Series four of Doctor Who, transmitted last year on BBC One, has been shortlisted in the Best Drama Series category at the British Academy Television Awards (BAFTAs), the UK's most prestigious television accolades. This is the second time that the programme has been nominated for this award - series one was nominated and won the category at the 2006 ceremony.

The BAFTA website shows that Doctor Who has been nominated alongside Channel 4's Shameless and BBC One stablemates Spooks and Wallander. Spooks and Shameless were also nominated the last time that Doctor Who won the category.

The awards will be presented at a ceremony held in the Royal Festival Hall in London on Sunday the 26th of April.

The Lancashire Evening Post reports that writer Simon Farquhar is looking for the family at the centre of one of Fourth Doctor Tom Baker's most famous tales about his time in Doctor Who.

In his 1997 autobiography and elsewhere, Baker has related how he was so concerned about the possible effect on children of the 1976 serial The Deadly Assassin that while travelling home from a publicity event in the town of Blackpool, he stopped off in the town of Preston to find somewhere he could watch the episode. Seeing some children's bikes in the garden of a house, he knocked on their door, asked if they were Doctor Who viewers and was invited in to watch the programme with the children.

Now Farquhar is reportedly researching the incident for a BBC drama about it, provisionally titled Teatime with Tom Baker. If you are the family or know who they might be, contact details for how to get in touch with Farquhar are given in the article.

Posted By Brigadier Bill

Russell T Davies has taken the lead in a big push to save children's programmes on the BBC. In a speech to BAFTA members, Davies said: "They put money into rubbish films, why can't they put money into children's television?"

Davies created The Sarah Jane Adventures for CBBC, but he claims that because of a cutback in funding for children's programming, the show has nearly been cancelled on three occasions. BBC News reports that he has called for National Lottery funding to be made available to ensure the future of children's programmes. He has insisted that: "It needs to be a special case. They're our children, they're the most vital and precious resource you could ever find. It is more important than industry, it is more important than the economy, it is more important than food and education."

Series three of The Sarah Jane Adventures was affected by a reduction in its budget. Davies explained: "We had to look and say, do we want to make a version of Sarah Jane that's a travesty? It was truly shocking to have a successful show having to face cuts which are that severe."

In the end, the series found the required money due to different BBC departments pulling together to fund it. However, Davies still maintains that in general "children's (TV) is sinking lower and lower down the agenda".

Since the return of Doctor Who to British television, there have been many opportunities for UK children to participate in the programme, from the Blue Peter contests that gave us the Abzorbaloff and young Creet in "Utopia", to the "Doctor Who Backstage" contest held for Children in Need last year. Now older Doctor Who fans will have an opportunity to appear as an alien in a special Doctor Who scene.

John Barrowman is hosting a new programme called "Tonight's the Night", in which members of the public will be able to reveal their hidden talents and perform in a professional venue. According to an earlier press release, "this could mean duetting with a favourite pop group, singing with a big band or tripping the light fantastic with the cast of a hit West End musical."

Now the BBC's Doctor Who website has revealed that "Tonight's the Night" is holding a contest for Doctor Who fans over the age of 18 to appear as an alien of their own creation in a specially written scene.

The contest will be held in several stages. For the first stage, contestants are asked to create a costume for a new Doctor Who alien and submit a photograph of themselves in the costume to the programme makers. They must also create a name, home planet, powers, weaknesses and other details about their alien and submit them with the photograph.

The judges will select 50 "aliens" to participate in the second stage, an "Alien Activity Day". There, the contestants will compete in several group and character tasks and be judged by the programme's panel. Ten semi-finalists will be selected and will meet the judges individually and be assessed on their "vocal, movement and scene stealing abilities", and three finalists will be chosen. The finalists will complete a series of "alien oriented challenges", and a winner will be chosen. The winner will appear in a Doctor Who scene exclusively written for him or her, which will air on "Tonight's the Night" in April or May.

Full details and the application form are available at the BBC's Be on a show website. The photograph and application must be submitted by 28 March 2009, so get to work!

The nominations for the 2009 Hugo Awards have been announced, and once again Doctor Who has been nominated for the "Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form" category. Two Doctor Who stories received nominations: "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead" by Steven Moffat, directed by Euros Lyn; and "Turn Left" by Russell T Davies, directed by Graeme Harper. They will compete against episodes of Lost andBattlestar Galactica, and Joss Whedon's Internet musical "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog".

The Hugo Awards are given each year for the best works of science fiction or fantasy, as determined by the members of the World Science Fiction Society. Doctor Who has won every year since its return to television in 2005: the last three winners have been "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" (2006), "The Girl in the Fireplace" (2007) and "Blink" (2008), all written by Steven Moffat. Five other Doctor Who stories and one episode of Torchwood have been nominated in the past.

