Timeout: Easter Collectible Cover Offer

Thursday, 28 April 2011 - Reported by Chuck Foster

To celebrate the return of Doctor Who, last week's Timeout London (21-27 April) published six different covers depicting the characters from The Impossible Astronaut - previewed in that issue - plus interviews with the stars and head writer Steven Moffat.

The magazine is now offering all six covers online worldwide as a collectors set, which can bought via their Timeout Shop.



Previously, the magazine celebrated Doctor Who in December 2009, when it published covers for each the ten Doctors that had played the role to date.




FILTER: - Magazines

Who to Watch tomorrow!

Thursday, 28 April 2011 - Reported by Chuck Foster
Tomorrow sees several channels dedicated to coverage of the Royal Wedding; however, as an alternative, you could always experience the first few adventures of the Ninth Doctor instead, with digital channel Watch broadcasting Rose, The End of the World, Aliens of London/World War 3, The Long Game and Father's Day from 10:00am!


Alternatively, you can watch The Doctor gate-crash a different wedding in the morning, with the CBBC channel broadcasting the compilation version of The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith between 9:00-10:00am!




FILTER: - Miscellaneous

Doctor Who Experience: Royal Wedding Offer

Thursday, 28 April 2011 - Reported by Chuck Foster
The Doctor Who Experience have made a special offer on tickets available in celebration of the Royal Wedding taking place tomorrow - for Friday 29th April only, tickets can be purchased for just £4.29 (plus fees)!


Tickets may booked from the Experience website, and are subject to availability.


 




FILTER: - Special Events

The Doctor's Wife - Press Details

Thursday, 28 April 2011 - Reported by Marcus
The BBC have released press details for episode four of the current series, The Doctor's Wife, written by Neil Gaiman and directed by Richard Clark
Doctor Who: The Doctor's WifeThe Doctor receives a distress signal from an old friend. Could there really be another living Time Lord out there? Hopes raised, he follows the signal to a junkyard planet sitting upon a mysterious asteroid in a Bubble universe, populated by a very strange family, as the time-travelling drama continues.

The Doctor, Amy and Rory are given the warmest of welcomes by Auntie, Uncle and Nephew. But the beautiful and insane Idris greets them in a more unusual fashion – what is she trying to tell the Doctor? As the Doctor investigates, he unwittingly puts his friends in the gravest danger.

The Doctor is played by Matt Smith, Amy by Karen Gillan, Rory by Arthur Darvill and Idris by Suranne Jones.

The programme is due to be broadcast in the UK on Saturday 14th May at a time to be confirmed next week.

Meanwhile it has been confirmed that the UK Broadcast of Episode Three: The Curse of the Black Spot will be at the slightly later time of 6.15pm. It will again be sandwiched between Don't Scare the Hare and So You think You Can Dance. ITV1 will show New People Do the Funniest Things.




FILTER: - Series 6/32 - Broadcasting

The Hand of Fear to be repeated

Tuesday, 26 April 2011 - Reported by Chuck Foster
The Radio Times have reported that The Hand of Fear is to be broadcast as a tribute to the late Elisabeth Sladen; the story was her last appearance as series regular Sarah Jane Smith alongside Tom Baker's portrayal as The Doctor.

The story will be broadcast on BBC4, with parts one and two on at 7:40pm and 8:05pm respectively on Monday 9th, and parts three and four in the same timeslots the following evening.



Episode details may be found both on the Radio Times and from our own Doctor Who Guide.




FILTER: - Classic Series - Sarah Jane - Elisabeth Sladen

Impossible Astronaut scores AI of 88

Tuesday, 26 April 2011 - Reported by Marcus
Doctor Who: Impossible AstronautDoctor Who: The Impossible Astronaut, scored an Appreciation Index figure of 88, one of the highest figures of the weekend.

The Appreciation Index, or AI figures 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.

The score is the joint highest ever received for a series opener, Smith and Jones also scored 88. Last year only two episodes managed a score of 88 or above. Only Lewis on ITV1 scored higher over the weekend, with the show preceding Doctor Who, Don't Scare the Hare receiving one of the lowest scores on record, 46.

In a measure of how successful Doctor Who was over the weekend, no programme on Sunday managed to get more than 6 million watching, including Coronation Street which had 5.9 million viewers; this means Doctor Who remains in 13th position for the week, one which will rise when final figures are released.

David Tennant's performance in United had an audience of 3.2 million on BBC Two/BBC HD.




FILTER: - Ratings - UK - Series 6/32

BAFTA nomination for Matt Smith

Tuesday, 26 April 2011 - Reported by Anthony Weight
Matt Smith has been nominated for the British Academy Television Award (BAFTA) for Best Actor for his performance as the Eleventh Doctor in the 2010 series of Doctor Who - the first time in the programme's history that one of its leads has been nominated for this prestigious award. He is up against Benedict Cumberbatch (for BBC One's Sherlock, created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss), former Comic Relief Doctor Jim Broadbent (for Channel 4's Any Human Heart) and Daniel Rigby (for BBC Two biopic Eric and Ernie).

