BBC Radio Wales has announced it will dedicate its daytime schedule to Doctor Who on Thursday, November 21 - two days before the worldwide broadcast of the special 50th anniversary adventure, The Day Of The Doctor.

Two of the station’s daytime programmes, Jason Mohammad and Eleri Siôn, will be broadcasting live from the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff Bay on the day, with a host of special guests ready to tell the Welsh story of the legendary time traveller. Radio Wales will also be re-broadcasting the Doctor Who Prom that was performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London in July this year.

BBC Radio Wales’ Editor, Steve Austins, says: From 10am on Radio Wales Doctor Who Day, Jason Mohammad will be chatting with Jenna Coleman about her role as the Doctor’s current companion, Clara Oswald, and Steven Moffat, the show’s head writer and executive producer, will be answering listeners’ questions. Mohammad will also be talking to the curator of the Doctor Who Experience, Andrew Beech, and there will be a special item about how Wales has benefited from its association with the long-running series.

Mohammad’s connection with the series is stronger than some listeners of his Radio Wales show may appreciate, as he’s appeared as a newsreader on both Doctor Who and the spin-off series, The Sarah Jane Adventures. He’s therefore experienced some of the passion the fans have for the series at first hand. Eleri Siôn will take over the live broadcasts from the Doctor Who Experience from 1pm, with an interview with location manager Iwan Roberts about his job and some of the Welsh locations used on the series. There will also be an exclusive look behind the scenes as the BBC National Orchestra of Wales records the music for The Day Of The Doctor, including interviews with composer Murray Gold and conductor Ben Foster. Film critic Gary Slaymaker will also assess the impact Doctor Who has made on film.

BBC Radio Wales can be heard globally via the BBC Website.

New Zealand's Prime television channel will screen The Day of the Doctor a little later than the simulcast that will be seen in many other countries.

If simulcast, the 50th anniversary special would have screened at 8:50am NZ time on Sunday 24 November. It will instead commence just ten minutes later, at 9:00am.

This brief delay is believed to be because Prime is not permitted to broadcast PGR (Parental Guidance Recommended) classified programmes before 9:00am in the morning. New series episodes of Doctor Who invariably receive this rating in New Zealand. Prime will repeat the special at 8:30pm the same day.

A couple of new documentaries to mark the anniversary are also scheduled on Prime for 24 November. Doctor Who Explained will screen at 6:30pm followed by Doctor Who in the U.S. at 10:15pm.

One additional item appears in Prime's line-up for 24 November. Closing Time will screen on 2:00pm. This is not part of the anniversary schedule but rather the latest in a run of weekly repeats of the latter half of Series Six.

CBBC is celebrating 50 years of Doctor Who with the launch of a Blue Peter competition, which will give children the chance to design a brand-new device for the forthcoming series of Doctor Who.

The competition, which will be launched on the Doctor Who: Blue Peter Special on Thursday 21 November. Viewers aged between six and 15 will be asked to design a new sonic device for either Sontaran Commander Strax, Madame Vastra or Jenny Flint and the winning gadgets will feature in the science fiction series next year.

There will be three eligible age categories for the competition - six to eight years, nine to 11 years and 12 to 15 years. All entries will be considered by a panel of judges which will include Blue Peter editor Ewan Vinnicombe, Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat, Doctor Who producer Nikki Wilson, Doctor Who’s brand account manager Edward Russell, CBBC presenter Chris Johnson, Blue Peter series producer Ellen Evans and Michael Pickwoad, production designer for Doctor Who.

Winners will be announced as part of Blue Peter’s Christmas show on 19 December. The designer of the winning device will be invited to Cardiff to see their gadget being used on the Doctor Who set, with three runners up each receiving a special framed picture including their competition entry and a signed picture of the actor they designed their device for.

Competition details will be live on the Blue Peter website following the launch on the show on 21 November.

Ewan Vinnicombe, editor of Blue Peter, said: In addition to the exclusive competition, Blue Peter will also be broadcasting two live episodes dedicated to Doctor Who – Doctor Who: Blue Peter Special on Thursday 21 November and a Doctor Who: Blue Peter Party episode on Saturday 23 November.

Presenters Barney Harwood, Lindsey Russell and Radzi Chinyanganya will be joined by aliens and monsters in the studio and the audience will be challenged to design their very own alien live on air. Viewer questions will be answered by Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman, and there will be a very special themed ‘make’ as the team shows the CBBC audience how to make their very own cushion (to hide behind) and some tasty – if slightly scary – Dalek cupcakes.

