According to information from the programming department of the Sci-Fi Channel, Doctor Who did well its first night in broadcast. 1.58 million viewers tuned in to watch "Rose," says the report, with 1.61 million viewers watching "The End of the World" and .78 million viewers each watching "Rose" and "The End of the World" in their 11pm and 12am repeat slots. These numbers are somewhat lower than the standard viewing the channel received for its broadcasts of its original series "Stargate: Atlantis" and "Battlestar Galactica" in the same time slots, but higher than any broadcast of syndicated series that evening (including repeats of "Firefly" and "John Doe"). Final numbers including Nielsen rankings should be available within the next week or two. (Thanks to Joey Reynolds)

Doctor Who has been nominated for three prestigious Hugo Awards this year, according to an announcement made yesterday by the award's administrators and the 64th World Science Fiction Convention, L.A. Con IV. Taking three of seven slots in the "Best Dramatic Presentation: Short Form" category are the Doctor Who episodes Dalek written by Robert Shearman,Father's Day written by Paul Cornell, and The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, written by Steven Moffat. The three are running against an episode of the new "Battlestar Galactica" series, the Pixar animated short "Jack Jack Attack," and two live events, the stage play "Lucas Back in Anger" and the "Prix Victor Hugo Awards Ceremony," both performed at last year's World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, Scotland. (The latter was written by writers Paul McAuley and Kim Newman, both of whom have, coincidentally, written for Telos Publishing's Doctor Who novella range). The "Short Form" category was created out of the "Best Dramatic Presentation" category in 2003 to distinguish between films and television episodes, and describes a presentation lasting ninety minutes or less. The Hugo Awards, named for science fiction pioneer Hugo Gernsback, are the science fiction community's most prestigious awards, given out each year since the early 1950's; they will be presented at the Worldcon convention taking place this year in in Anaheim, California on August 26, with several of the writers expected to be in attendance.

Classic Series Broadcasting Update

Radio Times has now confirmed that repeats of the Jon Pertwee serial The Green Death will form part of BBC Four's season of programmes from and about 1973 (to tie in with the channel's screening of Life on Mars). From Monday 3 April to Wednesday 5 April, the six-part story will be shown in three double bills from 7.10 to 8.00pm, according to this linkand this.

BBC Focus Controversy

As reported by Outpost Gallifrey on 17 March, the April edition of BBC Focus dedicates its cover and a large article to the forthcoming book The Science of Doctor Who, with free copies of Paul Parsons' book going to the magazine's subscribers. Today's Media Guardian, however, reports that the "extensive coverage" has come in for criticism - because the magazine is edited by Paul Parsons himself - but that "the BBC has defended" Focus and its editor. A BBC spokeswoman is quoted as saying that there are "viable commercial and editorial reasons" to support the coverage, that Paul Parsons is a Doctor Who expert so a natural choice to write the magazine article, and that "all profits [from the magazine's sales] are returned to the BBC for the benefit of the licence fee payer." The full article is available at their website; it's also been reported at The Independent.

Other Items

BBC New Media has begun to unveil its plans for the development of the BBC's online presence, and a report today from BBC News highlights the intention to allow seven-day online access to television programmes "like Doctor Who." "Ashley Highfield, director of the BBC's new media division, shared a platform with Microsoft boss Bill Gates at a technology conference in Las Vegas. Mr Highfield said the BBC would work with technology firms like Microsoft. He also showed off the BBC's Integrated Media Player (iMP), designed to allow users seven-day access to TV shows. The iMP, which uses peer-to-peer technology to distribute BBC content across the internet, has been undergoing extensive user trials. 'Audience needs are changing. They want to consume media on their own terms, anytime, anyplace, anyhow,' Mr Highfield told the audience at the Mix06 conference. 'If we want to stay relevant in the digital age, the BBC must respond to this challenge by some seriously good technological innovation, resulting in products like the iMP, through partnerships such as this one with Microsoft.'"

