Voting has now opened for the eighteenth National Television Awards, and as per the norm Doctor Who and its stars have been nominated for awards.

The show itself has been nominated for the Drama category, but is up against a formidable number of shows this year, with some 35 to choose from. The list includes the other Steven Moffat success Sherlock, BBC medical stalwarts Casualty and Holby City, Merlin, and last Christmas's showpiece drama Great Expectations. ITV1's contributions include Lewis, Whitechapel, Law & Order UK and last year's winner Downton Abbey.

Matt Smith is up for Drama Performance: Male; there are 29 nominations in this category, which include Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman (Sherlock), Kevin Whately (Lewis) and Sir Kenneth Branagh (Wallander). Other Who-related nominees include Marc Warren (Without You), Colin Morgan (Merlin), Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey), Daniel Mays (Mrs Biggs), and Martin Clunes (A Mother's Son).

Karen Gillan has slightly less to contend with for the Drama Performance: Female, with "just" 25 nominees, including Gillian Anderson (Great Expectations), Claire Danes (Homeland) and Emilia Fox (Silent Witness). Other Who-related names include Lesley Sharp and Suranne Jones (Scott and Bailey), and Sunetra Sarker (Casualty).

Who-related actors in other categories include Nina Wadia (Eastenders) in Serial Drama Performance, and Alexander Armstrong, Reggie Yates and Bradley Walsh as Entertainment Presenter.


Voting for the awards is made by the public, and takes place until Thursday 11th October. Up to four nominees from each of the categories with the most votes will then go forward to be included in the shortlist voting round (date to be announced). The ceremony itself will take place live from the O2 on ITV1 on 23rd January 2013.

This year's MediaGuardian 100 continues to rank Steven Moffat amongst the industry's most powerful and influential people, with Doctor Who's lead writer and executive producer placed at number 87, up five places from his chart entry last year at 92.


BBC executives that have an influence on Doctor Who's future in the list include the new Director General George Entwistle in fourth place (last year 26), and BBC1 Controller Danny Cohen at number 13 (last year 14).


The Media 100 has been compiled every year since 2001 by the Guardian, and is a list of who they consider are currently the most powerful people in the UK media. Candidates for the list are judged on cultural influence, economic clout and political power over the course of the last year.

The new man in charge of the BBC has paid tribute to Doctor Who on his first day as Editor-in-Chief of the Corporation, the man ultimately responsible for everything broadcast.

George Entwistle took charge of the national broadcaster today as the 15th Director General, taking over from Mark Thompson who had been in charge since 2004 and who now leaves to become Chief Executive Officer of The New York Times Company.

Entwistle told staff he wanted the BBC to be one of the major international media brands with a vibrant presence in many markets built around major pieces of BBC content such as Top Gear, Doctor Who and Dancing With The Stars. In an interview with Radio Times he recalled how he fell in love with television drama as a child while watching Doctor Who with his family. "Jon Pertwee was my Doctor," he said, "I was a bit sceptical about the Tom Baker regeneration."

Entwistle praised the way the BBC produced its Olympic coverage, which managed to bring the nation together, and he looked ahead to events that would give the BBC the chance to take the Olympics formula and make it work again, including the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who next year.

Doctor Who returns as a specialist subject for the long-running knowledge quiz show Mastermind this coming Friday (8:00pm, BBC2). The questions will be based around the show between 1963 and 1989, while the topics for the other contestants are the geography and history of Arkansas from 1836, football manager Terry Venables, and the story of Moses in the King James Bible.

The show has featured as a specialist subject a number of times in the past, such as in 2004, and notably when the Telegraph's resident Doctor Who reviewer Gavin Fuller became champion during Doctor Who's 30th Anniversary in 1993.

There was also a special Doctor Who-themed version of Mastermind on 19th March 2005 as part of BBC2's Doctor Who Night the weekend before Rose was to herald the triumphant return of the show on television. The questions were set by John Leeson and the winner, Karen Davies, received the trophy from the Doctor himself, Christopher Eccleston. The actor also appeared on Junior Mastermind nearly a year later, where he was interviewed by the young contestant Sam who had chosen Doctor Who's premiere year as his specialist subject on 26th February 2006.

In addition, David Tennant had Doctor Who as his specialist subject on a celebrity edition of Mastermind for Comic Relief on 13th March 2009.

Meanwhile, back in 1988 the New Zealand version of Mastermind featured Doctor Who as the specialist subject from long-term fan Jon Preddle - you can read more about his 'adventure' on the show via the New Zealand Doctor Who Fan Club.

Both Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures have been nominated in this year's BAFTA Cymru Awards.

The Doctor Who Series 6 opening episode The Impossible Astronaut is in the running for the Television Drama title, while the Series 6 finale The Wedding of River Song is up for a gong in the Sound category. The Curse of Clyde Langer, from the fifth and final series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, is nominated for the Children's Programme award.

The Doctor Who Adventure Game The Gunpowder Plot - available free to TV licence-holders in the UK and for sale elsewhere globally - is up for the Digital Creativity And Games title.

Meanwhile, Eve Myles is nominated for the Actress award for Baker Boys - a programme for which Helen Raynor is co-nominated (with Gary Owen) for the Writer prize.

Last year, Doctor Who won two of its categories and The Sarah Jane Adventures was presented with the Children's Programme honour.