Doctor Who News is offering a copy of the official 50th Anniversary book, Doctor Who: The Vault, to the person who can most accurately guess the BBC One ratings for the UK premiere of The Day of the Doctor.

The Day of the Doctor is being broadcast in the UK on Saturday 23rd November at 7.50pm, later than normal Doctor Who episodes. On BBC One it follows Strictly Come Dancing, the latest edition of the Dancing With the Stars format, which achieved a rating of 11.09 million viewers in the most recent reported week. Doctor Who will be opposite The X Factor on ITV, which had 8.67 million viewers in the most recent week.

Doctor Who: The Vault:

This is the full and official story of Doctor Who, from the first pre-production memos in 1963 to the most recent props created for the 2013 series, including interviews with key contributors and scores of prop photos, design sketches and behind-the-scenes stills from every decade of the show's production.

Taking you year by year through the world's longest-running science fiction series, Marcus Hearn explores the show's groundbreaking innovations as well as its impact on popular culture through books and comics, magazines and toys, merchandise and ephemera.

The Vault is a collector's dream and the ultimate celebration of Doctor Who

Entering The Competition:

To enter the competition, please send the following details to comp-50thratings@doctorwhonews.net:

• Your name and email address
• Your country (full address will only be requested if you are a winner)
• Where you read about this competition
• Your guess for the final viewing figure!

Previous Ratings:

For comparison, the rating for the previous Doctor Who episode, The Name of the Doctor, shown in May, was 7.45 million. The last Christmas episode, The Snowmen, had 9.87 million watching at 5.15pm. The last episode shown in November was The Waters of Mars in 2009, which had 10.32 million watching, while the last anniversary special, The Five Doctors, shown in 1983, had 7.70 million watching.

Terms And Conditions:

• The competition closes at 7.50pm GMT, 23rd November 2013.
• Only one entry will be accepted per person.
• The competition is open worldwide.
• BARB figures are expected around 10 days after transmission; we will contact the winner once they have been published.

BBC One programme introductions may be subject to interruptions by the Doctor, as witnessed this evening on the channel when he popped up before Strictly Come Dancing! The BBC have now made a clean version of that ident available to watch:



The 'interruption' was preceded by the broadcast of the 40 second version of The Day of The Doctor trailer, as released by the BBC yesterday.

The BBC is being challenged over the ownership of the copyright of the TARDIS, by the son of the author of the first Doctor Who story, Anthony Coburn.

Stef Coburn is claiming that his father created the TARDIS, seen in the very first episode of Doctor Who, An Unearthly Child, shown on 23 November 1963. He claims that he remembers his father getting the inspiration for the TARDIS during a walk on Wimbledon common. He believes the BBC is failing to give his father "the public recognition that should by rights always have been his due" for inventing the Tardis.

Anthony Coburn was a staff writer for the BBC when he was commissioned to produce scripts for the proposed new science fiction series. He inherited a concept for the show which had been produced by script writer Cecil Edwin Webber in which much of the structure of the programme had already been defined. In the original document the spaceship is described as something "humdrum, say, .... such as a night-watchman's shelter"

Stef Coburn's case is that any informal permission his father gave the BBC to use his work expired with his death in 1977 and the copyright of all of his ideas passed to his widow, Joan. Earlier this year she passed it on to him. He told the Independent
Coburn had demanded that the corporation either stop using the TARDIS in Doctor Who, or pay his family for its every use since his father's death. The BBC says it is looking into the complaint. A repeat run of a restored version of the very first story, An Unearthly Child, was announced in September, but then removed from schedules 'pending the resolution of issues'. The BBC have yet to confirm these issues have been resolved.

This is not the first time the BBC has been involved in litigation over the TARDIS. In 1998 the London Metropolitan Police argued it should own the trade mark of blue box, objecting to the BBC using the image of the TARDIS on comics, T-shirts, videos and other merchandise. The Police force lost the case, following appeal, in 2002, and was ordered to pay £850 plus legal costs to the BBC.

The BBC have now released the first full trailer for Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary story, The Day of the Doctor:




The official BBC website also reports that a second trailer will be released tomorrow (Sunday); this trailer has been seen in various forms at industry events, but will now be presented in its finished form, complete with special effects.

BBC Three has announced it will host a celebration show, Doctor Who Live: The Afterparty directly after the BBC One screening of The Day of the Doctor.

No details are yet available on the content or the guests on the programme.

Canadian broadcaster SPACE has announced details of programming on the 23rd November to coincide with the simulcast of The Day of The Doctor:

The BBC have released a teaser trailer for the forthcoming 50th Anniversary Special, The Day of The Doctor, via their YouTube channel.