yeah, they will cancel DW tommorrow lol

Where are you getting this desperate knee-jerk feeling from?
My impression is that the BBC saw that Doctor Who underperformed at least in part due to the rugby match so decided at the last minute that a repeat would be a good idea to win back a few viewers lost to the rugby. It seems like a pretty reasonable idea to me.

This notion that the BBC are desperately scrambling to save a dying show is a product of you own imagination.
We've had 2 underperforming episodes. You can't come to any conclusions about the health of a TV show based on two episodes. Calm down.


Why are you comparing Great British Bake-Off to Doctor Who? GBBO is far far more popular than Doctor Who has ever been.

Do you think it likely they will squandering BBC1 airtime showing Dr Who two-parter repeats throughout this series?

I suspect things will pick up after the rugby. Heck, I think things will pick up after Saturday if England lose to Australia. I haven't seen many people denying that the ratings so far have been relatively disappointing, and as I personally think we've just had two cracking episodes, that's a shame. But really don't see any need to panic. Even if Who starts to regularly get 6m-6.5m after the plus 7 period, these are hardly dreadful or low ratings, just....um...lowER, y'know. And the BBC will always look at the final plus 28 figures. (think its plus 28 anyway?)

And Who doesn't exist in a vacuum. It wouldn't exactly be the only show that has dropped year on year if the above happens. Course I could be proven wrong, but don't think there's any need to panic just yet! And I was there, going all Max Boyce, in 1986 and 1989...

I don't know if SM will still be there in 5 years.

It's certainly wrong that you give all this negativity about viewing figures stemming solely from your apparent hatred of SM's writing style. The viewing figures, for the all reasons given by many over a considerable time remain quite sound and don't support your contention.

Feel free to dislike and critique the eps - that way we can all have a good, interesting debate, but please stop expecting everyone to agree with you and claiming that when they don't you're being bullied!

They cleared the schedule for it less than 24 hours before and threw in tabloid quotes. The whole thing reeked of desperation and was always doomed to the utter failure that it was. You talk about the show under-performing... in defence of an ill-judged repeat that was the worst rating show if the day and (as I did try to tell you yesterday) has merely underlined to people and the media that contemporary Dr Who is culturally irrelevant and losing viewers as a result.

You can pretend that overnights don't matter as much as you like, but the fact that 2.8M people watched the episode live is going to be a big issue for BBC1. It says a lot about how much people care about it, and raises the question of what the point of it being on Saturday nights actually is. If only 2.8M people watch live, why not put it on Saturday mornings or Thursdays at 6pm on BBC2?

I think the show worked best as a lead-in to BBC1 Saturday night TV in the spring. Remember when it used to beat Ant & Dec every week?


Where in my post you quoted did I refer to Moffat's writing style?

You're just annoyed you missed the scheduled GBBO repeat on Sunday. Go on, admit it.

Anyone who claims Doctor Who is culturally irrelevant are living on cuckoo land.

You didn't, in that particular post. But I've seen many of your others where you do. Since, rationally, the figures are holding up, the only possible reason I can come up with, for you to be so negative about them, is it stemming from your dislike of SM's style, or "way of doing DW" if you like.

[Edit] I notice you haven't addressed my other two points.

What two points? The only other thing you said was that the ratings are holding up, but I've talked about little else on this thread, so what do you want me to say? The ratings are down this series and were down last series. The BBC panicked, threw in an emergency repeat and just dug the hole deeper by it being the lowest rating show of the day.

Remember when Dr Who was repeated on BBC3 on Sundays and Fridays and brought in the best part of a million more viewers? Rather than 640K on BBC1, a fraction of other repeats in the same slot that get watched the first time by many millions more and don't go up against Rugby and the X-Factor when it's a sunny day and it's important to watch the first time to avoid spoilers about who won?

BARB has updated. The Magician's Apprentice ends up with 6.54m.

Not a disaster but not great.

At least it starts to give us an idea of what's happening. The "not watching live" audience is about the same in percentage terms as last years opener but the overall audience has dropped. Less watched live and less watched later. There hasn't been a magical shift in audience habits in the last 12 months, it seems basically consistant with last series. The only thing sticking in my mind is that this rating is lower than any episode last series. Not a promising start for a season premiere and a Dalek episode (though personally I don't think the Daleks are any kind of draw for the show anymore). Normally a series loses a bit of it's audience as time goes by.

Not a major concern as yet, things may yet improve and 6.5m is still decent for most shows.

