The BBC have - and quite reasonably too - been trumpeting the Saturday night Doctor Who ratings victory against the ITV-scheduled Harry Potter movie.

According to the BBC News pages, 8.3 million viewers was the peak total towards the end of the Doctor's first adventure of the series. The competitors?

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets...pulled in an average of five million viewers...beat the BBC's other Saturday night hit, as Strictly Dance Fever attracted just 3.8 million people, as well as Channel 4's Deal or No Deal, with 2.9 million viewers

Meanwhile, opinion on New Earth is strongly divided. You can discuss the episode in our forum as well as read my review of the Doctor and Rose's trip to the year 5 billion and 23 to find out just why this adventure will go down in the annals of Doctor Who history for the wrong reasons...

There's more coverage on the BBC News pages, meanwhile, with Billie Piper revealing she was scared at attempting "comedy" in the series. See, it's not just me...

Piper said: "I was quite nervous about the being-possessed-by-Cassandra theme, because it was something that I've never really done before, and a lot of it was comedy that I hadn't really played before."

However there are some interesting insights in the same article into what motivates Rose this year:

"She is a bit feistier this time round and very jealous, which I love playing. She feels that at any given moment he can be taken away from her. And I don't think she ever considered that before.

She could contemplate monsters and all of that, and dealing with alien life forms and parallel worlds, etc, but the idea of losing the man she loves is really shocking and sad. She doesn't want it to happen again.

She reacts terribly to meeting Sarah-Jane. That's when the jealous streak starts to kick in, out of fear that she's not his greatest companion and that he's had millions of them before. It's like meeting the ex-girlfriend, and we have this wonderful bitch fight which is worth watching."

Meanwhile you can find out what Billie thought about the kissing at icwales.co.uk

You might be interested to know that The Hollywood Reporter reviews New Earth, although quite why when everyone who is watching Doctor Who in the USA is watching it on Sci Fi is quite a mystery. Writer Ray Bennett seemed to enjoy it though, so in the interest of balance you might want tyo click the link above and read it...