Sci Fi Wire, continuing their daily coverage of Doctor Who with featurettes, reports that "Russell T. Davies, executive producer of the new Doctor Who, told SCI FI Wire that his revival of the long-running British SF drama was bolstered by a team of writers committed to the show's success. 'None of them had written for the program before,' he said in an interview. 'But they had started their own television series and written their own dramas, and they'd also commentated on Doctor Who in the absence when it was off the air. They were very well-known for it, and you needed people who knew all those tiny details that make all the difference in telling a science fiction story. For example, the Doctor can't do magic, and it's very easy for new writers to assume that the Doctor and the Tardis can do anything, because the program is a very free-format. He can travel in time and space and land anywhere, but there are actually very strong limits within that as to what you can do and how an adventure works, so I'm glad we went for people who were well-versed in that sort of storytelling, because I didn't need to have script meetings in which I was telling them how the science fiction of Doctor Who worked. In addition to writing half of the first 13-episode season himself, Davies came up with basic storylines and settings for the remaining scripts, which were divided up according to the writers' individual strengths. 'Mark Gatiss, for example, is one of the writers and stars of [the British sketch comedy show] The League of Gentlemen, which is a marvelously dark and gothic comedy. I knew he had a great love of Victoriana, so when we had an episode set in the Victorian era with Charles Dickens ['The Unquiet Dead,' airing on SCI FI March 24], it was absolutely automatic that we give it to Mark. Steven Moffat is the writer who invented Coupling, and he's brilliant at structure and plot, so he was the only writer outside of myself to be given a two-parter ['The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances,' airing later this season], because they're very difficult to construct.' A relatively new writer, Rob Shearman, had previously written an audio play feature the Doctor's most famous nemeses, the Daleks. 'You could not get a cleverer, more intelligent and exciting take on the Doctor's old enemies than that,' Davies said. 'As a matter of honor, I felt we had to offer [the episode 'Dalek,' airing on SCI FI April 14,] to him, and it was a very big chance for Rob, writing a big piece of adventure television for prime time BBC1, and he did it magnificently. So all these decisions just made sense, really, and again, we've done that with the second [season].' Davies has written several scripts for season two, which is the final weeks of production back in the United Kingdom, and he has brought in Gatiss and Moffat as well as a group of new writers for the remaining episodes. 'They're very carefully chosen, because Doctor Who is so unique and it's so different every week. Each episode even has a different style, so you need to balance the writers and work out where their episodes play within the overall season, so we plan it all out very carefully.'"

Another report on Sci Fi Wire says that "Euros Lyn, who directed the Doctor Who episode 'The Unquiet Dead' (airing on Sci Fi Channel March 24 at 9 p.m. ET/PT), told SCI FI Wire that it was an enjoyable challenge to create the period adventure with a guest appearance by Charles Dickens. 'There were lots of things we wanted to do in the episode,' he recalled in an interview, 'including lots of crowd duplication shots in the theater. But knowing we had to get the dramatic scenes done first and get the story covered, we had to leave big-scale shots to the end of the day, which meant we sometimes didn't get them. Sometimes we'd reach the end of our day, and some of those grander shots fell off the list, so that was tough. We also had big snow scenes with paper snow in whipping wind, with horse-drawn carriages and lots of extras, and those were really tricky to achieve as well, so there were lots of big set pieces that were a real challenge.' In 'The Unquiet Dead,' the Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and Rose (Billie Piper) travel back to Cardiff on Christmas Eve of 1869, where they discover the bodies of the dead are being possessed by the alien Gelth. Their main ally against the creatures: a world-weary playwright named Charles Dickens (Simon Callow). 'It was brilliant to get him,' Lyn said about the casting of Callow. 'He's an actor of such great stature and experience, and the work that he's associated with is work of quality. The secret to getting him interested was the script. He read the script and loved it, but he's also a Dickens freak. He loves everything about Dickens and has written books and performed one-man shows about him, so the material was of great interest to him, and I think that helped. Yes, it's Doctor Who, and yes, it's popular drama, but it also has an erudite and classical dimension to it.' The director is currently working on another history-based episode for season two, which begins airing in Britain in April. 'The Girl in the Fireplace' is set in 18th-century France and guest-stars Sophia Myles (Tristan and Isolde) as the French noblewoman Madame du Pompadour. 'They're very different episodes, but that's one of the brilliant things about Doctor Who: Every episode is a genre piece and utterly different to each other. It's like starting again every time; virtually nothing is current from one episode to another. One day you could be shooting on a set 2 billion years in the future, and the next morning you're stepping onto a set in 1879. So that's wonderful.'"

The Capital Times of Wisconsin says of the new series, "And it's really quite a hoot, faithful to the goofy charm of the original series while doing the serious upgrading and improving that was so desperately needed. Right from the opening credits, which use the spacey original theme music and show the Doctor's TARDIS, which looks like a 1950s emergency phone booth, winging through space and time, you know you're in good hands. For the uninitiated, the Doctor is a renegade space/time traveler who zips through the cosmos battling bad guys, trading quips with aliens and otherwise having a grand old time. ... In the first of last Friday's two episodes, the Doctor met up with Rose while trying to save London from being overrun by sentient department store mannequins. You see, this alien consciousness was able to animate plastic, using the London Eye Ferris wheel as a transmitter, and ... you know, not many 'Doctor Who' plots hold up on paper. Just know that everybody seemed to be having a good time, and this is that rare science-fiction show that not only puts an emphasis on comedy but is also pretty funny. I don't know who Piper is, but she's pretty great as Rose, sometimes gobsmacked at the wonders that the Doctor shows her and other times amusingly unfazed. She and Eccleston develop great chemistry: part father-daughter and part friends, with maybe a little sexual tension thrown in for good measure, quite quickly. The second episode was even better, as the Doctor and Rose whisk forward a few million years to watch the destruction of the Earth with a roster of VIAs (Very Important Aliens), who for some reason decide to commemorate Earth's passing by playing what they think is one of our world's great pieces of art: the '80s pop hit 'Tainted Love' by the group Soft Cell. Fans used to getting their fix of gritty, violent science fiction every night from 'Battlestar Galactica' (which coincidentally is also a remake of a cheesy old sci-fi series) might have a little trouble to adjusting to the whimsy of 'Doctor Who.' But I'll bet even they'll catch the groove of this amiably daffy show, and Sci-Fi will have another remake on its hands that tops the original. What's next, an Emmy-quality reimagining of 'Buck Rogers in the 25th Century'?"