As ever, you're completely ignoring the ever growing effect of PVRs and catch-up services, which obviously have a greater impact on repeats than the original broadcast. The additional choice brought by multi-channel services also dilutes the audience, an effect seen across the board.

Panicked? How could you possibly know whether that's right or not? Unsubstantiated overly negative and emotionally loaded speculation.

and Since the overnights will go up when rugby is over....

The BBC want more people to watch the show (of course they do), but it's not necessarily desperation. Just something which seemed like a good idea, but in the end didn't work.


I'm not defending the repeat. It failed and as such I doubt the BBC will bother again. All I'm saying is that I think your belief that it will actually damage the show (rather than have no effect whatsoever) is ridiculous.

And if you seriously think a last minute repeat on a Sunday afternoon is indicative of the show's overall health, you seriously need to get a grip on reality.

Why don't you just sit back and wait for the ratings to come in for Series 9 before you jump to the usual "DOCTOR WHO IS DYING!!" conclusion. There have been two episodes and one repeat. Anyone with half a brain knows that you can't arrive at any conclusions based on a sample size of two- especially if the final statistics for those two episodes haven't even been published yet. Talk about knee-jerk reactions...


Where did you pull this 2.8m figure from? The last episode had a 3.7m overnight and has added an extra million onto that due to time-shifting so far. Still not a great figure, but it's better than 2.8m.

(EDIT: This question has been answered by another poster)

And I know you want to cite the overnights as evidence that the show is dying because it's the only thing you've got, but it has been explained time and time again why this argument is flawed. If you've chosen to ignore this to further your agenda then there's no point in me trying to explain it to you again.

At least arm yourself with the basics - The omnibus DW repeat yesterday took the slot originally scheduled for the Bake Off repeat and in doing so didn't even get (according to another poster) half the viewers the GBBO had been getting.

2.878M watched live.

Oh I see, so they looked for the lowest figure they could.
Is this 2.8m (2.9m if you round properly) figure relevant to anything? Can you make any sort of conclusions about the show's performance or health from it?


I am aware of this, but it still doesn't make any sense to compare Doctor Who and GBBO. The BBC would have known full well that a Doctor Who repeat wouldn't get anywhere near as many viewers as a GBBO repeat because the two shows are in totally different leagues of popularity.

It's comparing what that same slot was getting before DW was parachuted into it. Where's the sense in showing two eps of Who to 600k people if 1.5m would want to watch GBBO at that same time instead? The Beeb are effectively sacrificing a bookmarked-for-weeks repeat slot for Bake Off in a vain attempt to bolster the ratings for Dr Who - And it clearly hasn't worked as it's THE lowest rating of the day, beaten even by the repeated programme that followed it.

"Doctor Who The Magician's Apprentice has an official consolidated 7 day rating of 6.54 million viewers. 13th most watched show that week."

I've lost count of the times I've pointed out that if these are so important, and overnights no longer matter, the BBC wouldn't have panicked into an emergency temporal repeat within 24 hours of initial broadcast. And 6.5M for a series opener in the BARB finals is an all-time low for the new series. The fact that 2.8M people watched the episode live is clearly a big shock for the BBC. The fact that their repeat got 640K viewers (about whom we know nothing yet) must have caused a response like something out of WC1.

Has an opening episode ever been at or below the average for the whole series?

I'd honestly say that the production team as a whole have taken the show's audience for granted. Can anyone honestly claim that the opening episode to series nine (2015 was as accessible to a member of the public with little exposure to/interest in the wider mythology of Who than the opening episode of series 4? (2008) or equally to a five/six/seven year old child discovering Doctor Who for the first time?

I actually loved the drama of TMA/TWF and thought it to be one of the best stories from the past five years. However, I can see how, as a re-introduction to a family-orientated tea-time show, it failed abysmally on several levels.

BIB - Sorry Isambard, you've entirely lost me there. Why do we need to know anything the 640K viewers? And why would any sort of response be expected from the WC1 area of London?

Do you work at the BBC? If not, you are simply making huge assumptions that there is panicking or shock taking place at the BBC.
And please stop making your 'emergency temporal repeat' gag. It wasn't that funny first time...

Two episodes in? You'll have to wait for my answer till this series is finished and the final numbers are in.

Please justify/substantiate the word "panicked". If you can't then it really is just your speculation.

I heard it was repeated through a time warp on the BBC Home Service in 1955.