The first sneak preview for The Day of The Doctor has now been revealed on the 50th Anniversary #SaveTheDay website. You can watch it via the picture link below:

Doctor Who has been honoured with a reception at Buckingham Palace to mark the series' fiftieth anniversary.

The reception was attended by past Doctors Tom Baker and Peter Davison as well as the current incumbent Matt Smith and The War Doctor John Hurt.

Held at the official London residence and principal workplace of the British monarch, the reception was hosted by Sophie, Countess of Wessex, the daughter-in-law of the Queen.

Also attending were current showrunner Steven Moffat, today celebrating his 52nd birthday, and current companion Jenna Coleman. The event was held in the Bow Room of the Palace, which had been decked out with Daleks and a TARDIS in honour of the event.

Former companion Catherine Tate was also invited as well as senior members of BBC management including Director General Lord Hall and Director of Television Danny Cohen.

Also present were children from two Cardiff schools, Gladstone Primary and Mount Stuart Primary, who entered a local competition to design a Tardis for the Queen. One of the winners, Hafza Hassan, 10, had painted a gold-plated time machine with a Union flag door, while Emily Parnce, 11, had included a dog flap for the Queen's corgis and an illuminated crown on the roof.

The status of the last part of the Destiny of the Doctor series, The Time Machine, had been uncertain since the series publisher AudioGo entered administration last month; however, the series producers Big Finish have now announced that they will be releasing the final adventure on CD and download, completing the collection which kicked off in January with Hunters of Earth.


For more details, see the Big Finish website.

The extra content for the DVD and Blu-ray release of The Day of the Doctor was revealed today - including another mini-episode.

BBC Worldwide said the 50th-anniversary episode would be accompanied by the following:

• The Night of the Doctor mini-episode
• The Last Day - a second mini-episode
• Doctor Who Explained
• Behind The Lens
• The Day of the Doctor TV trailer
• 50 Years of Doctor Who trailer

The release will also contain English subtitles for the hard of hearing, audio description, and audio navigation. The main feature will have a 5.1 soundtrack.

It will be released for Region 2 (the UK, rest of Europe, and Ireland) on Monday 2nd December (pre-order DVD, Blu-ray), and for Region 1 (USA and Canada) on Tuesday 3rd December (pre-order DVD, Blu-ray/DVD combo - two discs). Please note that the Blu-ray release will play normally on both 3D and standard Blu-ray players but the 3D will only work on a Blu-ray 3D player. Release dates for other regions are unknown at the moment.

A behind-the-scenes report on The Day of the Doctor was shown on BBC One's Breakfast today.

Presented by entertainment correspondent Lizo Mzimba, the four-minute piece included interviews with Matt Smith, David Tennant, John Hurt, and Jenna Coleman.

Watch the report below. (NB: May not play outside the UK.)

The BBC and BBC America have released a number of new publicity images to promote the forthcoming The Day of The Doctor; this batch includes images of Matt Smith, David Tennant and John Hurt as the Doctor, with Jenna Coleman as Clara, Billie Piper as Rose, and Ingrid Oliver as Osgood.

Today BBC Radio Four Extra begins a week of celebrations for the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who with a reading of the very first Doctor Who novelisation.

Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks was first published in 1964, adapted by the series' script editor David Whitaker from the first Dalek story written by Terry Nation. The story was republished by Target Books in 1973, kicking off the range which would introduce a generation of fans born in the sixties and seventies to the eras of the first and second Doctors.

The story, intended to work as a standalone, is told from the viewpoint of Ian Chesterton and has a very different meeting between the Doctor and his future companions than that of the television series.

The Audiogo recording is read by William Russell, who played Ian in the TV series. The broadcast begins at 1800 GMT on Saturday with the first two episodes. The full adaptation is broadcast between 0000 GMT and 0430 GMT on Sunday.

The broadcast kicks off a week of Doctor Who programming on the station. Radio Four Extra can be heard worldwide via the BBC Website.

• Sunday - Protect and Survive - 1800 GMT & 0000 GMT
In this drama the Seventh Doctor (played by Sylvester McCoy) and his young companions Hex and Ace are plunged into the late '80s, where history has gone terrifyingly wrong, with the world trembling on the brink of a final terrible war.
• Monday - Fanfare for the Common Men - 1800 GMT & 0000 GMT
A four-part drama featuring the Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison). The Doctor's young companion Nyssa is unfamiliar with the Earth's musical heritage, but in a trip back to the '60s the Beatles are nowhere to be seen and their role has been taken by the Common Men.
• Tuesday - A Thousand Tiny Wings - 1800 GMT & 0000 GMT
A full-cast audio drama in which the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) arrives in a remote homestead during the period of Kenyan independence in December 1963 and is reunited with an old acquaintance – an ex-Nazi called Klein.
• Wednesday - Farewell Great Macedon - 1800 GMT & 0000 GMT
Based on an unproduced television script and brought to life through a combination of performance and narration. The original team of the First Doctor and companions Ian, Barbara and Susan step out from the TARDIS into the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and meet Alexander the Great.
• Thursday - Human Resources - 1800 GMT & 0000 GMT
A full-cast drama featuring the Eighth Doctor (played by Paul McGann). The two-part story explains the on-going mystery of Lucie Miller (Sheridan Smith), paired off with the Doctor in a witness protection programme.
• Friday - The Dalek Invasion of Earth - 1800 GMT & 0000 GMT
A reading by William Russell (Ian Chesterton in the original TV serial on which the story is based). This is one of the classic Doctor Who stories featuring the First Doctor and set in an occupied Britain.
• Saturday - Doctor Who special – Who Made Who - 0900 GMT & 1600 GMT
Tracy-Ann Oberman is the guide on a journey back to a time before Time Lords. Interviewees include Doctor Who writers Charlie Higson and Al Hennen and William Hartnell's grand-daughter Jessica Carney. Featured programmes include The Reunion, which gathers the original 1963 cast, and Whatever Happened to . . . Susan Foreman? which tries to solve the mystery of the Doctor's original travelling companion, his grand-daughter.
• Sunday - Lucie Miller - 0000 GMT
An Eighth Doctor adventure starring Paul McGann, Sheridan Smith and Graeme Garden.
• Monday - To the Death - 0000 GMT
The Time Lord calls on friends, family and the Monk to help overthrow the Dalek occupation of Earth. This Eighth Doctor adventure stars Paul McGann, Sheridan Smith and Graeme Garden.

