‘Fellow academics’? Is the education so effed up that ‘academics’ haven’t got anything more intellectually stimulating to discuss than a kids’ programme? Jeez, we really are in trouble!

I'm guessing it's a pub quiz team name.

(in a faux pained voice) 'Family' programme, please. All ages welcome!

I wasn't saying it lacked logic. I was just agreeing that Moffat has little interest in showing these things. Instead we were told she was a genius, shown she had computer skills magically injected (but possibly those disappeared) and then she was all of a sudden a teacher.

I quite like the gaps Moffat leaves, but some aspects of that work against something I like - the sense of the companion being a real person. We can all imagine what might have happened to companions off-screen, but it's not really our job as the audience. It's the author's.

But, of course we all know the real reason for Clara suddenly never mentioning Angie and Artie ever again (they had names! I forgot that.). As you say - nobody was interested. It wasn't character development. It was a reboot.


It's not people. It was me. I forgot about her dad. I had a recollection of "Bells" and "Rings" talking about her parents dying. It was only her mum. Her dad was, of course, memorably portrayed in Time of the Doctor, but I instantly forgot about those scenes.

And now we're back off topic!

You must have missed Radio 3's Night Waves round table discussion of the show back in 2013 with a writer, a historian and a philosopher discussing the show. All fans and .... academics.

I wasn't scolding the young for liking what they like. Just acknowledging it. It's been suggested that the BBC/Moffat might have been somewhat deliberately going for this - in part to market the series overseas. And there's no doubt that there's been a concentration on marketing the show abroad.

I was just interested that I read a couple of articles and forum posts about the show being more tightly focussed on the niche young adult audience than prior, and here is some AI research appearing to back that up.

It'll be interesting to see what the next series is like - in the far future of 2017. Dark, introspective and 'complex' (ahem). Or family oriented?

I liked this series though. Wouldn't want the switch being thrown too far the other way. But a bit more fun and colour wouldn't hurt.

Academics have been discussing Doctor Who for years. Remember The Unfolding Text from the early 1980s? An academic text book that gently had the piss taken out of it in Dragonfire a few years later.

Sorry to stay off topic but Clara's dad was also memorably played by someone in "Rings" as well. He was so memorably portrayed both times that he regenerated into a different actor in between and no one seemed to notice Moffat clearly doesn't have the same regard for companions families as RTD used to.

I loved Amy's dad and hoped he would be in some more episodes, but after her wedding he and her mum seemed to completely disappear again - hardly seemed worth bringing them back from the cracks.

Final rating of 6.17m for Hell Bent.

Although it is the lowest rated finale of the series, the finale ratings have always been a bit up and down:

"The Parting of the Ways" - 6.91
"Doomsday" - 8.22
"Last of the Time Lords" - 8.61
"Journey's End" - 10.57
"The Big Bang" - 6.7
"The Wedding of River Song" - 7.67
"The Name of the Doctor" - 7.45
"Death in Heaven" - 7.60

I'm not sure why The Big Bang was so low, though.

For season 9, the finale figure is consistent with what is being reported - that the drop this year is an average of 1.5m per episode (as opposed to a million).

We were never told that Clara was a genius, that was Oswin. And Clara is an ENGLISH teacher, so the computing stuff (which almost certainly reset at the end of TBOSJ when the GI reset everyone) is fairly irrelevant.

What S7 DID show us was that Clara was very good with children, not just Angie and Artie, but also Mery in Rings of Akhaten. Victorian Clara was a governess, Oswin was a children's entertainer, Clara becoming a teacher is hardly a random leap.

Angie and Artie are genuinely irrelevant to the plot of the series going forward. Why would we need to see her with family friends? Especially as, yes, they weren't especially popular or relevant to the plot. Clara worked in a school, so they already had plenty of other children in the show...

