Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Celebrations Announced

Are you ready? Good. It's time for the 50th Anniversary countdown to begin in blazing style...
The BBC have today announced a wealth of upcoming Doctor Who 50th Anniversary celebrations set to broadcast on a vast range of mediums in the ten weeks leading up to the broadcast of the much-anticipated blockbuster 50th Anniversary Special. Here in this article, we've rounded up all of the key details you need to know on the matter(s) at hand.

Firstly, BBC One have shed further light on the 50th Anniversary Special itself. Set to broadcast on November 23rd simultaneously across the world and in cinemas, the episode will be titled The Day of the Doctor and will have a feature-length running time of 75 minutes. This running time is the joint-longest seen for an episode of Doctor Who since the show's revival in 2005, matching The End of Time Part 2's extensive 75 minutes and just eclisping Voyage of the Damned's 72 minutes in 2007. Don't fret over this, seeing as the only singular story which reached a lengthier running time was The Five Doctors and we'd much rather have a story with a minimal amount of excess 'fat' on it come November. The first full poster for the episode can be seen at the bottom of this article.

That's by no means all, though- indeed, it's just the top of the metaphorical iceberg. The BBC One Facebook team have kindly provided us with an extensive and (virtually) complete list of 50th Anniversary special broadcasts. It is not fully complete, as another BBC Three Special has been commissioned. What's here, however, is a pretty comprehensive summary of the grand extent of the show's celebratory programmes coming up:

• Brian Cox delves into the realms of Doctor Who with a lecture documentary at the Royal Institution of Great Britain exploring the feasibility of time travel, extraterresterial life and other concepts posed on the sci-fi show. (BBC Two)
• The Culture Show presents its own 60-minute special in Me, You and Doctor Who. Presented by Matthew Sweet, the one-off episode deals with the cultural influence of Who in the past half-century and the great legends of its creation. (BBC Two)
• Mark Gatiss' biopic drama An Adventure In Space and Time focuses on the inception and early days of making the show. The 90-minute movie stars David Bradley as William Hartnell along with other acclaimed British actors including Jessica Raine, Brian Cox, William Russell and Carole Ann Ford. (BBC Two)
• Doctor Who's first ever story, An Unearthly Child, will broadcast in four parts on the BBC for the first time in nearly two decades! (BBC Four)
• Blue Peter special episodes will celebrate the relationship of Doctor Who with its original target audience over the past 50 years, including interviews with the show's stars new and old including Matt Smith, Jenna Coleman and Sylvester McCoy. (CBBC)
• The Doctor Who: Monsters & Villains Weekend will be something of a live event, intended to get fans involved as a series of broadcasts ask us which monster is the all-time greatest menace to appear on Doctor Who...(BBC Three)
• For relative newcomers who need a place to start, a new broadcast of the US programme Doctor Who: The Ultimate Guide may help those new fans find their feet before The Day of the Doctor premieres! (BBC Three)
• Who Is The Doctor?, a radio documentary that focuses on the lasting impact of Doctor Who in the past 50 years and why it still remains a worldwide success. (BBC Radio 2)
• The Blagger's Guide to Doctor Who takes a more satirical approach, as David Quantick poses such persistent queries as why some Americans think that Tom Baker is still the Doctor...(BBC Radio 2)
• Graham Norton takes us to the Doctor Who Celebration Convention in London for a three-hour experience of the convention and a catch-up with the series' stars and its fanbase! (BBC Radio 2)
• A documentary looking at the evolution of 'TROCK' (Time Lord Rock) over the years since Doctor Who's revival in 2005. (BBC Radio 1)
• Who Made Who? investigates the world as it stood in 1963, and how that world influenced Doctor Who's inception and its initial adventures. (BBC Radio 4)
• Doctor Who: The Doctors Revisited, a twenty two-episode series featuring eleven specials focusing on the Eleven Doctors and eleven repeat broadcasts of classic Who stories. The regularity of these impending broadcasts has yet to be confirmed. (Non-BBC Channel)

Doctor Who returns with its blockbuster 50th Anniversary Special, The Day of the Doctor, on BBC One and in cinemas worldwide on November 23rd.