Katy Manning has been talking to SFX about her feelings on returning to the role of Jo Grant 37 years after she made her television farewell to the character in The Green Death.

In the interview she talks about her delight in being asked to work on the show.
The magazine also contains a report on the read through which took place last Monday. They describe the script as very moving, with echoes of School Reunion and absolutely stuffed to the gills with in-jokes and little nods for the fans.

The British Board of Film Classification has cleared a trailer for a forthcoming double DVD release of Revenge of the Cybermen and Silver Nemesis.

Revenge of the Cybermen is a fourth Doctor story first shown in 1975. As well as Tom Baker it stars Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith and Ian Marter as Harry Sullivan. Written by Gerry Davis, the co-creator of the Cybermen, and Robert Holmes, the story is set on Nerva Beacon and on Voga the fabled planet of gold. It was the first story for the Cybermen since they appeared in the 1968 second Doctor story The Invasion and their last until Earthshock in 1982. Other cast members include Ronald Leigh-Hunt, Christopher Robbie, Jeremy Wilkin, William Marlowe, Michael Wisher, Kevin Stoney and David Collings. This story was the first Doctor Who story to be released on VHS in October 1983 with a retail price of £39.99.

Silver Nemesis was a seventh Doctor story, first shown in 1988. Alongside Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor, the story starred Sophie Aldred as Ace. Written by Kevin Clarke the story was part of the 25th year celebrations for the series. Other cast members included David Banks, Mark Hardy, Anton Diffring, Courtney Pine, Fiona Walker and a special appearance from film star Dolores Gray. In 1993 an extended version of this three-part serial was released on VHS. It is understood that this special edition will not be included on the DVD release, nor, due to rights issues, will the accompanying VHS documentary.

There is no date announced for this release, but the classification of the trailer indicates the stories are likely to be available in July.

The premier Canadian showing of The Eleventh Hour, was watched by an average of 0.47 million viewers according to BBM Canada. It was the number 1 non-sports specialty program of the day.

The programme had nearly a million viewers who watched at least part of the episode. During the broadcast, SPACE hosted a live chat on spacecast.com featuring a panel of Doctor Who experts, including Innerspace reporter Natasha Eloi, Sanctuary star Robin Dunne and award-winning artist Pia Guerra. The two and a half-hour chat clocked up 1,300 comments, paralleling the number of comments made in The Juno Awards chatroom the previous night on CTV.ca. The episode is available for the next four days on demand at spacecast.com.

Doctor Who on BBC America has broken records for the channel with 1.2 million viewers watching the series premier, The Eleventh Hour last Saturday evening.

The audience was for those watching Live or Same Day and aged above 2.

The programme also gave the channel its best Live + Same Day audience in the 25-54 age group and ranked BBC America number 2 among all ad-supported cable networks in its time period for this age group. The rating is higher than that achieved by the SyFy channel in this age group for the season premiers of Series 1-4.

Doctor Who is also currently the Number 1 TV series in the US and Canadian iTunes store.

The BBC Press Office has announced that The Sarah Jane Adventures will have two special guests when it returns for a fourth series this autumn. In a special two-part story written by Russell T Davies, Matt Smith will appear as the Doctor, and Katy Manning will guest as the Doctor's former companion Jo Grant. Manning starred in Doctor Who opposite the Third Doctor, Jon Pertwee, from 1971 to 1973. Manning has recorded audio adventures for Big Finish Productions, but this will be the first time she has played Jo Grant on television in thirty-seven years.

The press release includes reactions from Elisabeth Sladen, who plays Sarah Jane Smith, Manning, and Sarah Jane Adventures executive producer Nikki Wilson:

Final figures for The Beast Below published today by BARB show the story was watched by 8.42 million viewers.

The total is once more much higher than the initial overnight reported figure, implying many time-shifted the episode.

On BBC One the story had 7.93 million watching, enough to make the story the fifth most watched on the channel for the week, behind four editions of EastEnders, and the eleventh most watched on all British television. However an additional 494,000 people watched the simulcast on BBC HD, the identical audience to the week before. This gave the story a total audience 8.42 million, making it the tenth most watched overall.

On BBC Three the Sunday repeat had 0.82 million watching and was the sixteenth most watched programme on multi-channel for the week.

Sticker collectibles producer Topps will be releasing a new edition of their Doctor Who Stickers and Album collection, "following the Eleventh Doctor and his brand new assistant on their amazing journey through time and space".

Ruth Leonard, Entertainment Marketing Director, Topps Europe, said:

As well as the new Doctor, the new collection will also feature the 2009 specials, and also the most popular characters in the series, aliens, Cybermen, and of course the Daleks. There will be some 260 stickers in total to collect, with the 48 page album also featuring an A2 wall chart.

The collection is expected to launch during the first week of May.

Victory of the Daleks scored an Appreciation Index figure of 84.

The AI or Appreciation Index or AI score is a measure of how much an audience enjoyed a programme. Although the score is slightly lower than recent episodes of Doctor Who, it is still one of the highest scores of the day.

Doctor Who Confidential had an AI figure of 85.

The Sunday repeat had an audience of 0.59 million watching.

With the whole week's ratings now available, Doctor Who currently is seventeenth for the week. This will almost certainly rise when the final figures are reported next week.

The BBC has released a trailer for Episode Four of the new series, The Time of Angels.

The episode is written by Steven Moffat and stars Alex Kingston as River Song, Simon Dutton as Alistair and Iain Glen as Father Octavian. It can be seen in the UK next Saturday at 6.20pm on BBC One and BBC HD.

Victory of the Daleks was watched by 6.2 million viewers, according to unofficial overnight figures.

With a share of 32.7% the rating is the second highest of the day. Britain's Got Talent stole the night with 10.6 million viewers and a 44% share of the audience. Doctor Who was still nearly a million viewers ahead of the third placed programme, the BBC News.

An additional 231,000 watched the later showing on BBC HD, although as the showing wasn't simulcast the figures won't be added together.

Doctor Who is currently sixteenth for the week, a position which should rise when the official ratings are released next week.

On BBC Three, Doctor Who Confidential was watched by 0.59 million with a share of 3.1%. An additional 0.12 million watched on BBC HD.