Happy Birthday, Doctor Who

The show — called the Celebration — is taking place over three days at London’s Excel Centre, where there are “panels, signings, and a host of other activities,” reports Doctorwhonews.net. “The BBC have released a taster of the event this morning,” the website adds. Meanwhile, the 50th-anniversary edition of Doctor Who Magazine (DWM) has “proved so popular it is being reprinted just a week after publication.” The website reports that Issue 467 is “the biggest edition of the magazine ever at 116 pages and includes 12 art cards, a spoof mini magazine that imagines how DWM would have celebrated the show’s first birthday, and nine free audio downloads. Despite a larger-than-normal print run, it has been selling out around the UK.” DWM editor Tom Spilsbury says around 50,000 copies were initially printed, “with another 15,000 now coming off the presses.” Spilsbury says: “It’s astonishing! I’ve never seen anything like it. Truth be told, I was a little nervous about the 50th-anniversary issue. We worked hard to put together a really good package for readers, but you never quite know how anything is going to go down. You just cross your fingers and hope people like it.” Fellow Digital Journal writer Tim Sandle was at the first day of the special three-day convention yesterday, as can be seen from his photo essay. Earlier in the year, Sandle attended a special event hosted by British Film Institute, which has been celebrating the 50th anniversary all year long. As reported yesterday, the next major televisual feast is tonight, with the feature-length drama The Day of the Doctor. It will be simulcast in more than 75 countries from 7:50 p.m. GMT. It will be followed at 9:05 p.m. GMT by Doctor Who Live: The Afterparty. In the USA immediately before, BBC America will celebrate the anniversary with the first ever live simulcast from YouTube Space Los Angeles. According to Doctorwhonews.net, the station “has joined with Nerdist Industries to screen a pre-anniversary show on the station and streamed globally on BBC America’s YouTube Channel.” The live show will be hosted by Veronica Belmont, and will air from 2:30pm ET (7:30 p.m. GMT) just before the TV premiere of the anniversary special. Whether on TV, radio or the Internet, references to the 50th anniversary can’t be avoided, whether it’s Google’s new Google Doodle — which it calls a Whodle — or Wikipedia’s choice of subject for its main-page featured article today, which links to the full article on the Who story The Stolen Earth, which was in the 2007–8 series and starred David Tennant.