(Thanks to Steve Tribe, Paul Engelberg, Peter Weaver, Cliff Chapman, Paul Hayes)

Partial data is now available of the take-up for BBCi's red-button episodeAttack of the Graske on Christmas Day. Among Digital Satellite viewers, approximately seven per cent of available viewers pressed the red button between 8pm and midnight on Christmas Day. This amounted to approximately 250,000 users, of which 230,000 stayed with the interactive episode for three (out of fourteen) minutes or more, a 'retention rate' of 93 per cent. The top programme for 2005 was Wimbledon with a Reach+1 of 4.4m, 39% of the available audience, although that took place over a fortnight rather than over one evening. The 'Graske' figures compare very favourably to other high-profile results - a Gorillaz concert screened by BBCi in November was accessed by 100,000 users in a seven-day period. At 93 per cent, Doctor Who also had a much higher rate of retention than many other interactive services: BBCi coverage of the Glastonbury music festival, for example, managed 55% in 2005. These figures exclude Freeview and Digital Cable users; it is estimated that the inclusion of that data would roughly double the figures. (Thanks to 'Shaun Lyon')

In an interview for the US Sci-Fi Channel's Sci Fi Wire, executive producerRussell T Davies singled out both a start date for production on the spinoff series Torchwood as well as a likely date for transmission. "We start filming in May, and we should be on in this country [England] in October," Davies tells Ian Spelling. "So we'll have two shows running simultaneously, which will be fun." Says the article, "Davies, who will oversee Torchwood while maintaining his Doctor Who responsibilities during the filming of that show's second season, described Torchwood as a 13-part science fiction series for adults. (Torchwood is an anagram for Doctor Who.) 'Doctor Who airs in this country at 7 o'clock at night, so it gets the whole family watching,' Davies said. 'Torchwood is Earth-based. It takes one of the actors who was very popular from the first [season] of Doctor Who, who is called Captain Jack Harkness [John Barrowman]. He was in five episodes and was hugely successful as a companion to the Doctor [Christopher Eccleston].' Davies added: 'He's a bisexual con man. Hooray! We need more bisexual con men on our television screens, I think, don't you think? Bisexual con men from the 53rd century, what could be better? He was so enormously successful that we've created a spinoff for him.'"

Series One in America

Today's Sci Fi Wire on the Sci-Fi Channel's website, says that "Russell T. Davies, executive producer of the new Doctor Who and the guiding force behind the BBC's successful revival, told SCI FI Wire that the series found its footing very quickly in the first season and hasn't slowed down since. 'I think the learning experience is overstated by fandom,' said Davies, who is currently overseeing production of season two, which is being shot in Cardiff, South Wales. 'I think it's very much fandom's attitude to sit there with [season] one and say, 'Ah, well, they're learning!' Frankly, we hit the ground running and were a success right from the start, so there's truly not a single episode that I'm not proud of.' Doctor Who, which starred Christopher Eccleston as the alien Time Lord, debuted on BBC1 in March 2005 to stellar ratings and respectable reviews. ... Davies is pleased with the direction that was established early on. 'I'm aware of all sorts of faults and bits that I'd write differently and things like that,' he conceded. 'But it's more important to not underestimate the massive success that this was in terms of getting, like, a 44 percent share from the very beginning and coming back with a new Doctor and again getting a 45 percent share on Christmas Day, which is extraordinary. So the learning experience is overrated in terms of talking about how in hindsight we learned this or that, when actually we very confidently knew what we were setting out to make right from the start and we made it.' Davies said that the technical part of production started out slower. 'Because that amount of [computer visual effects] and green screen had never been attempted before in Great Britain,' he said. 'I actually think the amount of CGI in this is unparalleled in any television production I've seen so far. There are up to 100 shots per episode, which is extraordinary and different every week. It's not like you're shooting a monster with a laser gun and then every week, you shot that monster with that same effect, with that same laser gun. Here, there's a different monster every week, with a different laser gun, on a different planet with different explosions, so learning how to do that, we're all convinced that we could plan World War III if anybody needed a strategy planned.' Davies added: 'Doctor Who is also a program made on location, and that's very rare for this sort of show. Everyone was fully expecting it to be much more of a studio show, as science fiction tends to be, but we've got a very brilliant designer, Edward Thomas, who persuaded us to take an awful lot of outdoor locations. Even the interior of spaceships: in episode two ['The End of the World'], there's an interior of a spaceship called Platform One, which is actually a temple in the middle of Cardiff, and it looks extraordinary. It looks like the most beautiful spaceship in the world, so we have a very clever team, pushing stuff in different directions that we had never been in before. So, yes, we did learn from all of that. But now that we're faced with [season] two, we don't want to repeat ourselves, so we're pushing in all sorts of different directions again so that we get something new.'"

