in the TARDIS console room featuring the Doctor, who will interact with a brand new human character (contemporary or historical), and/or one of either a Judoon, Cyberman, Ood or Weeping Angel.

The competition is open to primary schools, who may submit one script written by a group of 2-4 pupils (who must be aged between 9 and 11 before the 31st August). The script must be original and, and entirely the group's own, and has to be suitable for broadcast to a family audience including other children.

The writers of the winning script will get to travel to the BBC's Cardiff studio, where they will see their script brought to life by the Doctor Who team and cast including Matt Smith. Doctor Who Confidential will also be on hand to take viewers behind the scenes to show how the script gets developed from paper to big screen - from the first script meeting, a cast read-through, on set filming all the way to the final edit.


The BBC have also released a video introduction featuring the Doctor, Amy and Rory, plus 'real-life' observations on the writing process by head writer Steven Moffat and further suggestions by script editor Caroline Henry, executive producer Beth Willis, and producer Marcus Wilson.


The competition closes on 13th June 2011; visit the competition page for details on how schools can enter, and for full terms and conditions see BBC's Teachers website.

---

 
Neil Gaiman, award winning fantasy author and writer for the most recently broadcast episode, The Doctor's Wife, provides his own suggestions on how aspiring writers should approach writing a short script and for the character of the Doctor.

The BBC have released two videos by The Doctor's Wife writer Neil Gaiman, where he discusses scenes from the story that he enjoyed writing for the story, but ultimately were dropped from the final shooting script:

This is a quick round-up of recent news on David Tennant's filming projects.

BBC Radio 4 Extra - recently rebranded from BBC7 - will be bringing new adventures of the Fifth Doctor to radio next week. The series, created by Big Finish, stars Peter Davison as the Doctor, alongside his Season 20 co-stars Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Janet Fielding (Tegan) and Mark Strickson (Turlough).

The series kicks off on Monday 16th May with Cobwebs broadcast in four parts in the radio station's Seventh Dimension slot (6:00pm and midnight); the week is finished off on Friday with part one of the second adventure, The Whispering Forest. The full, continuous schedule can be found on the Radio 4 Extra website.

Cobwebs by Jonathan Morris You know what cobwebs mean. Spiders…” In search of a cure for a sickness that’s so far claimed six billion lives, scientist Nyssa arrives at an abandoned gene-tech facility on the toxic planet Helheim. ‘Hellhole’, more like. Nyssa’s not alone. The TARDIS has also been drawn to the Helheim base – and in its cobweb-coated corridors, she soon runs into the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough, her travelling companions of half a century past. But who, or what, has engineered this strange reunion? The Black Guardian, perhaps? The answer’s here, in the dark. With the Cractids. In the cobwebs.

The Whispering Forest by Stephen Cole The TARDIS arrives in alien woodlands, where a small group of humans hold tight against the the menace of the Takers – strange creatures who come by night to spirit away members of their settlement. But if there’s one thing that the inhabitants of Purity Bay fear more than the Takers, it’s the dirt and disease spread by strangers. Strangers like the Doctor, Tegan, Turlough and Nyssa… The fanatical Sister Mertil and her hygiene-obsessed acolytes are victims of a terrible corruption – but not in the way they think. Only the whispering forest knows the truth…

Full details on Cobwebs at Big Finish

Full details on The Whispering Forest at Big Finish

The Radio Times's David Brown writes in this week's issue: