Judoon - Overnight Viewing Figures

Monday, 27 January 2020 - Reported by Marcus

Fugitive of the Judoon: Judoon Captain (Credit: BBC Studios (James Pardon))

Doctor Who Fugitive of the Judoon, was watched by 4.21 million viewers in the UK yesterday according to unofficial overnight figures.

The rating, representing 21.2% of the total viewing audience made Doctor Who the sixth most popular show on British Television yesterday. Although it closed the gap, Doctor Who was beaten by its ITV opposition, Dancing on Ice, which had 4.42 million viewers.

Top for the day was Call the Midwife, with 6.51 million viewers. This week the lead into Doctor Who was The FA Cup which had 4.59 million watching. Meanwhile the drama The Trial of Christine Keeler had 3.78 million watching. The highest rated programme on ITV was Vera with 5.37 million viewers.

Doctor Who was the 39th highest rated programme for the week on overnight figures.

The overnight figure counts those who watched the show yesterday. Final figures, released next Monday, will include those who recorded the programme and watched it later and are likely to be substantially higher.

FILTER: - Ratings - Series 12/38 - UK

Zerinza Volume Three Out Now

Sunday, 26 January 2020 - Reported by Marcus

Zerinza Volume Three (Credit: Doctor Who Club of Australia (DWCA))

The Doctor Who Club of Australia (DWCA) has just released the third volume of its Zerinza yearbook series.

This third volume of Doctor Who fan publication Zerinza contains all-new interviews with K9 creator Bob Baker, non-fiction writer Robert Smith?, fiction writer Jon Blum, as well as fan audio creators Dallas Jones and Roger Reynolds.It also contains interviews from the archives (thanks to Antony Howe) with first producer Verity Lambert and Third Doctor companion Katy Manning.

Plus the publication delves behind the scenes on the making of a fan film, with both the script and an interview with the University of NSW Doctor Who Society on their work. Not to mention articles on a history of early Doctor Who fandom in Brisbane and a look at the links between Doctor Who and Bob Baker's 1980's opus Into the Labyrinth (which also featured scripts by Who luminaries Robert Holmes, John Lucarotti and Anthony Read).

Zerinza Volume Three is available now in paperback and hardcover editions from the DWCA Lulu shop.

FILTER: - Australia - Fan Productions

Fugitive of the Judoon - New Pictures

Thursday, 23 January 2020 - Reported by Marcus

The BBC has released new pictures from the upcoming episode of Doctor Who - Fugitive of the Judoon.

Written by Vinay Patel
Directed by Nida Manzoor
Starring Jodie Whittaker, Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole and Mandip Gill.

Guest starring Jo Martin, Neil Stuke and Ritu Aryać.

Ko Sho Blo! Trigger-happy space police the Judoon are targeting 21st-century Gloucester. The Doctor, Yaz, Ryan and Graham race back to Earth in order to prevent them doing too much damage to the cathedral city. But who are they looking for, and what did they do to incur the wrath of the Judoon?

The episode can be seen on BBC One at 7.10pm next Sunday. North American viewers can see it at 8pm ET, while in Australia the episode debut's is on Thursday at 8pm. In New Zealand, it can be seen at 9am, Monday morning, just a couple of hours after the UK showing.

Full broadcast details can be found here, and ongoing adventures of the Doctor can be found via This Week in Doctor Who.

COMING SOON | Doctor Who: Series 12

FILTER: - Production - Series 12/38 - Thirteenth Doctor

Doctor Who: Dark Universe

Tuesday, 21 January 2020 - Reported by Marcus

The latest audio release from Big Finish, the Seventh Doctor crossover story Doctor Who: Dark Universe is released today.

Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred and Mark Bonnar star in a brand new story that picks up the threads of the relationship between the Doctor and an older Ace, in her now grown-up role as CEO of A Charitable Earth,.

Doctor Who: Dark Universe is available now as a collector’s edition CD or on download at the Big Finish website from £12.99.

The Eleven has a plan. A grand plan. An appalling plan. A plan that endangers all life in the cosmos.

With Ace working against him, the Doctor must rely on scheming Time Lord Cardinal Ollistra for help. The stage is set for an epic confrontation.

Because the Doctor has a plan to stop the Eleven. A grand plan. An appalling plan. A plan that endangers all life in the cosmos.

Whichever one of them wins, the Dark Universe won’t want to lose

Mark Bonnar returns as the Eleven, a Time Lord psychopath in his eleventh incarnation who retains the personalities of all his previous incarnations, in his first chronological meeting with the Seventh Doctor.

Producer, David Richardson, said

I’d long planned that if ever I was in a position to make it happen, we’d do a story with the Seventh Doctor and the Eleven, and tell the lead-in to the first scenes in the Eighth Doctor series, Doom Coalition. So when Emma Haigh and I took over as joint producers on the Seventh Doctor stories this year, I leapt at the opportunity and asked script editor Matt Fitton to commission a script.

There’s a lot in Dark Universe – not only does it return to the Eleven’s story, it also shows what happens to Ace in her later life. And it features Ollistra and Rasmus, two characters who are important to our ongoing Time War series, plus it sets up other things too... It’s actually a pivotal release, for so many reasons.

Actor Mark Bonnar said

I was really pleased with the script as it gave a bit of the Eleven’s backstory. When I first played the Eleven, Sylvester was the Doctor who caught him. I’d met him previously because Sophie Aldred is a pal of mine, but it was really good to work with him as we hit it off pretty much straight away.

I really enjoyed being the Eleven with another Doctor this time – I hope there are plans to have him meet some of the other ones!

Doctor Who: Dark Universe is available now as a collector’s edition CD or on download at the Big Finish website from £12.99.

FILTER: - Big Finish - Seventh Doctor

Orphan 55 - Official Ratings

Monday, 20 January 2020 - Reported by Marcus

Orphan 55: Ryan (Tosin Cole), Yaz (Mandip Gill), Bella (Gia Re), The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) (Credit: BBC Studios (Ben Blackall))

Doctor Who, Orphan 55, had an official rating of 5.38 million viewers, according to figures released by the Broadcasting Research Audience Board, BARB.

The ratings make the episode the 10th most watched on BBC Television for the week and the 25th across all television. It had a 23.7% share of the total TV audience.

Doctor Who did beat the opposition on ITV, Dancing On Ice, which had 5.10 million viewers.

In detail 5.25 million watched the episode on a conventional TV set. However the BARB 4-Screen Dashboard shows that an additional 66,000 watched on their PC, 37,000 watched on a Tablet device and 29,000 watched on a smartphone.

Top for the week was Silent Witness on BBC One with 8.54 million watching.

Orphan 55 had an Appreciation Index score of 77

FILTER: - Ratings - Series 12/38 - UK

Doctor Who - Overnight Viewing Figures

Monday, 20 January 2020 - Reported by Marcus

Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror: Yaz (Mandip Gill), The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker), Ryan (Tosin Cole) (Credit: BBC Studios (Ben Blackall))

Doctor Who Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror, was watched by 4.04 million viewers in the UK yesterday according to unofficial overnight figures.

The rating, representing 20.0% of the total viewing audience made Doctor Who the sixth most popular show on British Television yesterday. Doctor Who was beaten by its ITV opposition, Dancing on Ice, which had 4.52 million viewers.

Top for the day was Call the Midwife, with 6.33 million viewers. Countryfile, the lead into Doctor Who, had 5.23 million. The drama The Trial of Christine Keeler had 3.46 million watching. The late News managed 4.38 million viewers, pushing The Doctor into sixth place.

The episode was the 50th highest rated programme for the week on overnight figures.

The overnight figure counts those who watched the show yesterday. Final figures, released next Monday, will include those who recorded the programme and watched it later and are likely to be substantially higher.

FILTER: - Ratings - Series 12/38 - UK

Black Archive - Update

Sunday, 19 January 2020 - Reported by Marcus

Black Archive #39: The Silurians (Credit: Obverse Books)

The latest edition of The Black Archive looks at the 1970 Third Doctor story The Silurians.

The story raises issues of land rights, the 1970s energy crisis, technological innovation, animal experimentation and the role of the military. Science is presented as the solution to many of the problems, but terrible acts result from the morality of the choices made by both humans and Silurians – and an exiled Time Lord.

The book is written by Robert Smith? (the question mark is part of his name), a mathematician, writer and editor. He is an award-winning professor of disease modelling at the University of Ottawa in Canada.

The Black Archive is Obverse Books’ series of critical monographs about individual Doctor Who stories. The range has recently acquired a new editor. Paul Driscoll, known to readers as the author of previous Black Archives on The God Complex and Doctor Who (1996), as well as for his work with fiction imprint Altrix Books. He will join Philip Purser-Hallard and Paul Simpson as joint editor of the series. He begins his work this year, on books to be published from 2021 onwards.

The first six Black Archive titles for 2021 have now been announced.

Paul Driscoll himself will examine Richard Curtis’ 11th Doctor episode Vincent and the Doctor, while long-serving Black Archivists Jon Arnold and Simon Bucher-Jones look respectively at 1970s staples Invasion of the Dinosaurs and The Hand of Fear.

New authors Andrew Orton and Billy Seguire will be writing on 1976’s The Deadly Assassinand 2005’s Dalek respectively. Theologian James F McGrath, editor of the academic essay collections Religion in Science Fiction and Time and Relative Dimensions in Faith, will be exploring the 13th Doctor’s first season finale, The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos.

The rest of 2021 will bring further releases, some of which will particularly please fans of the fifth Doctor, who so far has been rather underrepresented in the range.

In other news, while the catalogue of titles for 2020 remains the same, unforeseen circumstances behind the scenes mean that two forthcoming Black Archives will be delayed. James Cooray Smith's book on The Underwater Menace and Jonathan Dennis’ on Vengeance on Varos will now be published in April 2020, alongside William Shaw’s Black Archive on The Rings of Akhaten.

The current schedule for 2020-21 is therefore as follows:

January 2020 – The Black Archive #39: The Silurians by Robert Smith?
April 2020 – The Black Archive #40: The Underwater Menace by James Cooray Smith
April 2020 – The Black Archive #41: Vengeance on Varos by Jonathan Dennis
April 2020 – The Black Archive #42: The Rings of Akhaten by William Shaw
May 2020 – The Black Archive #43: The Robots of Death by Fiona Moore
June 2020 – The Black Archive #44: The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang by Philip Bates
July 2020 – The Black Archive #45: The Unquiet Dead by Erin Horáková
August 2020 – The Black Archive #46: The Awakening by David Evans-Powell
September 2020 – The Black Archive #47: The Stones of Blood by Katrin Thier
October 2020 – The Black Archive #48: The Tenth Planet by Michael Seely
November 2020 – The Black Archive #49: Arachnids in the UK by Sam Maleski
December 2020 – The Black Archive #50: The Day of the Doctor by Alasdair Stuart
December 2020 – The Black Archive #50A: The Night of the Doctor by James Cooray Smith
January 2021 – The Black Archive #51: The Deadly Assassin by Andrew Orton
February 2021 – The Black Archive #52: The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos by James F McGrath
March 2021 – The Black Archive #53: The Hand of Fear by Simon Bucher-Jones
April 2021 – The Black Archive #54: Dalek by Billy Seguire
May 2021 – The Black Archive #55: Invasion of the Dinosaurs by Jon Arnold
June 2021 – The Black Archive #56: Vincent and the Doctor by Paul Driscoll

FILTER: - Books

Doctor Who Virtual Reality Experience Launches Internationally

Wednesday, 15 January 2020 - Reported by Marcus

The Runaway (Credit: BBC's digital drama - BBC VR Hub - Passion Animation Studios)

This Thursday will see the international launch of the BBC’s acclaimed virtual reality experience Doctor Who: The Runaway.

Doctor Who fans around the world will be able to download and enjoy the immersive VR special including a 360 version available on the Doctor Who YouTube channel.

The VR experience stars Jodie Whittaker voicing an animated version of the Thirteenth Doctor. The viewer crash lands in the TARDIS and is quickly recruited by the Doctor to help return a strange and potentially dangerous creature called Volta to its home planet.

Where previously the experience has only been available to view on VR headsets like the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Samsung Gear VR, the YouTube 360 version enables anyone with an entry-level VR headset like a Google Cardboard to step into the TARDIS and try out the adventure for themselves.