The BAFTA Awards are the most prestigious awards given in the British television industry, analogous to the Primetime Emmy Awards in the United States. The winners of most of the categories, including the one in which Smith is nominated, are decided by a jury of industry experts. Doctor Who last triumphed at the main ceremony in 2006, when the first season of the new series, starring Christopher Eccleston, won the Best Drama Series category, and the programme also took home the viewer-voted Audience Award, and Russell T Davies was given the honorary Dennis Potter Award for achievement in television writing. The 2008 series, starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate, was also nominated for the Best Drama Series category at the 2009 awards, but lost out to BBC One's British version of Wallander.

The series and its personnel have, however, won several awards at the BAFTA Cymru and BAFTA Craft Awards ceremonies since Doctor Who returned to the screens in 2005, including the Best Writer Award for Steven Moffat in 2008. The winners of this year's main BAFTA Awards will be announced at a ceremony on Sunday 22nd May, at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London. BBC News has a report on the nominations.





FILTER: - Matt Smith - Awards/Nominations

Record Ratings for BBC America and SPACE

Tuesday, 26 April 2011 - Reported by Marcus
Doctor Who: BBC AmericaBBC Worldwide have revealed that the series premier of Doctor Who broke new records for BBC America giving the channel its highest-rated, most-watched telecast ever in Live + Same Day ratings.

Altogether Doctor Who delivered almost 1.3 million viewers in the states, a rise of 71,000 viewers over last season’s opening episode The Eleventh Hour.

The channel also notes
  • Viewership across all of BBC America's Doctor Who YouTube content reached an all-time high of 3.5 million views.
  • The official debut of Doctor Who on Tumblr reached over 10,000 followers in two weeks.
  • Doctor Who is currently the number 1 TV series on the iTunes store.
  • BBCAmerica.com pulled in its largest traffic ever. On its best day, Saturday, April 23, 74% of users were new visitors to the site.


Meanwhile across the border on SPACE, a record 538,000 total viewers watched the premier in Canada, up 3% over the previous most-watched Doctor Who episode, making The Impossible Astronaut the most-watched SPACE broadcast this year.

The premiere also broke records among several key demographics including Adults 18-49 (up 7% with 292,000 viewers); Women 25-54 (up 50% with 111,000 viewers); and Women 18-49 (up 62% with 114,000 viewers).




FILTER: - USA - Ratings - BBC America - Series 6/32

Doctor Who nominations in 2011 Hugo Awards

Monday, 25 April 2011 - Reported by Chuck Foster
Following a long tradition, Doctor Who is once again been nominated for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form in the annual Hugo Awards. This year sees A Christmas Carol (written by Steven Moffat), The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang (also by Moffat), and Vincent and the Doctor (Richard Curtis) vying for the award, up against The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan and **** Me, Ray Bradbury by Rachel Bloom.

Since its return in 2005, Doctor Who has only been beaten once in this category: Steven Moffat was successful for the first three years with The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances (2006), The Girl in the Fireplace (2007) and Blink (2008); 2009 was the 'gap' year with Moffat's Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead and Russell T Davies's Turn Left losing out to Joss Whedon's Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog; last year saw Davies and Phil Ford win the award with The Waters of Mars.

Also nominated for an award in the Best Related Work section is the book Chicks Digs Time Lords, A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It, published by Mad Norwegian Press. In the book a host of award-winning female novelists, academics and actresses come together to celebrate the phenomenon that is Doctor Who, discuss their inventive involvement with the show’s fandom and examine why they adore the series.

This year's award winners will be revealed on Saturday 20th August at Renovation, the 69th World Science Fiction convention taking place at Reno, Nevada over that weekend.




FILTER: - Steven Moffat - Awards/Nominations

Impossible Astronaut - Overnight Ratings

Sunday, 24 April 2011 - Reported by Marcus
Doctor Who: The Impossible Astronaut was watched by 6.5 million viewers, according to unofficial overnight figures.

The programme which has a share of 37% of the total audience, was the highest rated show on BBC One for the day, a remarkable achievement given the early timeslot and the excellent bank holiday weather across the UK. It was more than two million viewers ahead of the next programme on BBC One, Casualty.

Overall it was the second highest rated programme on all TV with Britain's Got Talent on ITV1 taking the top slot with 9.5 million watching. Against Doctor Who, March of the Dinosaurs had an average audience of just 1.3 million watching.

To show what a draw Doctor Who is, the programme preceding it had just 1.9 million watching. The BBC One audience jumped from 2.2 to 6.0 million as Doctor Who began, with the audience growing throughout the programme and an average of 7 million watching the final fifteen minutes. At the end of the show, over half of the viewers left BBC One, with the channel seeing its audience plunge from 7.0 million to 3.2 million.

Of the 6.5million viewers watching Doctor Who, 0.76 million watched on BBC HD.

On BBC Three, Doctor Who Confidential had 0.55 million viewers, with an additional 40,000 watching on BBC HD.

On CBBC 0.71 million tuned in for the tribute to Elisabeth Sladen, My Sarah Jane, a 4.1% share of the total audience.

Doctor Who is currently the 13th highest rated show for the week. Final figures, including those who recorded the show and watched it later, will be released next week.




FILTER: - Ratings - UK - Series 6/32