This Week in Doctor WhoThis Week in Doctor Who

This Week in Doctor Who


Week 31: 1-7 Aug 2020 - United Kingdom

Data last updated 13 January 2025

Saturday 1 August

Show broadcasts for Drama
 
1:00pm BST
The Idiot's Lantern
(Repeated: Sat 11:00pm BST)

Time-twisting adventure with David Tennant. Our heroes visit 1953 for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Written by Mark 'League of Gentlemen' Gatiss.


Show broadcasts for Drama
 
2:00pm BST
The Impossible Planet
(Repeated: Sun 12:00am BST)

One of the scariest new Who stories so far! David Tennant's Doctor arrives on a bleak planet in the orbit of a black hole, where a great evil is waking.


Show broadcasts for Drama
 
3:00pm BST
The Satan Pit
(Repeated: Sun 1:00am BST)

An adventure at the edge of time and space for David Tennant's hero. As Rose battles the deadly Ood, the Doctor finds his every belief is challenged to the core.

Sunday 2 August

Show broadcasts for Watch
 
10:00am BST
The Rings of Akhaten

Sci-fi adventure with Matt Smith. The Doctor takes Clara to the Festival of Offerings, but the Old God is waking.


Show broadcasts for Watch
 
11:00am BST
Cold War

Sci-fi drama with Matt Smith. On a Russian submarine in 1983, a frozen alien warrior is waking up, just as the TARDIS materialises.


Show broadcasts for Watch
 
12:00pm BST
Hide

Sci-fi drama with Matt Smith. Something terrifying is hiding in Caliburn House, and the Doctor finds himself part of the ghost hunt.


Show broadcasts for Watch
 
1:00pm BST
Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

Sci-fi drama with Matt Smith. The TARDIS has crashed, Clara is lost inside, and the Doctor has 30 minutes before his ship explodes!


Show broadcasts for Watch
 
2:00pm BST
The Crimson Horror

Sci-fi drama with Matt Smith. Something ghastly is afoot in Victorian Yorkshire, as bodies are found with their skin a waxy, glowing red.


Show broadcasts for Watch
 
3:00pm BST
Nightmare in Silver

Sci-fi drama with Matt Smith. Hedgewick's World of Wonders is the perfect theme park day out. And ground zero for a deadly silver resurrection.


Show broadcasts for Watch
 
4:00pm BST
The Name of the Doctor

Sci-fi drama with Matt Smith. The identity of the Doctor is called into question as his friends are kidnapped.

Thursday 6 August

Show broadcasts for BBC Radio 3
 
10:00pm BST
Free Thinking: BBC Radiophonic Workshop (Related)

The BBC Radiophonic workshop was founded in 1958 by Desmond Briscoe and Daphne Oram. This group of experimental composers, sound engineers and musical innovators provided music for programmes including The Body in Question, Horizon, Quatermass, Newsround, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Chronicle and Delia Derbyshire's iconic Doctor Who Theme before being shut down by Director General John Birt in 1998.

In an edition recorded just as the Workshop prepare to release a new album, and tour the UK, Matthew Sweet brings together Radiophonic Workshop members Dick Mills, Paddy Kingsland, Roger Limb, Peter Howell, and Mark Ayres to reflect on the days and nights they spent in the workshop, coaxing ageing machines into otherworldly life, and pioneering electronic music. Also in the programme, producer and former drummer with The Prodigy Kieron Pepper, Oscar winning Gravity composer Steven Price, Vile Electrodes, and Matt Hodson, on the influence the Radiophonic Workshop had on them.


Show broadcasts for BBC Radio 3
Premiere
 
11:00pm BST
BBC Proms: Pioneers of Sound (Related)

In 2020, BBC Radio 3 is bringing together musical greats, from the past and the present, in one extraordinary Proms season. Radio 3 is broadcasting the best of four decades of unmissable Proms concerts. Tonight's concert takes a recent glance back to a Prom from just a few years ago, celebrating some of the great pioneers in electronic music. Daphne Oram’s visionary Still Point fills the Royal Albert Hall for the first time in the premiere of a revised realisation. Composed in 1949 – almost a decade before Oram co-founded the BBC Radiophonic Workshop – the piece is thought to be the first to combine a live orchestra with live electronic manipulations, here played via turntables.

Still Point forms the centrepiece of a late-night sonic exploration that features works by Delia Derbyshire – another Radiophonic Workshop pioneer, who achieved cult status for her electronic arrangement of the Doctor Who TV theme – as well as new works inspired by the Radiophonic legacy.

Presented by Kate Molleson

Delia Derbyshire: The Delian Mode
CHAINES: Knockturning (world premiere of new arrangement for orchestra)
Laurie Spiegel: Only Night Thoughts (world premiere)
Suzanne Ciani: Improvisation on Four Sequences
Daphne Oram: Still Point (world premiere of revised version)

Shiva Feshareki (turntables/electronics); James Bulley (live mix/electronics); Suzanne Ciani (synthesiser); CHAINES (live electronics); London Contemporary Orchestra; Robert Ames (conductor)

(From the BBC Proms 2018, 23 July)