The next in the Doctor Who Lockdown global 'watchathon' events will be in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Eleventh Doctor to our screens this coming Friday 3rd April!


Once again the episode's writer Steven Moffat will be contributing to the Twitter discussion during this episode; speaking on his Instagram account, he also hinted:
Update: Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill and director Adam Smith will also be participating to the Twitter discussion.

Beforehand, at 5pm BST there will also be a Q&A session, with organiser Emily Cook tweeting:

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You can also support the creative industry behind our entertainment at this time through JustGiving as detailed below:

'Vincent and the Doctor' demonstrates the power of TV. If you'd like to support the creative industry at a difficult time, please donate to the @FilmTVCharity's COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund. #DoctorWhoLockdown has a JustGiving page to fundraise... https://t.co/lKPhu94UnI

— Emily Cook #FishCustard (@Emily_Rosina) March 30, 2020

The third in the global 'watchathon' events organised by Doctor Who Magazine's Emily Cook - now entitled The Doctor Who Lockdown - will be eleventh Doctor tale Vincent and the Doctor, taking place on the titular Vincent Van Gogh's birthday, 30th March.

As with previous events, the writer for the story, Richard Curtis will be commenting live on Twitter, but this time Emily and her fellow co-organiser for this viewing, the story's script editor Emma Freud, have also announced the Doctor himself, Matt Smith, will be joining Twitter to participate in the discussion, along with his trusty companion's real-life counterpart Karen Gillan, and the actor who brought Vincent to life in this episode, Tony Curran. Not only that, but the uncredited curator of the Musée d'Orsay, Bill Nighy, will also be joining in!



There is a new YouTube channel for these event, Doctor Who Lockdown, which features videos relating to all the events so far, and more to come!

BBC Studios have announced the forthcoming release of Doctor Who's fifth series of adventures for the 21st Century in a limited edition Steelbook:


The steelbook is due to be released on 10 February 2019, and is available to pre-order in the UK from Amazon.

Though the modern series of Doctor Who has yet to be established as essential viewing on television in Japan, fans in the country will now be able to enjoy the series in their native language thanks to an initiative announced by production company Kadokawa for this Autumn.

Doctor Who: New Generation will see the Matt Smith era released in the country starting with his debut series on 3rd October 2014, with the sixth and seventh series following over the next few months. The episodes will be fully dubbed into Japanese, with the voice of the eleventh Doctor portrayed by Tokuyoshi Kawashima, Amy by Kana Uetake, Rory by Yoshiki Nakajima, and River Song by Kozue Harashima.

The Series 5 Boxed set will be presented with Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo soundtracks in Japanese and the original English, plus Japanese subtitles; as well as the thirteen episodes of the series, the seven disc set will also include the 2010 Christmas special, A Christmas Carol:

• Disc 1: 11番目の時間 (The Eleventh Hour); 眼下の獣 (The Beast Below)
  
• Disc 2: ダーレクの勝利 (Victory of the Daleks); 天使の時間 (The Time of Angels)
  
• Disc 3: 肉体と石 (Flesh and Stone); ヴェネチアの吸血鬼 (The Vampires of Venice)
  
• Disc 4: エイミーの選択 (Amy's Choice); ハングリー･アース (The Hungry Earth)
  
• Disc 5: 冷血 (Cold Blood); ゴッホとドクター (Vincent and the Doctor)
  
• Disc 6: 下宿人 (The Lodger); パンドリカが開く (The Pandorica Opens)
  
• Disc 7: ビッグバン (The Big Bang); クリスマス・キャロル (A Christmas Carol)
  

The DVD is available to pre-order via Amazon.

Karen Gillan has posted online one of the first pictures of herself and Matt Smith in costume as Amy Pond and the Doctor - taken at their initial camera test.

The actress shared the image via Twitter on Tuesday, saying: "1st pic of Matt and I [sic] in character was released 4 yrs ago today [sic], but, I have the real one..from the 1st camera test".

Having already appeared in the show as a soothsayer in The Fires of Pompeii in April 2008, Gillan made her debut as Amy two years later in The Eleventh Hour on 3rd April 2010.

On 17th February 2010, the BBC released a montage shot featuring the duo to promote the start of Series 5, as reported by Doctor Who News, with the world having been given its first look at Gillan and Smith in costume seven months earlier, when an official image was released as filming began on the series - also reported by Doctor Who News.

It is currently unknown when exactly the test photo - shown below - was taken.