TV Guide Magazine, in their Monday morning 'Watercooler' segment, showered the new series with praise. "'Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life!' So concludes the first exchange between feisty Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) and her new acquaintance, the Doctor (Christopher Eccleston). Although Rose doesn't know what this cockney dude has to do with the sudden rash of killer mannequins roving around the basement of a Harrods-type department store, at least she could take solace in knowing that this man saved her from their murderous clutches. Yep, Whovians, the Doctor is back on American TV after a 10-year hiatus, and he's sporting a leather jacket and plenty of 'tude. Say, can anyone remember the other Doctor who began his stint battling the Autons? (Answer later.) The ho-hum plot -- the Autons want to wipe out the human race, again -- served as salad dressing for the episode's real function, which was to reintroduce us to our favorite Time Lord. Veteran Whovians and novices learned the following: Gallifrey went up in flames due to a civil war (although it remains to be seen if the Master and the Rani are still about); the Doctor is still half-human (the continuity of the 1996 Paul McGann turkey still applies); the sonic screwdriver is as indispensable as ever; Rose ranks with Jamie, Leela and Ace as the Doctor's toughest companion; conspiracy theorists are on to the Doctor (if only Clive had pictures of the Doctor's other selves, the joke would've been perfect). Anyone remotely familiar with Who knows how cheap it used to look (part of its charm, actually), but now the Beeb has gotten wise and produced it on film, which only enhances the show's signal strengths -- its strong characters and resourceful storytelling. (Before I forget, the answer to the trivia question: Jon Pertwee.) The throwaway moments were the choicest -- the Doctor leafing through the magazine; battling the animated plastic arm as Rose prattles in the foreground; Rose's flirtatious mum. They perfectly balanced the fantastic, even absurdist nature of the adventures. This was even more evident in the second episode, a tale worthy of the late Douglas Adams. Not only did we learn that the TARDIS (love that retro blue police box!) alters brain waves so as to facilitate communication with other species, but we found that the Doctor could alter Rose's cell phone so she could call her mum from five million years into the future! Someone slow down the spinning of my head. OK, so I'm not wild that humanity will eventually wind up as a hide that needs moistening (I call it the Katherine Helmond-circa-Brazil theory of evolution), but at least I won't be around for it. I will, however, be around for Doctor Who for as long as Sci Fi continues to air it, and I hope that will be for a very long time. Welcome back, Doc!"

Slate.com writes, "The pilot of Doctor Who ... combines themes from all kinds of media experiences: the chick lit of self-actualization, the Kim Cattrall vehicle Mannequin (1987), and Norman Mailer's patented rants against plastic. Rose Tyler, our heroine, has a tedious job at a London department store, a tacky home life with a fantastically nattering mother, and a complacent romance going with a sweet and contemptibly dopey boy. She begins her transformation one day around closing time. Down in the basement, she attracts the unwanted advances of a posse of homicidal mannequins, a crew that the audience could find menacing only because the effects look so cheap that their very awkwardness is a freak-out. Nonetheless, Rose is executing some commendable woman-in-peril shrieks when a middle-aged fellow swoops in to the rescue. He's full of ready quips and interdimensional know-how, and the writers do not intend for his goofy charm to obscure his dashing melancholy. This is the Doctor, an enigmatic figure doomed to cruise through space-time helping various civilizations out of very silly scrapes. In the pilot, there is some kind of molten glob beneath London threatening to use its telepathic command of synthetic materials--witness the mannequins--to destroy the city. The second episode, set on a spaceship in the distant future, concerns a baddie who wants to spoil a viewing party for the explosion of the sun. This new Who, constructed by the BBC, is a revamp of the classic science-fiction series. It merits, limits, homages, and heresies are doubtlessly the subject of robust conversation in certain circles that I'd rather not get too familiar with, but to my novice's eye, it's pretty decent hokum--fast, corny, genial, honest in its schlock. And though it's got the time-travel hook of the original and abounds with galactic mumbo-jumbo and spiffy gadgets, it reads less like speculative fiction than romance. Billie Piper--a British pop star soon to be adorning screensavers at finer engineering schools everywhere--brings limitless pluck to her portrayal of Rose. In Spice Girls terms, the character is two parts Sporty and one part Baby--but, more to the point, she's a post-Buffy the Vampire Slayer figure, a self-possessed wiseass who entertains some ambivalence about her supernatural gig. She's on equal footing with Christopher Eccleston, who plays the Doctor as a notably alienated alien, a sweetheart full of secret sorrows. Yes, the show tells its fan-boy audience, there's a plump-cheeked gal out there for you. The two of you can talk about the end of time until the end of time. This is geek love."

