Never mind the day of the Doctor, this seems like the year of the Doctor, there's been so much build up, indeed hype about the 50th anniversary of the show's first broadcast. In fact I'd swear I've seen in the schedules more programmes about a fictitious TV time- traveller than an assassinated US president (both events of course occurred on the same day). Anyway, quibbling apart, I've quite enjoyed these catch-up quick-guides to the 11 doctors who precede the soon-come regeneration of Matt Smith to Peter Capaldi (who I think will make a great Doctor). I'm old enough to remember Patrick Troughton as the first Doctor I ever saw and Jon Pertwee as "my Doctor", although I missed the Tom Baker years completely (my teenage protest about Pertwee's passing) and couldn't really stick the Colin Baker or Sylvester McCoy series, when the show fell into a seemingly terminal decline. I'm interested that the one-off TV special of the Doctor of Paul McGann gets rehabilitated as a counting member of the family line with no mention at all of Peter Cushing's twice-rendered cinema version from the mid- 60's. With some interesting interviewees and insights from the show's creators and participants, it was an easy watch for an old Whovian like me. Of course some key participants are missing in action, like Russell T Davies, the show-runner for the successful re-boot in 2005 and Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper from that most crucial of series and the format of discussing in order the Doctor, his companions and enemies grates long before the last episode on Matt Smith, but with decent clips and like I said, expert comments from the sidelines, this was a good aide-memoirs for fans of the Doctor, old and new.

This year, with the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who scheduled for November, we have been treated to the best set of puff piece work to introduce a new audience to the Doctor. "The Doctors Revisited" is a series of half-hour specials which discuss the incarnations of the Doctor, and the impact of their performers, followed by an airing of one of that Doctor's stories -- a serial edited into a whole.Although the new versions lack the cliff-hangers that added so much to the original broadcasts, they permit the modern viewer a fair look at the earlier Doctors. The half-hour discussions, ring-led by current show-runner, Steven Moffat, with appearances by the actors, when still alive, are informative and fun. For those of us who are familiar with the original TV series, which ran from 1963 to 1989, it's an amusingly produced aide-memoire. For the new fan, it is invaluable for getting up to speed -- and for showing just how production techniques have advanced in half a century.