This month sees the seventeenth annual National Television Awards take place at London's O2 Arena on Wednesday 26th January.

Last year saw Doctor Who win the Best Drama category, with outgoing Doctor David Tennant winning the Best Drama Performer award. After nominations took place in the summer, this year's shortlist reflects the same category entries, with the series in the Drama category and new Doctor Matt Smith up for Drama Performance.

However, Steven Moffat's other big series of 2010, Sherlock is also in the frame, with the show up against Doctor Who in Drama, and its star Benedict Cumberbatch in the Drama Performance category.

The final round of voting is currently open and results will be revealed live on ITV1 from 7:30pm.


The NTAs can also be followed on Twitter at @officialntas.

Sources are reporting that A Christmas Carol achieved a final rating of 12.11 million viewers with a 41.8% share of the total TV Audience.

The figure puts Doctor Who as the 3rd most watched programme of Christmas Day and is the fourth highest rating for the series since it returned in 2005. Only Voyage of Damned, The Next Doctor and The End of Time Part Two scored higher.

Final figures for the whole of Christmas week will be published later in the week by BARB.

The programme has been available on the BBC iPlayer for the past week and has so far been accessed 750,000 times. It is the fourth most requested programme in Christmas week, behind two episodes of Top Gear and Come Fly With Me.

The BBC One repeat of the 2009 Christmas special, The End of Time Part One, had an audience of 1.4 million viewers according to unofficial overnight figures.

The programme which stars David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor, Bernard Cribbins as Wilfred Mott and John Simm as The Master, had a 9.8% share of the audience and was level with Midsomer Murders on ITV1.

The repeat series continued today on BBC One with The End of Time Part Two.

The BBC One repeat of the 2009 Easter special, Planet of the Dead, had an audience of 1.3 million viewers according to unofficial overnight figures.

The programme which stars David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor, Michelle Ryan as Christina and Lee Evans as Malcolm, had a 12.5% share of the audience and won its timeslot.

The repeat series continued today on BBC One with The End of Time Part One which, along with the rest of the repeat season, is available on the BBC iPlayer..

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2011, and a new showreel from the BBC has been released highlighting shows coming up in the new year, which of course strongly features the forthcoming series of Doctor Who:

The official Torchwood Facebook page has added new a synopsis for Torchwood: The New World.

It does contain spoilers but if you do want to know just click 'reveal' to view the the new details.




Jane Epenson (Writer for three episodes of The New World) recently confirmed on her Twitter page that a read-through of the first episode is due to take place sometime next week.

The repeat of the 2008 Christmas special, The Next Doctor, had an audience of 1.3 million viewers according to unofficial overnight figures.

The programme which stars David Tennant as the tenth Doctor and David Morrissey as Jackson Lake, had a 12.0% share of the audience and won its timeslot.

The repeat series continues today on BBC One with Planet of the Dead showing at 1.10pm.

Matt Smith tells Now Magazine that he isn't worried about being type-cast: "playing the Doctor hasn't prevented Christopher Eccleston or David Tennant from taking on other parts." He also commented on the length of Karen's Gillan skirts in the series: "I know those short skirts caused a furore but I say bring them on. I see nothing wrong with celebrating women and their sexiness. There's absolutely nothing exploitative or demeaning about it."

Karen Gillan made a special appearance on Monday at her old haunt the Eden Court Theatre in Inverness, where she was called onto the stage to help clean it and then get gunked in goo as part of the show's "grotty totty". Says theatre marketing manager Laurie Piper: "all the way through the show the writer, Iain Laughlan, incorporated 23 Dr Who jokes, so some audience members might have had an idea what was going on. When Karen was called on to the stage, the kids loved it and everyone was delighted. She did it in great spirit." The actress recently became Arts Education Ambassador at the theatre. [Aberdeen Press and Journal]

John Barrowman has had to pull out of his pantomime Aladdin (SECC, Glasgow); the theatre reports: "In terms of future performances, as time goes on it is a case of evaluating his health prior to a performance to see if he is match-fit. John is genuinely disappointed at not being able to make the performances he has missed due to the flu virus – he is a professional who will always perform should he be able to. He is doing everything he can to make a full recovery." Meanwhile, his role is being played by his cousin Greg Barrowman. [Glasgow Evening Times, Herald Scotland]

Former Doctor David Tennant came fourth in a poll of the "most sexy celebrity in glasses", carried out by the College of Optometrists. He was beaten by fashion designer Gok Wan, actor Johnny Depp and comedian Alan Carr.

Finally, the New Years Honours list sees a couple of Doctor Who guest stars honoured: Burt Kwouk (Lin Futu, Four to Doomsday) is to be awarded an OBE and actress Sheila Hancock (Helen A, The Happiness Patrol) will receive a CBE for services to drama. [more details and video for Hancock at BBC News]

Big Finish are offering a free download of Rise and Fall from Doctor Who: Short Trips Volume I. More details from their blog post below.


Download it from here (MP3)

The two stories comprising The Mara Tales will be released in North America as separate stories on April 12, 2011. Kinda and Snakedance feature the Fifth Doctor and are released as a boxset in the UK a month earlier.

Meanwhile it has been confirmed that Australia will see the release of the Third Doctor story, The Mutants, on February 3, 2011, just a few days after its UK release.

2|entertain have announced, via their Twitter feed, that they hope to launch a YouTube channel in January on with they will post trailers and additional material made to complement the release of classic Doctor Who DVDs.

For full details of the global DVD release schedule see our product page.