In various reviews, the New York Daily News said of the series, "It's not as cheesy as the original, but also not as charming." The Hartford Courantsaid that "The stories may seem a little silly (the first foes are mannequins that come to life) but it's fairly lively and fun."

Other Press Items

The Huddersfield Examiner notes that writer "Mark Gatiss is very proud to have been made an honourary doctor of letters from Huddersfield University. Especially as he now gets to call himself Dr Gatiss. The title lends him an air of mystery, perhaps like the villains of his all-favourite Boys Own stories or, indeed, a particular hero, Dr Who. 'The last time I had to tick a box to say whether I was Mr, Mrs or Miss, I put Dr,' he explains. Before I rang the League Of Gentlemen star, I was warned to give him his proper title. Plain old Mark, it seemed, wasn't grand enough. But it turned out my source had mistaken his dry humour. 'You don't have to call me Doctor,' he insists. But you can tell he likes it. Mark Gatiss and League co-writer Jeremy Dyson are the big names at the Huddersfield Literature Festival, which opens today. Their appearance tomorrow at 8.45pm, in the Milton Building at Huddersfield University, is purely a question and answer session, with no readings from either author. Meeting his public is something the 39-year-old particularly likes. Frequently asked questions can include anything from: 'What's your favourite poem?' to inquiries about Dr Who - he's co-written an episode for the latest series. As the festival's about books and not TV or film, it's expected he'll be talking about his second novel, The Devil In Amber, out in December. It's the second in a trilogy - 'When they're all written and released, I'll be able to keep reissuing them in box sets forever' - about wit, dandy and rake Lucifer Box. The first, The Vesuvious Club, was set in Edwardian London. This time it's in the 1920s, another of Dr Gatiss' favourite periods. 'It's a detective story with a feel of The 39 Steps. Lucifer's older, he's got a lot of younger competition. 'There are lots of Satanists and Nazis - a perfect combination. 'The third book will be in the 1950s and be like an early Ian Fleming.' But that's a long way off yet, as the second is not yet ready to see the light of day. 'I'm still editing and rewriting,' he says. 'And that's the part of the process I like best. Working out a story and writing it can be a slog, real donkey work. 'A process of hacking and excavating. Very tough. 'But rewriting is all about refining.' Dr Gatiss writes in a back room of the new home he shares with his partner in Islington. They've just moved, and the builders are in. I can hear their dog, Bunsen, barking as we talk on the phone. I tell him I saw his old house pictured in a Sunday supplement a while ago, all red walls and taxidermy. 'Yes,' he says. 'I always wanted to live in a Victorian laboratory, so I created that room. But I found I didn't use it for anything other than showing people, and letting them go: 'Wow!' and for photoshoots ... So now I've put my odd things all around the house.'"

The Scotsman noted that series one and two actress Zoe Wanamaker"is nervous. Wearing a pale blue, high-necked sweater and a trim, grey suit, she is using a small rolling machine to assemble a brown cigarette. With sharp, birdlike movements, she completes the job, lights up and puffs away. She is clearly uncomfortable about the prospect of being interviewed, but submits to the process with grace, thoughtful pauses occasionally interrupting the flow of conversation as she ponders long and hard over her answers. 'I haven't seen it at all,' she says, when asked what she thinks of Cards On The Table, the Poirot mystery she stars in. 'I don't like watching myself,' she continues. 'I start looking at stuff that I really shouldn't be, thinking: 'I ought not to be standing like that, I wish I'd done it this way' and so on. ... Talking of prime characters, last year Wanamaker notched up something of an honour by portraying the first new monster to menace Doctor Who following the series' triumphant return to BBC One. The good news is, her character Cassandra will be back for a rematch when the show returns to our screens in the spring. 'It's fabulous!' she enthuses, when asked what it's like to be a Who baddy. 'It's such fun! It's such a credit to Russell T Davies and the producers. I think what they've achieved is brilliant. I think Cassandra's a naughty, naughty girl. That's what's such fun about her. She's cheeky. She's not evil, she's just naughty.' Alas, she's sworn to secrecy when it comes to talking about just what the vain 'last human alive' gets up to this time around, but she is prepared to reflect upon what the role means to her. 'It's like being a baddy in a Bond film,' she muses. 'It's that sort of television equivalent, I think. I desperately wanted her to come back. It's a character you can bring something to, twist it around and make something funny. She reminded me of Joan Rivers and that extraordinary woman who changed her face a million times to look like some sort of tiger. And it was extremely witty to do. After so many plastic surgeons, liposuction and all that she's ended up just a flat piece of parchment. I think that's fabulous. A fantastic invention. That's the best thing about science fiction, it's really basically fairy stories come to life, but they're great fun.'"

