Vote for who goes rather than who stays.

Then you get the end of farces like last night's result. Simple.

Or you say there are three people at the bottom of the leaderboard - you can save one, the judges will save another. That way you get at least 2 good dancers to the SF and probably the final. The current way we could get one against no one in the same league.

How will that make it fairer then?

How about going back to the old system of scoring but getting rid of dance off at quarter final stage so public have more influence towards the end of the competition.

I'm confused as well.

All those who wish their chosen couple to stay (especially if that couple is at the bottom of the leaderboard) will simply vote to get rid of the competition - and that will mean those at the top of the leaderboard. End result is that the talented/most promising end up in the dance off.

That never happened.

Why don't we just get rid of the dance off?

Or just get rid of James Jordan that'll stop talented women getting voted out early.

I'm not entirely sure it would be fairer.

Despite being good dancers, Ali and Ricky Whittle don't seem to be very popular. Had that system been in place, I'm pretty sure at least one of them would be gone by now.

Once the judges get over the so obvious "over-marking" of the "chosen ones" - in this case Zoe and to a certain degree Ali and Ricky W. Then the public (who are allowed to vote for whoever they want - and spend their money EXACTLY how they like) might stop voting for the lesser able dancers. Last nights performance from Zoe was lack lustre and also contained elements that Anton and Laila had been slammed for the previous week - it was nowhere near being worth a nine - it wasn't anywhere near as good as Natalie and Vincent - who scored less.

Note to Judges try to be a bit more consistent with your scoring - and pull all the contestants up for the same faults rather than pick on one or two and let others off as they are that years "chosen ones"

If it was a vote to go my only inclination to pick up the phone would be to try and get rid of my favourites biggest competition and theres no logic in that.

We'd most likely have already seen the back of the best dancers - Ricky W, Ali, Laila, Jade and the characters like Ricky G/Chris would also have been targeted by now .

We'd have been sitting on Saturday watching Joe, Jo, Richard (who?) Craig and Linda battling it out - well i wouldn't because i'd have switched off long ago!


This seems like a much fairer proposition to me.

It's fair as it is.

The better dancers are assited by the judge's scores. The rest is up to us.

If the majority of the audience prefers to watch a more entertaining but slightly inferior dancer as opposed to someone who can perform heel leads but is devoid of personality, then so be it.

I remember when Zoe Ball was on strictly, she danced beautifully and should have been in the final but, the judges praised her to the hilt every week and gace her top marks and she was voted out. I am sure the public got fed up with their obvious favoritism and she went out in the semi-final (I think)

They can't vote for everyone else to go and its very unlikely all the Craig, Phil and Ricky G fans are going to all pick on the same person , say Ricky W, to vote out. The anti-judge vote couldn't vote enough times to keep all the anti-judge candidates out of the bottom 2 because they would have to vote for 7 people not 3 . Meanwhile the people voting on the dancing are likely to be more agreed which people are worst and need to go.

I agree it gets risky later on as the two weaker SF candidates fans ought to vote out the strongest dancer but you can change the rules then.

Line of the week. I wish Claudia would make this the forum quote when little Jim is on ITT this week instead of the no doubt fawning drivel he will be told is 'all over the forums'.

You're so on my wavelength this series missfrankiecat!

Had Ola not won over so many viewers this year, I suspect we might have been saying bye bye to the Jordans.

It would be odd to get rid of him but not her though.

I don't believe he's very popular.

I so agree with this. On Saturday, we watched Zoe and James and said to one another "Oh dear, they're going to be slammed for this - the judges hate disco sambas."

Then we said "Eh?!"

I'm sure half of this apparent inconsistency is down to lack of time - the judges can't really contextualise in ten seconds - and then half the time goes on irrelevant clowning around, which may be entertaining but certainly isn't informative. However, the impression the viewer is left with is one of partisanship and unfairness. I'm positive the voting correlates to that, at least in part.

She was 3rd in the final.

Zoe would have been out very swiftly using the format recommended by the OP.

The dance off was put in to stop the voters voting out anyone who was an attractive female and had been given a high mark by the judges. They hoped that, even if the voters gave them a tiny vote for no reason to do with what the show was about, the judges would at least be able to keep the best dancer in.

They underestimated the voters who just reverse the leaderboard and put any good females into the bottom two against each other.

The only way out of that was to fix the marks so the best people were all at or tied at the top and hopefully someone hopeless would fall into the bottom two - but that didn't work either.

They then tried making the judges nicer and more constructive this year but that didn't work either as I suspect the people who could dance still got no votes and they ended up with 4 bad dancers getting votes not the usual 1 or 2.

Their choice now is to cull the vote or give up and hope the show can survive hopeless people staying forever while no one any good bothers to sign up. They should deal with the problem which is the vote but I ssupect they have already just give up and told Bruno to make it more panto.

The results are not a problem. Shocks are good for the show and keep everyone on their toes!

I'd go back to having no dance-off at all in a heartbeat. The results had much more suspense then and it was actually worth voting. I would never vote outside the final under the current system.

Not everyone who watches the show loves good dancing.

Couldn't agree more.

The reason the show became so popular was due to the dancers with personality and character. The VTs then also were a real insight into what made them tick. Now it is so much of a formula that they have no real impact.

It's also not true that the public only like the less able dancers. Think Jill Halfpenny, Colin Jackson, Darren Gough - to scratch the surface.
We do however expect to be entertained in one way or another - not sneered at by the judges when their noses are out of joint. They create this problem by their random scoring and downright rudeness.

Which talented female was voted out early before the introduction of the dance off?

None that I can think of.

The current system is fair.

The main problem is the judges using a small range of scores, which tied 3 couples last week. If they had not done that, the best dancers would have been further away from the bottom dancers, by up to a further 3 points. That would have made it more difficult for last weeks result to have happened.

The public also have to catch up with the new system and realise that everyone can end up in the dance-off, even the couple in first place, and vote accordingly.

The current sytem is not fair.

And better dancers ar not assisted by the judges scores, becasue of the mentality of the voting public they are disadvantaged by it. Thats why the system is not fair.

Let me ask this question: If Zoe had been bottom of the leaderboard on Saturday, would she have ended up in the dance off? An almost certain no. She was penalised for NOT being the worst.

And its wrong to suggest that people voting to get rid of competition to their favourites would have much of an impact. Everyone has different favorites for a start!

My proposed method is much fairer becasue the current system encourages people to vote for the worst dancers to keep them in. My system encourages people to vote for the worst dancers to get them out.

Getting rid of the public vote would make it fair, that and removing Alesha with a person who actually knows something about Dancing.

That theory doesn't hold water because Jo was bottom of the table last week and landed in the dance-off.

I think we're trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist.

Zoe & James simply weren't popular enough to survive the public vote. The viewers (without whom the show would not exist) simply prefer watching other couples, even if they aren't as proficient. What's wrong with that?

This isn't the World Championships.

If the system was fair then all the dancers would start been a similar ability and a similar age group and a similar status of how well they are known. There would be new pro's each year to ensure no favourite pro and the judges would be from the Ballroom/latin scene.

THe current sysytem is as fair as it could be, the judges could actually sort it out by not awarding ties and then the spread of points would have been from 1 to 10.