The third annual French Comic Con takes place at the Paris-Nord Villepinte Exhibition Center between the 30th June and 3rd July, during which the two opening episodes of Series Six, The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon, will make their French debut.

The two episodes form part of a series of events taking place around special Guest of Honour, Doctor Who's head writer Steven Moffat; timings have yet to be confirmed, but include:

• a public Masterclass on his work as a scriptwriter
• a public meeting on Doctor Who
• a signing session
• the screening of the French premiere of the first two episodes of Series Six
• a screening of A Study In Pink, the first episode of Moffat's other creation, Sherlock

Moffat appears courtesy of a partnership with BBC Worldwide, France 4 and France Television Distribution.

(with thanks to Aurélie Demonchaux/Beans on Toast)

The BBC have released two introductions to this weekend's mid-series finale, A Good Man Goes To War, the first featuring director Peter Hoar and the second with Karen Gillan, Steven Moffat, Alex Kingston and Arthur Darvill teasing over the identity of River Song. (warning, the videos contain some plot discussion):

BARB have now issued final ratings for the week ending 22nd May making Doctor Who: The Rebel Flesh the 13th most watched programme of the week.

The show was once again the highest non-soap drama of the week and held the 6th position in the BBC One chart.

The chart does not include iPlayer figures where over 1 million have already accessed this episode.

This week's Radio Times once again features Doctor Who on its front cover - though for once centre of attention falls to the Doctor's companion Amy Pond! (Please note the cover may be considered a spoiler for those who haven't seen the preceeding episode, The Almost People)



The magazine includes an interview with head writer Steven Moffat, who was asked about the future of the Doctor's most popular adversary, the Daleks:

Unsurprisingly the media picked up on these comments, with some suggesting that the Daleks were to be rested indefinitely; Moffat clarified his statements this morning on Twitter:

News links: Radio Times, BBC News, The Sun(1), The Sun(2), Metro, Guardian, Telegraph, Independent, Express, Anglotopia, Aberdeen Press and Journal, On The Box, The Register, NME

"Once upon a time (and some dimension in space), in the Hundred Acre Wood.."


Europe's largest daily T-Shirt website Qwertee have launched their latest Doctor Who inspired design; it is created by artist/designer robpwood.

This is a limited edition print which will only be available to purchase for two days (i.e. until 11:00pm Wednesday 1st June).



Readers of Doctor Who News will be able to take advantage of a special 40p/50¢ discount off the usual £8/€10/$13.50 price of this t-shirt - simply enter this promotional code when ordering:

 
            Q-DoctorWhoNewsPage

The t-shirt can be ordered from the Qwertee website.



Meanwhile, we are once again delighted to announce a competition in association with Qwertee - full details are on the Competitions page.

Doctor Who: The Almost People had an Appreciation Index or AI score of 86, once more putting into the excellent category. The score was one of the highest of the day.

The Sunday evening BBC Three repeat had 0.39 million watching, a 1.6% share of the audience.

Sunday night was a much stronger night than Saturday in terms of overnight figures, with 4 programmes rating higher than Doctor Who, pushing the programme down into 32nd place for the week.

Britain's Got Talent was the highest rated show of the week with 10.3 million watching.

The official figures will be published next Monday which should see Doctor Who rise considerably in the weekly chart.

Tonight saw the 2011 BAFTA Cymru Awards Ceremony take place at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay. Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures were nominated for a number of awards, and unlike last weekend's BAFTA Television Awards they did triumph in a number of categories.

The Children's Programme award went to The Sarah Jane Adventures and its producer Brian Minchin for last year's Death of the Doctor. Meanwhile, Doctor Who won two of its categories: Tim Rickett received the Sound award for his work on A Christmas Carol, whilst Mark Hutchingson won the Lighting award for The Eleventh Hour.

Other nominations included Music and Entertainment Programme, where Doctor Who at the Proms lost out to Young Musician 2010: The Final; Make Up and Hair saw Sherlock's Claire Pritchard Jones beat last year's winner in this category, Barbara Southcott (nominated for Vampires of Venice); and William Oswald was nominated for Editing: Fiction for The Time of Angels, but the award eventually went to John Gillanders for The Indian Doctor.

Steven Moffat's other show Sherlock did well at the Awards, winning five of the categories; as well as Make Up and Hair above, awards were given for Director of Photography: Fiction (Steve Lawes), Production Design (Arwel Wyn Jones), Director: Fiction (Euros Lyn), and the coveted Television Drama award.


A complete list of winners at the BAFTAs may be found on the BAFTA Cymru website.

The Rebel Flesh achieved a final official rating of of 7.35 million viewers, representing a 34.1% share of the audience who watched the programme within seven days of broadcast.

This number sees an increase of some 1.65 million viewers since the unofficial overnight figures released the day after broadcast.


Full ratings, which will reveal the chart position of the episode, should be released in the next couple of days.

5.0 million viewers watched episode six of Doctor Who: The Almost People, according to unofficial overnight figures.

The second half of the two part story, written by Matthew Graham, attracted 24.4% of the overnight audience, with 0.57 million watching on BBC One HD.

Although this represents the lowest overnight figure of the series so far, in terms of placing the episode continues the trend of all previous weeks of being the second most-watched programme of the day, a million viewers ahead of third placed Casualty. The UEFA Champions League Final: Barcelona v Manchester United took the top spot for the day , with some 7.9 million watching the match on ITV1.

More people watched Doctor Who than the Football during the period they were on together, although the overnight share was lower than in previous weeks. Figures also indicated around two million viewers switched from BBC1 to ITV1 as Doctor Who ended, reflecting their preference to watch the Doctor first!

Television viewing across the day was down, with many families away from home at the start the half term holiday. The final official ratings, which includes those who record the programme and watch it later, will be available next Sunday.

Doctor Who currently stands as the 27th most watched programme of the week.

On BBC Three, Doctor Who Confidential had an overnight audience of 0.34 million.

The Rebel Flesh has debuted in Australia to excellent ratings. TV Tonight reports that the episode averaged 823,000 viewers in the five major capital cities. Again, it won its national timeslot, was the top-rating drama of the day and the fourth highest rating programme for the day overall (only beaten by news programs). The corresponding Confidential Cutdown also rated a respectable 598,000 viewers in the five major capitals. These overnight figures, however, do not include regional, rural and time-shifted viewers and hence significantly understate the actual national ratings.