Radio Times

Crikey. A Dalek finally shoots the Doctor after 40 years of trying - and the Doctor Who production team keeps secrets better than the MoD does.

It must be fantastic being them tonight: the whole country caught off guard, no-one knowing this would happen. Even news organisations weren't ready. Nobody was ready, and a furious, just furious rush begins right now to find out who the new Doctor is.

It looks as if David Tennant has lied to us all when repeatedly saying he's doing the specials next year - unless there's something even weirder going on - but good on him. As great as Christopher...

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Q Are there no Freesat boxes with built-in hard-disk recorders (PVRs)?
John Lesley, Edinburgh

A It's inconceivable that there won't ever be any Freesat PVRs, but none is currently available. If you're very technically minded, you could try rigging something up with an existing PVR or even a PC, but we hear that viewers who have tried this have had only limited success.

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Do you have a question for Doctor Digital? Just get in touch using the form below.

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Q I understand that initial HD transmissions on the new Freesat service will be 1080-interlaced. Is there any hope that this will be upgraded to 1080-progressive in the near future, with a 24-frames-per-second option for films? I have a 1080p HDTV and want to maximise the quality of picture received.
Peter Cash, Manchester

A It's no to both, we're afraid. The highest-quality HD system at the moment, called 1080p, is used by Blu-Ray (high-definition DVD ), but not much else: no UK HD broadcaster transmits in this format as yet. Most are broadcasting in 720p, which is lower quality, although many argue it works better for sport.

The...

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The 1966 family comedy The Trouble with Angels, in which Hayley Mills creates mayhem at a convent-run school, is not Ida Lupino's finest hour.

But as one of America's very few working female directors in the late 1940s, 50s and 60s, she earned her two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. One for films, one for TV, where she ended up directing episodes of The Virginian and The Twilight Zone).

Lupino's name always comes up when discussing women who made the director's chair their own – mainly because there are so few examples.

So how much has changed in the intervening years? Well, the 76th...

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In this week's round-up, a new man enters our lives, and Rex and Mohamed find themselves in hot water after discussing nominations…

Romance 2/5

So the biggest news of the last seven days was the arrival of hunky, pretty new housemate Stu. It certainly marked the end of any chance Dale might have had with Jen. Did you see her reaction when Stu walked through the door? Her jaw dropped, her eyes lit up and a ravenous smile stretched across her face. It must have taken every ounce of self control (of which Jen has plenty) to stop her from jumping on Stu's back, wrapping her...

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Mainstream television often seems like a soft play area devoted entirely to teens and their half-formed sensibilities, what with its childishly silly sci-fi dramas and endless, tedious soaps.

But there is something at long last for literate grown-ups - you know, people who can form coherent sentences and whose lips don't move when they read - Criminal Justice, running every night from Monday to Friday (30 June to 4 July) on BBC1. It's rewarding, even though it's a big commitment and it's hardly a laugh a minute - a young man, Ben Coulter (the gifted Ben Whishaw), is arrested for rape and murder after he...

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Is there a more curmudgeonly character on television than Andy Dalziel?

All right, Victor Meldrew is a miserable old sod with the semi-permanent expression of a man forced to lick a dog's scent from a thistle, but at least we know it will always end in a joke at his expense. And Inspector Morse might be a grumpy old goat on occasion, but after a glass of wine and a bit of Mozart he could always invite Lewis over for a friendly game of Scrabble and a bit of a laugh about the day's grisly murder investigation. Even Scrooge saw the error of his ways eventually, bah...

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No question: Doctor Who monsters are scary. Take a look at the new Radio Times survey: vote for which is the most frightening monster and you could win Doctor Who DVDs. But tonight's is the first creature to make me feel ill since 1974. Jon Pertwee's final tale, Planet of the Spiders, had that disagreement between the Eight-Legs and the Two-Legs that might normally have gone our way but for how the Eight-Legs were bloody huge. Thirty-four years later and I just shuddered at that memory - although, true, the fact that it was nearly four decades ago did contribute to the upset.

Tonight's episode, Turn...

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Q I have a digital TV with built-in Freeview. Since getting it, I've noticed that whenever my neighbour uses his ride-on mower, my TV picture breaks up. I have a roof-mounted aerial and the neighbour is at the other side of a one-acre field! What can I do?
Viv Bell, Bournemouth, Dorset

A It sounds as if your signal is weak. Look at your Freeview settings: there should be an option to show signal strength. If it's below 30 per cent, there may not be much you can do. Freeview's signal will be boosted once analogue TV is switched off, but in your region, Meridian, that won't happen...

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Q If I only watch TV programmes via catch-up services such as the BBC iPlayer, can I stop paying for my TV licence?
Alan Gray, London SW19

A In theory, yes! You need a licence to watch programmes as they are being broadcast, so watching channels that are streamed live online requires a licence (BBC News and BBC3 are available this way, and BBC1 will be within the next 12 months). But catch-up services aren't covered by the law. What you actually watch is what's crucial: whether or not your receiving equipment could be used to watch programmes "live", if you do not in fact do so, you...

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The first production released by Hammer studios for over 20 years comes with a very clear warning: "Contains very strong supernatural horror, sex, drugs and gore." (If that's not an invitation to view, I don't know what is.)

It's called Beyond the Rave, and revolves around a vampire cult in a very creepy English woodland. Beyond the Rave is available to view for free on social-networking website MySpace, where it has been unfolding weekly since April in 20 four-minute chunks.

It is, you must admit, thoroughly modern, though it is also thematically in keeping with the British production house that redefined horror at the cinema in the late...

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Controversy, tasks and a limp excuse for a romance. Here's how we rate the second week in the Big Brother house.

Controversy 4/5

So, Alexandra threatened to set her "gangster friends" on whoever nominated her for eviction - and got herself chucked out for doing so. It's definitely controversial but without actual physical violence or the insertion of an inappropriate object into a housemate's orifice, I don't think we can give it 5 out of 5.

Despite everything, it's a bit of a shame Alexandra went. I found her stupid argument-making kind of entertaining and I was hoping that maybe, just maybe, she could...

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I was unfeasibly annoyed when I learnt that Shark (Fridays, 10:00pm, Five) had been cancelled by its American network. Not that it's a masterpiece of popular drama, you understand - it's fairly formulaic and frequently very silly. But at least every week it has a decent enough story arc that makes some kind of sense, with a beginning, a middle and an end. It's not meandering, self-indulgent twaddle like, say, Heroes, or soapy pap like Brothers and Sisters and Dirty Sexy Money.

And daft though it is, Shark, which stars James Woods as a straight-talking LA special prosecutor, is rarely boring, thanks to a breathless pace...

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I have to start by making a confession. I wasn't exactly chuffed when the news broke that Catherine Tate was to play the Doctor's new companion. Yes, I admit it, I joined countless other fans in a chorus of "What is Russell T Davies thinking?" I'd been unfortunate enough to catch a few minutes of Tate's comedy sketch show, and I couldn't see anything remotely funny about it. In Christmas special The Runaway Bride, I found her character, Donna Noble, brash, mouthy and annoying.

But as series four of Doctor Who progresses, I'm getting fat on humble pie. Donna is everything I hoped I'd get in...

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We never found out what the monster of the week really was - and I couldn't care less if you paid me to. The monster, the jokes, those gorgeous landscapes on the planet of Midnight - it was all there just to get people in a room shouting at each other. Fantastic.

And add it up. There were six ordinary passengers in the luxury cruise bus, plus a hostess and, of course, the Doctor. Add in the driver and mechanic who stayed in their control cabin, bung in this thing banging on the hull and top off your count with the flickering image of Rose on...

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