Again, I'm not saying any of it was illogical or that it was strange that Clara might become a teacher after giving up the nanny thing. I'm saying that series 7b Clara wasn't introduced as a normal person. In the context of drama she was, to the audience, already anything but normal - she was Oswin, she was a Victorian nanny she was a modern nanny, she did undercover sleuthing work in a victorian pub (or something), she'd lost her mum, she had a magical leaf, and then was a teacher all of a sudden, but we were told that not shown it.

And there is no reason to see her with family and friends or have her mention the family she had previously "adopted". But the context of the discussion is that RTD liked to show that and Moffat doesn't. All I'm saying is that it might help the NEXT companion anchor with the audience if it is done in RTD style, not in Moffat style. A change from magical companions who are integral parts of massive plots against the Doctor would be refreshing.

Oswin was Clara so if Oswin was a genius, so was Clara. I think it's been pretty consistently shown that Clara is a genius. She was spotting solutions to things more often than even the Doctor was for most of her time on the show!

I don't think the computing stuff reset at all. It explains Oswin's ability to hack the Dalek network, for a start, as well as her ability to hack the memory device in the latest episode.


Absolutely, one of her most consistent character traits was her affinity with children. Becoming a teacher was perfectly natural.

The problem I have with the conversation you are having (POTD, Thrombin and nebogipfel) is that a few years ago I probably would have engaged with it, to try and examine the evidence and get to the bottom of the mystery about Clara's life and how Point A connects with Point B etc.

But Moffat's writing of Clara became so random and so knee-jerk that I honestly don't believe that even he put that much thought into it. It's the same as the old woman in the barn in Hell Bent. A few years ago, there would have been an entire thread dedicated to a discussion about who she was. Now, people are so tired of Moffat throwing everything at them that they know, ultimately, it doesn't really matter.

If Hell Bent had concluded with a revelation that Peter Capaldi's Doctor was actually the real 8th Doctor and that McGann, Hurt, Eccleston, Tennant and Smith had all been an imposter Time Lord, I doubt I would have cared.

One assumes the woman in the barn was not the woman in 'The End of Time', yeah? I'm still engaged, but it's whatever floats yer boat, isn't it.

I actually think where most people went wrong with Clara is trying to look for the mystery. Personally, I didn't worry about the mystery. I took her at face value as an ordinary companion who was really clever and resourceful, loved kids, had a sense of excitement and wonder about her time with the Doctor, did what she was told most of the time (which was a refreshing change) and, generally was everything I look for in a companion. She grew closer and more important to the Doctor over time but, for me, her development never strayed from the person I always took her for.

Absolutely agree. When just watching each episode as it comes, and not worrying about arc plots or wotnot, Clara was fine. A cleverer than usual but otherwise solid normal companion. I've exaggerated the extent to which she is problematic for me, but not by much. It was mostly all that "who is this impossible girl?" stuff littered through series 7b that wore me down - having gone through similar with Amy and River. But Moffat compensated after with a rejigged version of the character - different job, romance blossoming and the tension between her and the Doctor was based on *her* personal life choices instead of a scifi plot.

Then series 9 Clara was fine by me. She'd been clearly shown as very clever from the outset, she'd been the companion for ages, the seeds of her Doctorish confidence were planted all over series 8 and it would have been somewhat strange if she was still playing it as in the Ice Warrior story. Of course, inevitably, we are reminded that Clara was always the instrument of The Master all along in yet another grand plot against the Doctor, but that's the Master for you. ("This time Doctor I will defeat you by ensuring you travel with an extremely competent companion of high intelligence! *evil cackle*")

I'm just expressing a preference for the new companion to be not a River, not an Amy and not a Clara, I like them all btw, in the sense of not being already of predetermined significance in a scifi plot against the Doctor. Just someone who tags along for the ride and gets involved. With a consistent and "normal" background. I'm not saying a carbon copy of Rose/Martha/Donna with frequent trips to visit a bothersome mother. Just something a little more grounded in reality at the outset.

And to stay on topic I'd better say that this is the thing that will definitely bring back the 1.5 million missing viewers. 100%

maybe if the last episode had followed jay mcguiness's scd 'tribute' on saturday, that plus 1.5 million would have been added to the viewing figures...