Last Friday's Mirror says that "You might think he'd be a bit tied up playing Doctor Who, but David Tennant has gone and landed the lead in a new drama special for ITV. The dashing Scot will play an eccentric Englishman in an adaptation of HG Wells's The History Of Mr Polly. The 'comic romp' follows Alfred Polly as he bemoans his life as a miserably married shopkeeper in the 'beastly silly wheeze of a hole' that is Fishbourne. He sparks arguments and slapstick calamity wherever he goes and eventually decides to end it all - in the most amusing (failed) suicide bid ever attempted. And not a Tardis in sight..."

Greg Dyke writes in today's Independent, "So what happened to Dr Who? Why didn't it win the RTS award for the best drama series at the ceremony last week? Of all the difficult things to pull off in television, radically re-launching a much-loved series is just about the hardest to do and the BBC team who made Dr Who did it brilliantly. So why didn't they win? Could it just be that snobbery came into it and the judges couldn't bring themselves to give the award to a drama that was so obviously populist? What was ironic was that the winner, Bodies, also came from the BBC but not everyone was celebrating its success. The series was commissioned as a BBC 3/BBC 4 co-production but was cancelled after the arrival of Roly Keating as controller of BBC 2. The writer Jed Mercuria was highly critical of Keating's decision so he must have felt pretty smug after the award. Meanwhile, we wait to find out if BAFTA will give Dr Who the award it so surely deserves."

Eve Myles has been voted Wales' number one bachelorette in the Wales on Sunday newspaper. "There was only one winner – stunning Torchwood actress Eve Myles," says the paper. "Eve, 27 from Ystradgynlais said: 'I'm so chuffed, I can't stop blushing. This is a real honour for me and I'm genuinely absolutely delighted.' Brunette beauty Eve has just landed a plum TV role starring alongside John Barrowman in Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood. She's also setting screens alight in BBC Wales soap belonging."

The Sunday Mail says that "No Angels star Louise Delamere reveals her long friendship with new Dr Who David Tennant but insists they are just good friends - despite being snapped hand in hand on the red carpet at a film premiere".

Wales on Sunday has picked up elements of a New York Times interview with Russell T Davies, in which he discusses his initial concerns about casting Billie Piper ('then we ... discovered she was brilliant') and 'rules out nudity in the new series' ('go and see a flasher movie').

An interview with actress Tamsin Greig (from last year's "The Long Game") appears in this weekend's Sunday Times: "...I went to Cardiff as well, to do a bit of Doctor Who. That was one of the most terrifying experiences. Trying to remember lines when you can't remember to wash. And some of the lines have sci-fi words like ‘introspike' in them.' Then she suddenly cackles. 'That's why you'll find, if you look quite closely, the three parts are actually all the same person. One has a lollop and a hair clip, one has her hair on the other side, and that's about it.' ... 'From April, she joins Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen and Judi Dench in the Royal Shakespeare Company's Complete Works Festival, the company's bold attempt to perform or host every one of Shakespeare's plays. Greig plays Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing ('the Emma Thompson part, who I will be stealing every gag off') and Constance in King John. '"

South African Airways has been showing the second episode of series one - 'The End Of The World' - this month (March) as part of the inflight entertainment among the TV options on its Boeing 747-400 flights between London Heathrow and Johannesburg. It is not known if the carrier is showing this or any other episode on other long-haul flights, or for how long it will be showing, or if others will be shown in subsequent months. However, it appeared to be unedited, including the 'Next Time . . . ' trailer for 'The Unquiet Dead' at the end of the episode. Curiously, 'The End Of The World' was described as 'comedy/drama' in the South African Airways inflight entertainment guide AirScape. Readers of Benjamin Elliott's This Week In Doctor Who section of Outpost Gallifrey will know that various episodes are also being shown by Thomsonfly Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Virgin Atlantic Airways, British Midland Airlines, British Airways and Air New Zealand.

Hemel Today says "Two, not one, of the Dr Who Daleks visited Hemel Hempstead in 1964 we have discovered. Interest has been high after a Dalek expert spotted a picture of one of what he believes to be the original six 'true' Daleks in the Local History section of the hemeltoday website. It was in a section of 1960s pictures and was of the Access Equipment Christmas Party of 1964 at Adeyfield Hall in Hemel Hempstead. The expert, who is trying to find out what happened to the original six 'true' Daleks, contacted hemeltoday and we managed to dig out the original negatives of the visit and today sent him full size images."

