This announcement follows a leaked BBC e-mail stating Series 8 was scheduled for August 2014, would be 12 episodes and would feature a new Doctor.
The Doctor will regenerate in the Christmas Special, not in the 50th anniversary special.
The full text of the BBC announcement, including quotes from Matt Smith and Steven Moffat can be read on the BBC website.
And the highest ratings for series 7B go to the finale, as ‘[In] The Name of the Doctor’ pulls in 812,000 five-city overnight viewers. That placed it at #9 overall, #2 for the ABC (it will pass the News once the time-shifting viewers are added) and #3 for dramas.
Doctor Who is taking to cinema screens again on the weekend of June 1-2 with screenings of Season 7 episodes Asylum of the Daleks and The Angels Take Manhattan.
In Victoria, the screenings are at Village Cinemas and tickets can be booked now. Session times below – more information at Village Cinemas.
Knox, Southland and Sunshine - 9pm, Saturday June 1 and 4pm, Sunday June 2.
Fountain Gate, Geelong, Jam Factory and Karingal - 4pm, Sunday June 2 only.
For those in Sydney that weekend, a series of Doctor Who 3D projections will be displayed against the facade of Sydney’s Customs House in Circular Quay during the evening of Saturday, June 1st, as part of this year’s Vivid Festival. The projections will be displayed hourly from 6:50pm to 11:50pm.
More details at the Vivid Festival website.
ABC Shops around Australia are hosting a Doctor Who night on Monday, May 20th to celebrate 50 years of adventures in space and time!
The event includes loads of activities for all ages:
In Victoria, the only shop involved is Chadstone – details below.
Come along and be one of the first people in Australia to purchase the new Doctor Who Series 7: Part 2 on DVD.
The ABC Shop have indicated more Doctor Who nights will follow across 2013.
Some droop this week, as the penultimate story of the season, ‘Nightmare in Silver’, pulled just 686,000 “five city” overnight viewers. Hell, Sydney almost had as many viewers as Melbourne!
Bit of a drab night for drama all round though, as the shine comes off ‘A Place To Call Home’, with ‘Call The Midwife’ just slotting in front of ‘Doctor Who’ as the second-top drama for the day.
As always, thanks to TV Tonight.
A bump for the show this week, with the highest ratings for some years as ‘The Crimson Horror’ pulled in 786,000 “Five City” overnight ratings. Pity (warning: editorial content!) the story wasn’t all that great… a few seconds of fighting skinsuit is not enough “M Appeal” for me!
But at least Tegan got bagged out.
Bit of deja vu, as ‘Doctor Who’ grabs 725,000 viewers for ‘Journey To The Centre Of The TARDIS’ — the same as they got for ‘The Rings of Akhaten’ a few weeks back. That made it the ninth-highest rating show of the day, and the second-highest drama of the day (‘A Place to Call Home’ had a 3 million lead-in courtesy of the season finale of ‘My Kitchen Rules’!)
A bump in the road, as ‘Doctor Who’ slid down 80,000 to 648,000 viewers for the episode ‘Hide’. That’s still a comfy win over ‘The Biggest Loser’, but the behemoths that are ‘The Voice’ and ‘My Kitchen Rules’ continue to drag in more than one-and-a-half million fast food fans.
But for what it’s worth, we won’t blame Sydney this week: they jumped up 3,000!
As always, thanks to TV Tonight.
More of the same for ‘Doctor Who’ this week, with ‘The Cold War’ microscopically up to 728,000 “five city overnight” viewers. So instead I’ll concentrate on the seemingly perpetual indifference that Sydney has for the show, both classic and new. Since at least the Nineties repeats, Sydney has always contributed far less viewers than you would expect given its population.
Below you can see, for example, the breakdown of this week’s 728,000 between the five cities, and the approximate percentage of each city’s population.
| City | Viewers | Percentage |
| Melbourne | 232,000 | 5.6% |
| Sydney | 154,000 | 3.3% |
| Brisbane | 135,000 | 4.4% |
| Perth | 120,000 | 6.6% |
| Adelaide | 86,000 | 6.8% |
I’m not actually sure whether the Brisbane area includes the Sunshine and Gold Coasts — if not, you can bump their proportion up to about 6.3%.
I haven’t trawled back through the archives to confirm this, but to my memory Perth has usually been the most interested, or very near to it. Let’s attribute that to them being the city that saw the show first, way back on 12 January 1965!
Lords of Time 1 has been and gone (in Melbourne, at least) and what a great weekend it was!
I’m sure everyone who went along had as much fun as we did and will agree the guests were wonderful! Thanks to First Contact Conventions for making it happen! Hello to everyone who stopped past the DWCV table and welcome to those who joined the club.
Now, Lords of Time returns in May for an evening with Eric ‘Master’ Roberts – one night only, Tuesday May 28th.
But, it doesn’t stop there – Lords of Time 2 lands in Melbourne on December 7th with another SEVEN guests, most of whom have never appeared in Melbourne before (and some not in Australia at all!).