The fiftieth anniversary episode of Doctor Who was the most accessed programme on the BBC iPlayer for the whole of 2013.

The Day of the Doctor topped the chart with 3.2 million people accessing the episode at some point. The episode had 0.3 million more requests than the second placed programme, episode 1 of Bad Education, the comedy series about the worst teacher ever to grace the British education system.

The Christmas episode, The Time of the Doctor, which saw Matt Smith leave the series, was accessed 1.95 million times in the week following transmission, enough to make it the 32nd most requested programme of the year and the most requested programme for Christmas week. Mrs Brown's Boys, which came top of the Christmas broadcast ratings, had 1.36 million requests.

Nearly a million people downloaded the iPlayer mobile and tablet apps over the Christmas period, meaning over 20 million now have the service on their mobile device.

All ten episodes of Doctor Who that premiered in 2013 made the top 50 programmes on iPlayer for the year. The Bells of Saint John came in at number 5 on the chart, with 2.64 million requests during the couple of months it was available. The Rings of Akhaten was 15th with 2.31 million requests. At 23 was The Name of the Doctor which had 2.06 million requests. Cold War was 33rd with 1.95 million requests, Hide was 35th with 1.92 million requests, Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS was 39th with 1.89 million requests, Nightmare in Silver was 40th with 1.89 million requests and The Crimson Horror was 43rd with 1.83 million requests.

Overall, the 2013 episodes were requested over 19 million times during the year. The 2012 episodes were also available on iPlayer for part of the year and were requested a total of 2.39 million times. The 14 episodes from Series Six were requested 4.51 million times and Series Five 0.67 million times.

BBC Worldwide has announced the release of Doctor Who: The Complete Series 1-7 Box Set on Blu-ray for release in the United Kingdom on 4th November and in North America on 5th November:


In addition, the North American release will include a bonus gift in the form of the original Doctor Who Universal Remote Control Sonic Screwdriver, three artwork cards featuring the three Doctors, plus an exclusive comic book.

The 29 disc collection contains each series in its own individual Blu-ray case, and it is expected that the four remastered Eccleston/Tennant series will be available individually at a later date.

Al Jazeera has bought Series 5 to 7 of Doctor Who, it was announced today.

The episodes were snapped up at the BBC Worldwide Showcase 2013 event and will be shown on the satellite TV broadcaster's pan-Arabic children's channel JCC, which launched in 2005 and is based in Qatar.

The showcase is a four-day international TV market being held at ACC Liverpool. It started yesterday and is welcoming some 700 TV buyers from around the globe.

Paola Tonella, BBC Worldwide's sales and distribution territory manager for the Middle East and Africa, said: Among the star names at yesterday's gala opening were Eve Myles and Mark Williams.

The showcase will also be hosting special events to both celebrate the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who and to spotlight the natural-history documentary series Africa.

Steve Macallister, the president and managing director of sales and distribution at BBC Worldwide, said:

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Hour has finally lost its position as the most accessed programme on the BBC iPlayer since the launch of the service in 2007.

Matt Smith's debut episode as the Doctor had clung to the top of the list since May 2010, shortly after it was shown on BBC One. The episode has seen off attempts by other dramas such as Sherlock, comedies such as Come Fly with Me and documentaries like Frozen Planet to dislodge it from the top spot, to retain the title of the most popular programme on iPlayer, ever.

The two year reign at the top came to an end a couple of weeks ago when BBC Sport claimed the crown with the Opening Ceremonies of London 2012 which has been accessed around 3.4 million times, overtaking The Eleventh Hour which currently stands at 2.85 million requests.

Doctor Who still retains the second place in the table, comfortably ahead of the third placed Sherlock: A Scandal in Belgravia.

Doctor Who returns to Germany this December when Series Five begins broadcasting on the pay TV FOX Channel.

The first episode Fünf vor zwölf, which translates as Five to Twelve will screen on the channel on 21st December at 8.15pm CET with episode two following later the same evening. The network has launched a website to tie in with the series

Series 5 will also be made available on iTunes Germany in both German and English beginning December 22nd.

German fans have yet to see broadcast the third and fourth series starring David Tennant.

serienjunkies.com has a report detailing the somewhat chequered history of Doctor Who broadcasts in Germany.

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Meanwhile Televisió de Catalunya, has begun transmitting series 6 in Catalan on Canal 3XL. The series continues this Friday with La maledicció de la taca negra.