(Thanks to Paul Engelberg, Steve Tribe, Peter Weaver, John Bowman, Ian Golden)

Big Finish has new word of the third batch of its Gallifrey miniseries today. "The first instalment of third and final series of Gallifrey will be released in May 2006. The series is set to bring the Time Lord saga to a dramatic climax. Gallifrey Series Three will star Lalla Ward as Romana, Louise Jameson as Leela, John Leeson as K9 and Mary Tamm as the evil Pandora who inhabits the body of the first Romana. Picking up scant weeks after the end of the previous series, the new set of five plays sees President Romana beleaguered and losing the civil war begun by the ancient Gallifreyan Imperiatrix, Pandora. Pandora is using a reconstituted body that of Romana's first incarnation, giving her access to everything a President could need to wage war, and threaten the other Trans Temporal Powers. As if that wasn't enough to deal with, Romana and her loyal followers will also have to contend with the aftermath of the Dogma Virus and those behind its release, the enigmatic Free Time conspirators." Also released today are covers for Nev Fountain's The Kingmaker released in April (starring Peter Davison, Nicola Bryant and Caroline Morris) and Simon Guerrier's The Settling in May (starring Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred and Philip Olivier); they can both be found on the Release Guide page here.

More media coverage from this evening of the US premiere of the series today:

Zap2It, in an article being printed Sunday in the Los Angeles Times, notes that "Once upon a time, there was a BBC science-fiction series called "Doctor Who" whose special effects were of the bubble-gum-and-rubber-band variety and whose basic premise sounded as cheesy as the show looked: A wanderer from the distant future fights intergalactic evildoers while traveling through space and time in a machine that is camouflaged as a London police box. Uh, right. Yet somewhere along the line, 'Doctor Who' became the longest-running sci-fi series in TV history (26 years), spawned several movie spinoffs, a mini-publishing empire, audiotapes, memorabilia, conventions, you name it. Now, after being off the air for 17 years, a new 'Doctor Who' series, first seen on the BBC last year, comes to the Sci Fi Channel on Friday (March 17). And therein lies a tale. When 'Doctor Who' first appeared on the BBC in 1963, it was a show for older children that aired late on Saturday afternoons. But quicker than you can say 'Daleks' -- the race of robots who became the title character's chief nemeses -- the program became a national sensation. The reasons were soon evident. The doctor's ability to go backward and forward in time meant that story lines were highly flexible. Although obviously a kids' program, 'Doctor Who' also had a wink-wink sense of humor that appealed to adults. Then there were the seven actors who played the doctor, who tended toward the warmly avuncular. And because Doctor Who takes on traveling companions from the places he visits who then join him on his adventures, the show could bounce its protagonist off against an ever-changing roster of foils. Plus, 'Doctor Who's' cheesy look actually worked in its favor. 'It was shameless about its shortcomings,' says Russell T. Davies, executive producer and head writer of the new series. 'They did intergalactic wars and invasions of the Earth with $2. Somewhere, by accident, they captured something very true about the world, that the future is very clumsy and nailed together. There is something beautifully normal about the 'Doctor Who' universe.' Los Angeles resident Shaun Lyon, who wrote 'Back to the Vortex,' a book about the new series, and whose Outpost Gallifrey (gallifreyone.com) is the premier 'Doctor Who' website in this country, echoes this 'It's the story line, stupid' sentiment by noting that America's most popular science-fiction program also had similarly cheesy production values. 'If you look back at the original 'Star Trek,' you'll see the same thing -- bad special effects,' Lyon says. 'The appeal is in the storytelling, even if there are no $10 million visual effects budgets. It's the stories, the characters, the actors themselves.' Although the series has been seen on PBS over the years, 'Doctor Who' never really developed a massive fan base in this country. Competition from shows like 'Star Trek' certainly held it back, and its chintzy foreign flavor didn't always translate well. But it did acquire a rabid cult following that now sponsors several 'Who'-oriented conventions (last month's L.A.-based Gallifrey One conclave was the 17th annual). But as with 'Star Trek,' 'Doctor Who's' 1989 demise did not end the appetite for it. So when veteran British TV writer Davies ('Queer as Folk') pitched the BBC a new version of the venerable doctor, the network went for it. 'I knew it could work again,' says Davies, 'that there was a new generation that could enjoy it. But I wasn't certain what the BBC wanted, whether they wanted an ironic version late at night. What they wanted was 7 o'clock prime time on a Saturday, which was how I wanted to bring it back. There hadn't been a sci-fi show on prime time in Britain for over 20 years, since 'V.' ' Davies understood that the fan community would want to have a say in the series' new direction, but he completely ignored the sci-fi message boards, claiming, 'It's the most stupid thing you can do, and people are seduced into believing that the most creative thing you can do is engage with your online fandom.' He also instinctively realized that the 21st century version of the doctor would have to be hipper, smarter and sexier than any previous incarnation. 'I decided to write it like anything else I'd write,' he says. 'I write character, I write funny, I write dramatic, and there's no way science fiction can't be the same thing. You just have to not steep it in nostalgia and not write techno-babble either.' Gussied up with state-of-the-art special effects and the kind of self-referential story lines that both kids and adults appreciate, the new 'Doctor Who' debuted on the BBC in March 2005 and proved an immediate smash hit (the series is in production on its second season). When he was developing the show, says Davies, 'I was thinking of 'Toy Story.' We were specifically aimed at getting a family audience, which people said didn't exist anymore. It was simply following the pattern of the old 'Doctor Who,' which was quietly witty while appealing to kids at the same time. The Pixar art of aiming at adults and kids is really difficult, but that's the path I tried to follow.'"

