Today's Blue Peter

Today's edition of Blue Peter on BBC One featured yet another Doctor Who item, demonstrating once again the strong support the show is receiving from Children's BBC's flagship show. The first feature on the programme, it opened with the presenters showing some of the large amount of mail they have been receiving from their viewers regarding Doctor Who, and they showed various children's drawing of Daleks and so forth that had been sent into them in recent weeks. Then presenter Gethin Jones talked about the Doctor having faced all kinds of monsters down the years, while a few brief clips from the classic series were shown. He then said that the Doctor's latest enemies were his old foes the Cybermen, and this linked into a pre-recorded item of Jones on-set in Cardiff for the shooting of Rise of the Cybermen / The Age of Steel, in which he was to have a guest appearance as one of the Cybermen.

Brief interview clips of Jones talking to some of the actors were then shown, starting with his CBBC colleague Andrew Hayden-Smith, who plays Jake. Jones asked him if he'd learned any Welsh (Jones being a Welshman) while he was shooting in Cardiff, and Hayden-Smith replied that he had learned one phrase -- "Doctor Pwy", Welsh for Doctor Who. Billie Piper was next, and she said she thought the Cybermen were terrifying, before David Tennant discussed some of the background of the creatures, with some brief clips of 1960s Cyberman episodes being shown as he did so. After Jones had finished speaking to him, Tennant turned directly to the camera and assured the Blue Peter viewers that when Jones was a Cyberman the Doctor would "get him!" The rest of the feature was taken up with Jones's experiences as a Cyberman, being fitted out for his costume, rehearsing how to walk and finally shooting a scene from The Age of Steel... He received praise from producer Phil Collinson for his performance, and finally a brief clip of the finished scene was shown. (Thanks to Paul Hayes)