This year's winner will be announced at Anticipation, the 67th Annual Worldcon, in Montreal, Canada in August.

Thanks to Steve Manfred.

The Sun has a story about the companions who will accompany the Tenth Doctor in his last story, and the story's antagonist. The information, if true, may be considered a spoiler; click the box below for details if you wish.

Please note that this has not been confirmed by any official source.

David Tennant will appear in four more special episodes of Doctor Who. One will air around Easter, and the other three will air around Christmas 2009 and New Year's 2010. The last two specials form a two-part story; this is the story which the Sun's news concerns.

Thanks to James Robertson.

The Daily Mirror has reported that one of the Doctor Who specials which will air later this year will be set on Mars. In classic Doctor Who, the recurring monsters known as the Ice Warriors were native to Mars; the planet was also the prison of Sutekh in 1975's "Pyramids of Mars", and in a 1970 serial, human astronauts met "The Ambassadors of Death" on their way to Mars.

The Mirror also reports that the special will star Australian actor Peter O'Brien and actress Gemma Chan as "evil characters" in one of David Tennant's final Doctor Who stories.

The Doctor Who News Page previously reported that The Sarah Jane Adventures had been nominated for a Royal Television Society Programme Award, in the Children's Drama category; the awards were announced on March 17, and SJA lost to junior spy adventure M.I. High.

Finally, the Edinburgh Evening News reports that the Edinburgh police force are planning to bring "Tardis-style" police boxes back into use in the city's downtown. Many Edinburgh police boxes have been converted into coffee shops, but if this initiative goes through others would be used by police, as they were in the 1950s and 1960s.


Thanks to Chuck Foster and "nabusan" of the Doctor Who Forum.

Posted By Brigadier Bill

Russell T Davies has taken the lead in a big push to save children's programmes on the BBC. In a speech to BAFTA members, Davies said: "They put money into rubbish films, why can't they put money into children's television?"

Davies created The Sarah Jane Adventures for CBBC, but he claims that because of a cutback in funding for children's programming, the show has nearly been cancelled on three occasions. BBC News reports that he has called for National Lottery funding to be made available to ensure the future of children's programmes. He has insisted that: "It needs to be a special case. They're our children, they're the most vital and precious resource you could ever find. It is more important than industry, it is more important than the economy, it is more important than food and education."

Series three of The Sarah Jane Adventures was affected by a reduction in its budget. Davies explained: "We had to look and say, do we want to make a version of Sarah Jane that's a travesty? It was truly shocking to have a successful show having to face cuts which are that severe."

In the end, the series found the required money due to different BBC departments pulling together to fund it. However, Davies still maintains that in general "children's (TV) is sinking lower and lower down the agenda".

Since the return of Doctor Who to British television, there have been many opportunities for UK children to participate in the programme, from the Blue Peter contests that gave us the Abzorbaloff and young Creet in "Utopia", to the "Doctor Who Backstage" contest held for Children in Need last year. Now older Doctor Who fans will have an opportunity to appear as an alien in a special Doctor Who scene.

John Barrowman is hosting a new programme called "Tonight's the Night", in which members of the public will be able to reveal their hidden talents and perform in a professional venue. According to an earlier press release, "this could mean duetting with a favourite pop group, singing with a big band or tripping the light fantastic with the cast of a hit West End musical."

Now the BBC's Doctor Who website has revealed that "Tonight's the Night" is holding a contest for Doctor Who fans over the age of 18 to appear as an alien of their own creation in a specially written scene.

The contest will be held in several stages. For the first stage, contestants are asked to create a costume for a new Doctor Who alien and submit a photograph of themselves in the costume to the programme makers. They must also create a name, home planet, powers, weaknesses and other details about their alien and submit them with the photograph.

The judges will select 50 "aliens" to participate in the second stage, an "Alien Activity Day". There, the contestants will compete in several group and character tasks and be judged by the programme's panel. Ten semi-finalists will be selected and will meet the judges individually and be assessed on their "vocal, movement and scene stealing abilities", and three finalists will be chosen. The finalists will complete a series of "alien oriented challenges", and a winner will be chosen. The winner will appear in a Doctor Who scene exclusively written for him or her, which will air on "Tonight's the Night" in April or May.

Full details and the application form are available at the BBC's Be on a show website. The photograph and application must be submitted by 28 March 2009, so get to work!

The official website of K9 creator Bob Baker has revealed a new promotional image for the forthcoming series. The image  shows the new K9 prop in clearer detail, as well as three characters from the series (presumably "Starkey", "Jorjie" and "Darius", as described in Park Entertainment's summaryof the series).

The image appears to have been created for promotional use at MIPTV in Cannes. Earlier reports indicated that K9 will air on Australia's Network Ten and on digital channel Jetix in the UK; Jetix recently announced that it will be rebranded under the name Disney XD later in 2009.