I completely agree. people can compare Moffat vs RTD all day long but the point is, for whatever the flaws of the RTD era, I preferred it because he made me care. Not just with his companions, but with his storylines. When he started an arc, you absolutely knew that it was going to be followed through and that the finale would tie up the arc in a spectacular enough way to justify the earlier hype. Moffat's who can and has had some very good episodes, and series 9 as a whole has seemed somewhat of a return to form for the show, but with his writing overall, I never get too excited when he start's a mystery or make statements implying something is the worst threat ever, because I can never be sure whether the pay off will be anywhere near the scale of the hype, or whether it will just be something brushed off in one rushed sentence years later (e.g - who blew up the TARDIS).

With Clara we had a companion who seemed mostly cold (to me at least), smug, and apparently all knowing, where she started off apparently having such ties to a family, that she had to stay with them rather than her dream of seeing the world. Then when they disappeared without a trace, never to be mentioned again, anyone would think such a person so keen to travel would want to be a permanent traveller, but no, instead, she's magically and rather quickly become a teacher and only has time to fit the doctor in if it fits her schedule. Nothing about her character made her endearing or made me care.

Hoping for a more sentimental, softer companion next time to balance with Capaldi and give me someone to like alongside the doctor.

Ratings are down year on year across the board for all tv apart from a few exceptions (mainly involving baking mmmm cake!). What are Corrie and Eastenders achieving currently? Are they exceeding 7 million viewers on a regular basis? I think most DS figures for them are between 6 and 7 million.

It is a fact that viewing figures are lower, sadly, but to be honest DW has bucked the trend for many years in this respect by not falling when the vast majority of shows were shedding viewers year on year. When DW came back in 2005 I think the two main soaps were getting about 14 million viewers each. Also, how many current tv shows would be over the moon with 6.8 Million?

Answering you're final question...most Drama series on British TV. And good point re Eastenders, etc. As for most people involved with 'genre' TV...they'd bite your hand off.

Cant say I am a Who fanatic but I was warming to Clara and Capaldi at the end. Older Doctor and younger female companion works well imo. Never fully understood the "impossible girl" business but I thought they became a quite engaging match up eventually.

So with the final ratings now in place (vs series 8)...

Overnight: 4.24m (vs 5.19m -0.95m)
Final: 6.03m (vs 7.26m -1.23m)
Timeshift: 1.79m (vs 2.08m -0.28m)

The 'reach' rating the BBC uses is also down. The difference between their final rating and BARB's was 1.04m last year and 0.77m this year. So whatever 'other' things they're counting are also down. 1.5m is definitely a significant drop and can't be explained by the time slot (because if that was the issue, people would catch up on the many available platforms).

I guess the problem with season 8 and 9 is that it is the first time the show has had absolute consistency - same Doctor, same companion, same writers and production crew, same time slot on the same day at the same time of year with all episodes broadcast as a single and unbroken season.

There's very little wiggle room to explain such a sudden drop in ratings. Its not changing viewing habits - simply that 1.23m people who watched last year chose not to watch this year.

This is going a little off topic (or perhaps more on topic) but does anyone know how Doctor Who’s UK viewing figures compare to a successful US show’s figures in the US?

I was looking at some of the (I assume) overnight figures from some recent DS stories and was interested at the figures for shows which (I believe) are considered successful in the US.

60 Minutes - 1.6 (10.58m) at 7pm
Madam Secretary - 1.3 (10.24m) at 8pm
The Good Wife - 1.1 (8.52m) at 9pm.

64m people live in the UK but 319m live in the US. So if Doctor Who gets an overnight of 4m that means 6.25% of the population were watching. By comparison, just 2.7% of Americans were watching The Good Wife.

I don’t understand the Nielson bit of the rating and maybe that’s the important bit. But it does seem as though shows in the US aren’t judged purely on how many people are watching.