The international launch will also enable the show’s fans around the world to team up with the Doctor in virtual reality. Until now, The Runaway has only been available in the UK, but is now available globally for free on the Steam store for the first time, is launching on the Oculus and Viveport stores internationally, and globally on the BBC VR app for the Oculus Go and Samsung Gear VR.

Doctor Who: The Runaway features new original music from series composer Segun Akinola, and is directed by Mathias Chelebourg, whose previous work in virtual reality includes Alice, the Virtual Reality Play and The Real Thing VR. The script was an original story written by Victoria Asare-Archer, and is being published today on the BBC Writersroom blog.

Doctor Who: The Runaway has been produced by the BBC’s digital drama team, BBC VR Hub and Passion Animation Studios. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last year and has since been shown at the Sandbox Immersive Festival in China and the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France, among many others. The BBC VR Hub has also taken it on an extensive tour of UK libraries, enabling people without VR headsets to try it in their local library.

FILTER: - Games - Thirteenth Doctor

Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror - Pictures

Wednesday, 15 January 2020 - Reported by Marcus

The BBC has released new pictures from the upcoming episode of Doctor Who - Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror.

The story is written by Nina Metivier and directed by Nida Manzoor, both making their debut on Doctor Who.

Written by Nina Metivier
Directed by Nida Manzoor
Starring Jodie Whittaker, Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole and Mandip Gill.

Guest starring Goran Višnjić and Robert Glenister.

1903. Who or what is sabotaging Nikola Tesla's generator plant at Niagara Falls? And has this maverick inventor really received a message from Mars?

COMING SOON | Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror

FILTER: - Production - Series 12/38 - Thirteenth Doctor

Season 14 Bluray release

Tuesday, 14 January 2020 - Reported by Chuck Foster

BBC Studios have announced that Season 14 will be the next instalment in the DOCTOR WHO: THE COLLECTION Blu-ray range, now available to pre-order from Amazon:

Doctor Who: The Collection - Season 14 (pack shot) (Credit: BBC Studios)

Doctor Who fans will be delighted to hear that BBC Studios is releasing Season 14 on Blu-Ray. Tom Baker’s third series as the Doctor will debut on Monday 20th April, and is available to pre-order now.

Doctor Who – The Collection: Season 14:

THE MASQUE OF MANDRAGORA
THE HAND OF FEAR
THE DEADLY ASSASSIN
THE FACE OF EVIL
THE ROBOTS OF DEATH
THE TALONS OF WENG-CHIANG

In 1976, Doctor Who took a dramatic new turn, electrifying audiences with changes in format, companion and appearance of the TARDIS. Season 14 saw the departure of the Doctor’s long-term companion Sarah Jane Smith, and the introduction of Leela. The season contains some of Tom Baker’s most iconic serials, with intrepid investigations in Victorian London, deadly robots in a murderous whodunit, a return to the Doctor’s homeworld, and one of the saddest goodbyes in Doctor
Who history.

Producer Phillip Hinchliffe led Doctor Who through a creative high, joined by Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, Louise Jameson as the Doctor’s captivating new companion Leela and guests stars Tim Pigott-Smith, Stephen Thorne, Peter Pratt, Pamela Salem, David Collings, Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter.

With all episodes newly remastered from the best available sources, this Blu-ray box set also contains extensive and exclusive special features which include:

Immersive 5.1 surround sound - The Deadly Assassin
Brand new audio commentaries - Tom Baker and Matthew Sweet on selected episodes of The Face of Evil and The Talons of Weng-Chiang.
Behind the Sofa - New episodes with Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Philip Hinchcliffe, plus companions Sophie Aldred and Peter Purves.
Our Sarah Jane – Elisabeth Sladen Tribute - A feature-length look at the life and career of Sarah Jane Smith, played by Elisabeth Sladen.
Whose Doctor Who Revisited - Toby Hadoke meets the producers and grown-up stars of the very first Who Documentary.
In Conversation - Matthew Sweet chats to producer Philip Hinchcliffe.
Blu-Ray trailer - Louise Jameson has trouble with her new home assistant.
Brand new interviews
Rare archive material
Convention footage
HD photo galleries
Scripts, costume designs, rare BBC production files and other gems from our PDF archive