This year's winners will be announced at a ceremony to be hosted by Alex Jones at the Millennium Centre in Cardiff on Sunday 30th September. A limited number of tickets are available to the public and are on sale from the centre.

A new 'teaser' trail for episode one of the new series, Asylum of the Daleks has been released by the BBC.

The series is expected to return in early September but no date has yet been confirmed.

The demand for tickets for the upcoming New York preview of Asylum of the Daleks has been heavy enough to cause major problems for the ticketing site, where all 800 available tickets were sold in less than twenty minutes.

The special showing will take place at New York’s Ziegfeld Theater on August 25 followed by a live Q&A session with Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and executive producer Caroline Skinner. Tickets were sold for the princely sum of 11c, plus a small service charge.

Comic Mix reports that shortly after the ticket release, the purchase system slowed to a crawl, with access severely limited. The site’s customer service number was also jammed as people attempted to see if aborted transactions resulted in a sale or not.

BBC America has apologized that the process didn’t go as smoothly as it could have done but have said they are pleased the event was so popular with fans.

The new Doctor Who series is due to launch on BBC America in early September, but no date has yet been officially confirmed.

The British Film Institute have announced that Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill will attend the preview screening of Asylum of the Daleks on Tuesday 14th August. They will join Steven Moffat in a Question and Answer session after the episode, which will also include executive producer Caroline Skinner. The Q&A will be chaired by broadcaster (and fan) Richard Bacon.

Tickets for Doctor Who related events at the BFI are very popular, with the Asylum preview selling out within an hour of opening registration!

Doctor Who has been granted the accolade of being the cover story of the US media magazine Entertainment Weekly.

The title, which has been running since 1990, is one of America's most popular entertainment magazines, with a circulation of 1.8 million and an estimated readership of 8.2 million. To make the cover is regarded as a major achievement, an honour unprecedented for a UK-made series, and something BBC America has been celebrating on its Facebook site.

Inside, it asks whether the time has finally come for the Time Lord to break big in America, and describes the upcoming season as maybe the most eagerly anticipated ever, as the Doctor prepares to say goodbye to his two trusty companions Amy Pond and Rory Williams.

The publication notes the number of on-screen shout-outs the show gets from programmes such as Community, Criminal Minds, Craig Ferguson's The Late Late Show, Supernatural, and Grey’s Anatomy. Executive producer Steven Moffat tells the magazine:The cover story tracks the ups and downs of the show's long history and previews the new episodes with help from Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill as well as Moffat.

Entertainment Weekly also checks out the 25 Best Cult TV Shows From the Past 25 years.

The fourth in our occasional series marking the 50th anniversary of events leading to the creation of a true TV legend.

The story so far. In May two BBC drama script editors had been asked to write a report identifying specific science fiction stories suitable for adapting for television.

It was on 25th July 1962, fifty years ago today, that Alice Frick and John Braybon presented their follow-up report to the Head of the Script Department at the BBC, Donald Wilson.

Science fiction was not unknown on British television at the time. In June the BBC had transmitted six half-hour episodes of a serial called The Big Pull, written by Robert Gould. Produced by Terence Dudley, the story concerned an alien invasion of earth, made possible by the return of a manned space capsule allowing the aliens to travel through the Van Allen Belt. Later in the month the sequel to the previous year's A for Andromeda, The Andromeda Breakthrough, also began a six-week run.

Meanwhile, ITV screened Dumb Martian, adapted from a story by John Wyndham, an Armchair Theatre production broadcast as a prelude to Out of this World, the first science fiction anthology series in the UK. This was commissioned by ABC's drama supervisor, Sydney Newman, a lifelong fan of science fiction, who was working out his notice at the ITV company before joining the BBC later in the year.

The report commissioned by the BBC was to investigate literary works and to see if any were suitable for adaptation for television. It was comprehensive and detailed. In the eight weeks it took to produce the report Frick and Braybon had read hundreds of science fiction stories, coming up with a short list of titles that they thought may be suitable for dramatisation on television. The two script editors were ambivalent about the appeal of science fiction, making it clear that they were not making a judgement as to whether any script should actually be produced. They were very clear that should a production be considered then it must be as realistic as possible.

They set out four main points at the top of their report. The stories must not include Bug-Eyed Monsters. The central characters must never be Tin Robots. The stories must not require large and elaborate science fiction-type settings, and they must provide an opportunity for genuine characterisation. The couple were very much of the opinion that any distraction which caused the audience to lose the belief that what they were seeing on screen was possible, would cause the drama to fail, citing some current ITV shows that they believed had failed for that reason.

They suggested two types of plot that they considered would make the best scripts for television: those dealing with telepaths, and those dealing with time travel. The latter they thought was particularly suitable as a variety of script editors could be assigned working on a number of plots.

The report went on to list seven titles that the couple considered would be suitable for television production: Guardians of Time by Poul Anderson / Three to Conquer by Eric Frank Russell / Eternity Lost by Clifford Simak / Pictures Don't Lie by Katherine MacLean / No Woman Born by C L Moore / The Cerebrative Psittacoid by H Nearing Jr / The Ruum by Arthur Porges

The report finished by concluding that a science fiction series was a possibility which had had a varied degree of success in the past. The report would not be acted upon for another nine months.

Frick/Braybon Follow-Up Report