BBC Three launched its Doctor Who: Greatest Monsters & Villains Weekend on Friday evening, a ten part series looking back at some of the greatest monsters of the series, hosted by stand up comic & impractical joker, Joel Dommett.

The format features a three minute potted history of the featured villain, followed by the screening of an appropriate episode of Doctor Who. Episode 1 featured the Judoon and was followed by a screening of Smith and Jones. It achieved an overnight viewing figure of 0.37 million viewers, a 1.7% share of the total TV audience. Episode 2 was dedicated to The Silurians and featured A Good Man Goes To War. It achieved an overnight viewing figure of 0.42 million viewers, a 1.7% share of the total TV audience.

At number 8, episode 3 revolved around the the Ood and was followed by the 2008 story Planet of the Ood. It had 0.40 million viewers with 1.6% share. Finally for the evening, episode 4 looked at the Clockwork Droids and featured a screening of The Girl in the Fireplace. The episode had 0.55 million viewers with a 2.5% share.

BBC Three outrated the other digital channels for most of the evening, just edging ahead of ITV2 and ITV3.

Thursday's showing of The Science of Doctor Who had an Appreciation Index of 85. Buzzcocks: The Doctor Who Special had an AI of 82.

The twenty-ninth in our series of features telling the story of the creation of Doctor Who, and the people who made it happen.

By the middle of November, the show's opening serial had been recorded, and production was proceeding on the second - The Daleks, by Terry Nation.

On Saturday 16th November 1963, exactly fifty years ago today, the British public had their first glimpse of Doctor Who, when the first trailer for the new series was broadcast on BBC Television.

The trailer was shown at 5.40pm, sandwiched between an episode of the cartoon series Deputy Dawg, in which he tries to sell his vintage fire engine, and an episode of The Telegoons, the puppet show version of the radio's The Goon Show. The Doctor Who trailer no longer exists, but the script survives in the BBC archives.
As well as the television promo a radio version was also transmitted in the week before the series' debut. The BBC Publicity team was briefed about the show, with producer Verity Lambert putting out a rewritten memo based on the one issued by Donald Wilson back in July. Reflecting the unease about the series in the higher echelons of the BBC, the memo no longer talked about a programme running for 52 weeks, but just listed the titles of the first three stories. Lambert made a plea for the team to protect spoilers in the series.
Although thirteen episodes were now confirmed and a transmission date was fast approaching, the production team were still having to cope with a number of problems and an inherent resistance to the show from within the BBC. James Mudie, the Head of Scenic Servicing for Television, had been against the idea from the start, worried that late scripts and impossible demands would put undue pressure on his department and jeopardise other productions. In July, he had warned the management to "think twice about proceeding with a weekly series of this nature."

Things came to a head in early November when the Controller of Programme Services, Ian Atkins, decided that the spaceship set was too heavy and cumbersome and needed to be simplified. It was taking too long to be rigged in the studio whenever it was needed, and would have to be redesigned. Mudie jumped on this memo and asked Head of Design J Beynon-Lewis and the designer of the current story in production, Raymond Cusick, to proceed with this as a matter of urgency: "in its present form it is obstructing the night setting operations for the whole of the Television Service."

Cusick informed Lambert of the instructions for the redesign he had been given. Although she had no strong objection, she was adamant that the costs for the redesign should not come from Doctor Who's budget but should be paid for by the design department, as the fault lay with original designer Peter Brachacki. Lambert was not happy that she had been bypassed in the decision process and not included in the memo to Cusick. She complained to her superior, Wilson: "No copy of Mr Mudie's memo was sent to me and instructions were issued to the designer without reference to me, in spite of the fact that no provision of man hours or money has been made for this by anybody up to the present time."

On Friday 15th November the first episode of The Dead Planet was recorded at Lime Grove Studio D, although the following week it would be discovered that the episode was not quite as ready for transmission as had been thought . . .

Throughout the problems, one man remained buoyant, fully behind the series and its untried production team. On Friday 15th November Head of Television Drama Sydney Newman sent Wilson the following memo.

The BBC's annual fundraising event Children in Need is in full swing tonight, and at 7:55pm it was the Doctor's turn to encourage people to donate to the cause with an exclusive clip from the 50th Anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor; the clip featured Matt Smith as the Doctor, Jenna Coleman as Clara, Jemma Redgrave as Kate, plus David Tennant as the Doctor and a very brief glimpse of Joanna Page as Elizabeth!