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Nov 15, 2013 By Mark Redfern Doctor Who

Next Saturday, Nov. 23, marks the 50th anniversary to the day of the airing of the first ever episode of the long running and iconic British sci-fi show Doctor Who (which aired its premiere the day after Kennedy was shot). As all fans know by now, in honor of it the BBC is showing a special episode, “The Day of the Doctor,” which features the return of David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose Tyler, and will air at the same time on various TV networks around the world and also in 3D in select movie theaters. BBC America will air the episode at 2:50 p.m. EST/11:50 a.m. PST (in the U.K. it airs at 7:50 p.m. on BBC One).

The BBC has now released a near 7-minite long prequel to the special, entitled “The Night of the Doctor,” that features the long awaited return of Paul McGann (Withnail and I, Luther) as the Eighth Doctor. McGann only appeared onscreen as The Doctor once, in a 1996 TV movie co-produced by the BBC and FOX that was supposed to lead to a new Doctor Who series, which was aborted when ratings in the U.S. weren’t particularly good. He’s since appeared in various Big Finnish audio dramas as the Eighth Doctor, but never on the screen, until now… Old school Doctor Who fans squealed in collective excitement when the prequel episode premiered online yesterday and they saw McGann as the Eighth Doctor for the first time in 17 years.

Why the BBC doesn’t greenlight some sort of new Eighth Doctor miniseries starring McGann is a bit of a mystery. McGann would probably do it and surely they’d make a profit on it, with the amount of fans around the world and the intense media interest in the show.

The BBC has also released a teaser trailer for An Adventure in Space and Time, a docudrama about the birth of Doctor Who that centers on the producers, writers, directors, and actors who took part in those initial 1960s episodes that started it all. It airs on BBC America next Friday, November 22, at 9:00 p.m.

Check out “The Night of the Doctor” and the An Adventure in Space and Time teaser below.

(www.bbc.co.uk)