About.com: "After being a smash on English TV, the latest incarnation of Dr. Who comes to America on SCI FI Channel tonight at 9 PM ET. For those who don't know, Dr. Who (so named because his real name is just too weird for us puny humans to pronounce) is a Time Lord, traveling around time and space with a human companion at his side. Rose works in a shop and is bored out of her mind when along comes a Time Lord with his promises of great adventure (after working with Rose to save the Earth). He delivers. This time around, The Doctor is being played by Christopher Eccleston, who brings a TARDIS-load of energy and humor to the role. Billie Piper brings, thank goodness, a lot more than 'spunk' to Rose. She's fun and funny in her own right."

The North Adams Transcript: "The two-hour American premiere of the revived "Doctor Who" (Friday, March 17, at 9 p.m. on the Science Fiction Channel) may be first honest opportunity this long-running British series has really had to appeal to Americans -- that is, beyond the usual oddball cultists. In its current incarnation, the show is accessible and fun, with just enough darkness to add to the tension and intrigue. ... As helmed by the versatile Russell P. Davies, creator of "Queer As Folk," this 2005 version has the Doctor appearing out of nowhere in a department store basement in order to save Earth from a bunch of killer mannequins. ... The series captures, with a great degree of sincerity, the same rollicking male/female adventure dynamic that films like "Austin Powers" lampoon -- if the Doctor and Rose aren't the John Steed and Emma Peel of our time, then I don't know who are -- and it's this dynamic that makes the series shine. The Doctor, a displaced alien whose only remaining calling in life is to show off his knowledge of the universe, and Rose, a bored teenager desperately looking for a better way to live, not only need each other, but love each other's company. It's an infectious relationship that rarely succumbs to the typical romantic television cliches. This is a tale of equals with different strengths. Davies has transformed the old children's show into a fairly sophisticated drama that manages to hold different levels of interest for all ages. The show is also high on satire and, throughout its 13-episode run, examines political and social issues -- nationalism, isolationism, consumer culture, war, class, sexuality, and justice -- with great humor. There are also echoes of 9/11, the war in Iraq, and the corporate-controlled media, as well as natural human complacency in regard to the big picture. 'Doctor Who' is clearly one of the smartest TV shows around, but it doesn't decrease its enjoyment level through heavy-handedness. There are still plenty of aliens and monsters and space ships -- and, in the Doctor, we oddballs still have a hero we can believe in."

The Kansas City Star: "The British cult classic sci-fi series that periodically used a new actor to play the good doctor begins a 13-episode run with Christopher Eccleston as the traveling time lord in some 2005 episodes. The previous Dr. Who, of course, was the guy who played Screech on “Saved by the Bell.” (Well, we might be misremembering that particular piece of trivia, but with Daleks menacing everybody, what’s the difference?)"

SyFy Portal says that "New 'Doctor Who' Is Not So Niche-y" in an article that features interview clips from various Russell T Davies comments over the past year.

North Jersey Media Group notes that "Christopher Eccleston becomes one of the many actors to play the droll time traveler on the small screen in this remake of the long-running sci-fi series. Eccleston's Doctor finds his ideal traveling companion in shopgirl Rose Tyler (pop star-turned-actress Billie Piper)."

Now Playing magazine is reprinting reviews by Arnold Blumberg from last year in conjunction with the broadcast of the show.

Doctor Who is one of the three Daily Picks on the TiVo video recording network.

(Thanks to Paul Engelberg, John Mitchell, Scott Alan Woodard and Lewis Beale)

The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has posted classifications for the special features for the UK DVD release of Inferno starring Jon Pertwee, due out later this year. Totalling just under 90 minutes, these are: