.As previously reported, Splendid Chaps is a year-long performance/podcast project to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who hosted by comedian Ben McKenzie (Dungeon Crawl, Melbourne Museum Comedy Tour) and writer John Richards (ABC1 sitcom Outland, Boxcutters podcast)

Described by its creators as part intellectual panel discussion, part nerdy Tonight Show, Splendid Chaps is a combination of analysis, enthusiasm and irreverence. The first episode went to number 1 on the iTunes TV & Film Podcast chart in Australia, and to number 4 in the UK.  The podcasts to the first few episodes are now available at www.splendidchaps.com or at  iTunes.

Tickets are now on sale for their 5th Doctor show!
On Sunday May 19 they’ll be celebrating the era of the 5th Doctor, the cricket-and-celery-loving Peter Davison, and exploring the notion of Fear in Doctor Who. When is Doctor Who scary, and why? Guests will include comedian Tegan Higginbotham (from comedy duo Watson and The Comedy Channel’s Whatever Happened To That Guy?) and horror author Narrelle M Harris. That’s at The Public Bar, 238 Victoria Street, North Melbourne, at 5pm.

Splendid Chaps: A Year Of Doctor Who: "Five: Fear"

Space: The Public Bar, 238 Victoria Street, North Melbourne
Time: Saturday 19 May 2013, 5 PM
Accessibility: This venue is wheelchair accessible.
Tickets: All tickets $15 (plus booking fee where applicable)
Bookings: via trybooking.com, or buy tickets at the door (subject to availability)
Podcast: not yet available, released 23 May 2013.

Hide had an Appreciation Index, or AI score, of 85.

The Appreciation Index or AI is a measure of how much the audience enjoyed the programme. The score, out of a hundred, is compiled by a specially selected panel of around 5,000 people who go online and rate and comment on programmes.

Doctor Who scored higher than most of Saturday's output. The highest scoring programmes of the day were Casualty with 87, Walking Through History with 87 and The Many Faces of Michael Crawford with 87.

Hide had an overnight audience of 5.0 million viewers, a share of 24.5% of the total TV audience.

Doctor Who was fourth for the day. Its final half hour was opposite Britain's Got Talent on ITV, which was top for the day with 9.7 million watching and 43.9% share of the audience.

The BBC's talent show, The Voice, had 7.9 million watching - a large increase on the previous week. Casualty was third with 5.2 million viewers.

Final ratings will be released next week, which should see Doctor Who substantially increase its rating once those who timeshift the programme are factored in.

Full ratings data for the week ending 7th April 2013 is now available and puts Doctor Who: The Rings of Akhaten as the sixteenth most watched programme in the UK for the week.

The episode achieved 7.45 million viewers had 34.8% share of the available Television audience.

On BBC One, Doctor Who was the sixth most watched programme of the week, behind EastEnders and Jonathan Creek.

On ITV five episodes of Coronation Street took the top five places with Broadchurch and Ant and Dec's Saturday Takeaway getting into the top ten.

The BBC have announced the summer line-up for this year's BBC Proms, which will once again feature performances dedicated to Doctor Who:


The prom is to be performed twice, with "Prom 2" taking place on Saturday 13th July from 7:30pm (tickets start from £14), and "Prom 3" the following Sunday morning at 10:30am (tickets at £12, restricted to maximum of six per booking). Booking for the Proms season opens on the 11th May.

The proms will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, and also recorded for broadcast on BBC One.

Since the original announcement earlier in the year, the schedule for DVD releases in the United Kingdom has altered slightly, with some titles pushed back further in the year. The stories currently listed are: The Visitation (SE) (6 May), Inferno SE (27 May), The Mind of Evil (3 Jun), Spearhead from Space (Blu-ray, 15 Jul), The Green Death (SE) (5 Aug), The Ice Warriors (26 Aug), Scream of the Shalka (16 Sep), and Terror of the Zygons (30 Sep).

In addition, the British Video Association lists the following titles under the umbrella theme of The Monster Collection, all currently cited for the 8th July: Cybermen, Davros, Silurians, Sontarans, The Daleks and The Master.

The schedule may well change again in the coming months, but BBC Worldwide have confirmed this week that Inferno (full release details here) is still planned for release at the end of next month.

(Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed the absence of the "Regeneration" boxed set from the lists above - as of writing though Amazon and the BBC Shop have it listed for the 10th June, the BVA have listed it as "pulled from schedule". BBC Worldwide have not currently released any further details about the set or its status.)

Series Seven classifications:

The BBFC have now classified episodes for the forthcoming Series Seven Part Two DVD boxed set: The Snowmen (59m51s), The Bells of Saint John (45m24s), The Rings of Akhaten (43m51s), Cold War (41m37s), Hide (44m51s), Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS (44m56s), The Crimson Horror (44m44s), and Nightmare in Silver (44m43s) have been passed, but as of writing the as-yet untitled series finale has yet to be listed. In addition, the 43 minute feature The Companions has also been passed as additional content in the set.

Coming Soon:

Coming Soon trailers have been passed for the Blu-ray edition of Spearhead from Space, and for the animation-enhanced DVD release of The Moonbase - the latter previously listed for release in the United States.

Final ratings data for the week ending 7th April 2013 released by the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board, or BARB, gives Doctor Who: The Rings of Akhaten a final rating of 7.45 million viewers.

The final rating includes all those who record the programme and watch it within a week. It does not include the BBC Three repeat, where around 300,000 watched. Nor does it include those watching on iPlayer where over 1.7 million people have accessed the episode so far.

Doctor Who was the sixth highest rated show on BBC One for the week, where the top rated programme was Jonathan Creek with 8.75 million watching.

A full ratings chart will be available later in the week.

Full Ratings Data

Cold War had an Appreciation Index, or AI score, of 84.

The Appreciation Index or AI is a measure of how much the audience enjoyed the programme. The score, out of a hundred, is compiled by a specially selected panel of around 5,000 people who go online and rate and comment on programmes.

The score is identical to last week's Doctor Who and scored higher than most of Saturday's output. The highest scoring programmes of the day were Casulty with 88, Walking Through History with 85 and Dad's Army with 89.

Cold War had an overnight audience of 5.7 million viewers, a share of 26.7% of the total TV audience.

Doctor Who was again third for the day. where top honours were taken by the return of ITV's talent show, Britain's Got Talent, which had 10.5 million watching and a massive 41.5% share of the audience.

The BBC's talent show, The Voice, had 6.7 million watching.

Doctor Who once more won the time-slot with You've Been Framed! And Famous 4 getting 4.0 million watching.

Final ratings will be released next week, which should see Doctor Who substantially increase its rating once those who timeshift the programme are factored in.

Full ratings data for the week ending 31st March 2013 is now available and puts Doctor Who: The Bells of Saint John as the eighth most watched programme in the UK for the week.

The episode achieved 8.44 million viewers had 35.8% share of the available Television audience.

The only thing to beat Doctor Who on BBC One was one episode of EastEnders. On ITV it was beaten by five episodes of Coronation Street and an episode of the detective series staring David Tennant, Broadchurch.

On Saturday 30th March, Doctor Who was the highest rated programme getting 120,000 more viewers than Ant and Dec's Saturday Takeaway, even though the ITV programme had a later start time.

On iPlayer The Bells of Saint John has so far been accessed over 1.4 million times.