The Doctor Who story Vincent and the Doctor has been nominated for the The Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation in the 2010 Nebula Awards, an annual event held by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

The episode, penned by writer Richard Curtis, is the only television episode in this category, and is up against the films Despicable Me, How To Train Your Dragon, Inception, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and Toy Story 3.

The winners are selected by members of the SWFA during March, with the results announced at the Nebula Awards Banquet, taking place at the Washington Hilton, Washington D.C. on 21st May.

Vincent and the Doctor had previously been nominated for a Mind Mental Health Media Award last year but lost out to Channel 4 drama Shameless.


Doctor Who has been nominated for a Nebula Award twice in the past: The Girl in the Fireplace lost out in the Best Script category to Howl's Moving Castle in the 2006 awards, and the following year saw Blink miss the award in favour of Pan's Labyrinth - both were penned by the current lead writer, Steven Moffat.

Series Five of Doctor Who continued on France 4 on Saturday, featuring Le labyrinthe des Anges (1+2) and Les Vampires de Venise. The shows achieved 375,000 viewers, 2% of the total viewing audience at that time (8:35pm onwards). Whilst this is a drop in the total viewers from last week (453,000), the audience share has remained the same.

The evening also saw a repeat of Torchwood: Les Enfants de la Terre on NRJ 12 in the same time slot - the five episodes achieved a rating of 219,000 viewers (1%).

Audience figures for Saturday can be viewed at Premiere, which shows that Danse avec les stars on TF1 was once again the highest show on French television that day.


The first three episodes of Series Five - Le Prisonnier Zéro, La bêtes des bas-fonds and La victoire des Daleks - are repeated on Tuesday evening, from 10:00pm (local time).

France 4 have released a new trailer for this Saturday's episodes, Le labyrinthe des Anges (1+2) and Les Vampires de Venise; they will be broadcast from 8:35pm (local time).



You can also follow France 4 via their Facebook page and Twitter feed.

Matt Smith debuted as the Doctor in France last night, with the first three episodes of Series Five broadcast on France 4

Le Prisonnier Zéro, La bêtes des bas-fonds and La victoire des Daleks were shown together during the evening and achieved a rating of 453,000 viewers, representing 2% of the audience watching television in France (viewing figures for the evening as a whole may be seen via Ozap).

Series Five has started off well, gaining more viewers than David Tennant's swansong, La Prophétie de Noël, which achieved 416,000 viewers over Christmas Day (but was pipped to the post by La Conquête de Mars with 504,000 viewers in October).

French viewing for the rest of the month consists of Le labyrinthe des Anges (pts 1+2) and Les Vampires de Venise next weekend, and Le Seigneur des Rêves and La révolte des intra-terrestres (pts 1+2) on the 26th.





(we leave our readers to enjoy translating the French titles!)

Matt Smith's first full series as The Doctor comes to France 4 next month when the channel begins showing the 31st series of the show, starting with Le Prisonnier Zéro (The Eleventh Hour) on February 12, at 8:35 PM.

Viewers in France got to see the end of the Tenth Doctor last Christmas day when France 4 showed La Prophétie de Noël.

The series will continue with Épisode 2 — La Bête des bas-fonds and Épisode 3 — La Victoire des Daleks.


In addition French-speaking Doctor Who fansite Beans On Toast has revealed that series 4 of Doctor Who will be released on DVD in French.

The news has been confirmed by France Television Distristribution, the DVD editor in charge of the DVD releases of the first three series in France. French-speaking fans have been campaigning for a DVD release of the series with Beans on Toast launching an online petition in August 2010.

Series 1, 2 and 3 are also to be re-released on DVD, and this time, the series 3 boxset will include the original English version with French subtitles. The current DVD edition only offers the French dub.

For discussion on this news see the Beans On Toast Forum.

Figures released by the BBC Press Office show that the Doctor Who Christmas Special: A Christmas Carol, was accessed over 700,000 times on the BBC iPlayer in the week after transmission.

The episode was the 8th most accessed programme in December, dispite only being available for the last week of the month. Overall December was a record month for the iPlayer with 89.7 million requests for TV Programmes.

Jana Bennett, BBC Director of Vision, said
Matt Smith's first full story as The Doctor, The Eleventh Hour, still holds the record for the most accessed programme ever on iPlayer, with 2.24 million requests, way ahead of the second placed Top Gear. Every single episode of Smith's first series was in the top thirty accessed programmes of the year, with Doctor Who taking seven of the top ten places. David Tennant's Swan-song, The End of Time: Part Two came in at number 33, with just over a million requests. A Christmas Carol was the 73rd most requested programme in 2010, but was also available for the first week of 2011.

In terms of overall programme totals, Doctor Who Series Five had 19.5 million requests. The most requested programme was EastEnders, with over 100 million requests, although spread over a much larger number of episodes.

Other series of Doctor Who faired well with repeats of Series 4 being requested over 2 million times. The most requested Doctor Who item on BBC Radio was the Radio Seven transmission of the reading of Doctor Who and The Giant Robot, which was requested over 200,000 times. In total there were over 32 million requests for Doctor Who connected programmes.

Matt Smith's debut as the Eleventh Doctor is the most watched programme on the BBC iPlayer for the year so far according to the BBC.

The BBC iPlayer celebrates its third Birthday this Christmas with over 1.3 billion requests being made throughout 2010. The Eleventh Hour accounted for 2.2 million of these hits with the rest of the series averaging around 1.5 million hits each.

Top Gear was the second most requested programme, with over half a million fewer requests than Doctor Who.

Daniel Danker, General Manager, Programmes and On Demand, said:
As part of the BBC's commitment to increase the reach of BBC iPlayer, the service is now available on around 40 different devices. For those who enjoy watching on-demand from the comfort of the living room, BBC iPlayer can be found on a range of TVs including Samsung, LG, and Sony Bravia, Blu-Ray disc players, Nintendo Wii and PS3 games consoles, and Virgin Media and Freesat set-top boxes. For those on the go, the BBC iPlayer mobile site can be accessed from phones and tablets including Apple iPads, iPhones and selected models of BlackBerry, Android, Nokia, Samsung, HTC and Sony Ericsson phones.

A book reviewing every episode of Series 5 is to be published next week on Monday 6th December.

Doctor Who: The Pandorica Opens - Exploring the Worlds of the Eleventh Doctor has taken Frank Collins's original reviews written on his Cathode Ray Tube blog and has vastly expanded them to provide an in-depth analysis of episodes, characters, themes and ideas, and places Doctor Who within the wider cultural context of contemporary social, political, historical and psychological debates.

An excerpt from an interview with Classic TV Press (PDF):


The book is available for pre-order direct from Classic TV Press at the discounted price of £12.49.

Frank will be signing copies of his book at the following:

The Mill have won the 'Digital Effects' award at this year's Royal Television Society Craft and Design Awards.

The visual effects company were rewarded for their work on The Pandorica Opens.

The the RTS explained:


Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss's Sherlock won three awards; best picture enhancement, best tape and film editing in a drama, and best original title music.

The Mill have also produced visual effects for Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Vincent and the Doctor, written by Richard Curtis has been nominated in the Drama category at this year’s Mind Mental Health Media Awards.

The nominations will be judged by an independent panel of media professionals and mental health service users. The awards, which celebrate the best portrayal of mental distress and reporting of mental health in broadcast media, will be held at the British Film Institute on Monday 22nd November 2010.

See the the full list of nominations here.