Published on November 16th, 2009 | by simeon

“Doctor Who” & “Torchwood” Updates

The penultimate story of David Tennant’s final days as The Doctor, the one-hour special ‘The Waters of Mars’, aired last night in the UK to a solid 9.1 million viewers and a 33.9% audience share, making it the third most watched program of the day and the sixth most watched for the week. It also beat the previous special ‘Planet of the Dead’ which pulled in 8.4 million viewers back in April. An inside look at the epidsode can be found here, while a promo for next month’s airing on BBC America is over here.

Reviews were also much more enthusiastic for the episode which took the titular Time Lord into a self-righteous moral realm so dark it often made him truly menacing. After it came a 30-second trailer the two-part final Tennant episodes, ‘The End of Time’, which are expected to air Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. You can watch that trailer, which includes a voice over by Brian Cox, below:

On December 16th, Tennant himself will appear as guest host of a Who-themed Christmas episode of music panel show “Never Mind the Buzzcocks”. Catherine Tate and Bernard Cribbins will serve as guests alongside Radio 1 DJ Jo Whiley, singer Jamie Cullum, and regular team captains Noel Fielding and Phil Jupitus.

Meanwhile, despite the recession making spending tight for British television, Russell T. Davies tells TV Guide Magazine that things look likely to start moving on a fourth season of “Torchwood” in January.

Davies says ideas are already in place for a fourth year and has previously stated he could “write you scene one of series four right now. I know exactly how to pick it up. I’ve got a shape in mind, and I’ve got stories. I know where you’d find Gwen and Rhys, and their baby, and Jack, and I know how you’d go forward with a new form of Torchwood.”