Which is still an entirely subjective view and not solid fact.

When almost 1.5m switch off in a single year, there's something wrong with the show.

There's nothing subjective about that.

I just rewatched 'Heaven Sent' for the first time since the weekend of broadcast. I think it's a Who masterpiece. The script, the direction, the editing, the score and *that* performance. Very possibly the best performance by an actor in the role. I've liked all the Doctors, but that was just phenomenal stuff. When I watch Who of that quality, and that episode will be watched and admired ad infinitum, I find the drop in ratings hard to care about, tbh!

Obviously ratings matter, but I've just watched an hour of Television that will last. If this is Who in a bad way.....well, not artistically, IMO.

Hmmm. That might've been a bit 'pseud's corner', but what the hey. It's such a powerful episode, I'll allow myself to be 'pseudy' for a bit.

Sorry but losing as many viewers as the show lost in a single year is not the standard decline that's affecting most shows. That's not viewers changing habits unless the habit they are changing is to stop watching the show. Now that we have the full ratings for this series I'm concerned about the show. The buffer has gone and the show cannot afford to keep losing viewers. It's not in immediate danger right now but any drop next series will put it in danger imo.


There's really not. The odd trend on Twitter is hardly a huge buzz and the internet is still in one piece after the news of a 10th series. Even this forum is relatively quiet compared to previous years (I've been round here since 2004).

4.9m viewers for The War Games, 5.5m for Inferno, 6.6m for Blink. All three are generally considered classics and some of the most beloved and memorable stories in the show's history. And yet the infamous Creature from the Pit had a nice round 10m.

Viewing figures certainly don't always reflect people's feelings on certain stories or seasons. I think Heaven Sent is almost guaranteed to go down as one of the Doctor Who classics as time goes by.

I'm not just talking about the internet and Twitter: the magazine is selling as well as ever, conventions are crazy, and Capaldi's Doctor is all the talk (he seems to have clicked a lot better than Matt Smith did). The show is certainly doing well for itself one way or another.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0436992/...=tt_eps_rhs_sm

These are the IMDB scores for every Doctor Who episode since the revival

Heaven Sent is currently second after 3,287 votes
Amusingly Sleep no More is second BOTTOM after 1,601 votes

Scanning the scores I see highly rated episodes from all series, and poorly rated episodes from all series, and no evidence that there's been a decline in quality at all.

The ratings and the AI figure (just 80) show a disconnect between what the critics thought of Heaven Sent and what the viewers thought of it.

In fact the only season 9 episode with a lower AI is the awful Sleep No More. By comparison Blink (which you compared it to) had one of the higher AIs for season 3.

I know you cannot directly compare the AIs for seasons 3 and 9, but certainly within each season the AIs remain a record of what worked best and least. Blink worked, Heaven Sent did not.

I think there comes a point when you have to accept that whilst you may have found an episode to be awesome, a big chunk of viewers didn't. I don't think a Marmite episode like Heaven Sent has any more right to considered a classic than Sleep No More.

Well, frankly they're wrong and people who loved it are right. It's a masterpiece!

(Am not being serious)

(Well, apart from the fact that I do think it's a masterpiece!)

Likewise, I think there comes a point when you have to accept that whilst you think the show has declined in quality, there are many people, critics included, who would strongly disagree with you there.

The Caves of Androzani received a rather underwhelming AI score of 66; and yet it's a fan-favourite and remembered by many people as one of the best Who stories ever. The Curse of the Black Spot, a more recent episode hated by many, scored 86. The result is that AI scores also don't reflect quality for everyone and are fruitless to use in an attempt to prove a lack of it.

I have never said the show has declined in quality. Quality-wise, I think it is still one of the best produced shows on TV. I do think, however, it has become less accessible and less enjoyable overall. But that's not a quality issue, that's an issue about tone and direction.

Comparing AIs across the decades makes no sense at all. Comparing AIs to five years ago make no sense. Comparing AIs within a single season, though, does show over all what did/did not hit the mark with the audience watching that year.

The Curse of the Black Spot did OK with its AI in a year when the AIs were pretty consistent across the whole season. Season 6 did pretty well in delivering consistent AIs. That cannot be said for Season 9 and certainly not for Heaven Sent.

Some viewers thought it one of the best episodes ever. Others thought it self-indulgent claptrap. The AI places it as second least enjoyed episode of season 9. The AIs for season 9 were as follows, from most popular to least popular:

"The Magician's Apprentice" - 84
"Under the Lake" - 84
"The Zygon Inversion" - 84
"Face the Raven" - 84
"The Witch's Familiar" - 83
"Before the Flood" - 83
"The Girl Who Died" - 82
"The Zygon Invasion" - 82
"Hell Bent" - 82
"The Woman Who Lived" - 81
"Heaven Sent" - 80
"Sleep No More" - 78

Like it or not, if the TV industry thought AIs were nonsense they wouldn't be recorded. So some Doctor Who fans may consider Heaven Sent a classic. The reviewers may consider it a masterpiece. The viewing public didn't.

We aren't talking about quality though. Heaven Sent could have been rated hotter than then sun yet it makes no difference because TV is all about bums on seats (aka ratings). Even then, as Mulett mentioned, the AI ratings do not seem to match these IMDB ratings (or even my own personal experience). It's entirely possible that this episode was loved by fans but not by the wider audience.

Whether you're comparing them or not they still don't reflect what people appear to think about them in general. But if you want to do it by series, The Caves of Androzani only scored a point higher than the notoriously unpopular Warriors of the Deep and three points below Resurrection of the Daleks. The beloved Season 13, which holds some of the most popular stories in the show, only had an average AI score of 57%. It still doesn't match up. You can't simply pick and choose your evidence.

I see no reason why an acceptable AI score of 80 would prevent a critically acclaimed episode such as Heaven Sent from becoming a classic. I apologise if the suggestion offended you.

I am no offended, but who is picking and choosing evidence? I'm not the one referencing the AI ratings of a single story from 30 years ago to support my opinion.

And with all due respect to The Caves of Androzani, Doctor Who Magazine readers may well rate it the best story of all time but there is no evidence to suggest viewers more generally remember it all, and certainly not as a stand-out story.

Certainly, I think most people would struggle to remember The Caves of Androzani beyond (possibly) it being Peter Davison's final story. And even that would be a stretch.

This is the point I am making - the big difference between Doctor Who fans and viewers generally. And its those general viewers who have started switching off. And like it or not, a million plus people switching off in a single year matters.

And while some fans on here are saying "please, more like Heaven Sent", my concern is that it is stories exactly like Heaven Sent that are resulting in people turning off.

Points from 30 years ago are apparently irrelevant to you unless they point to the show being cancelled. Picking and choosing.

I'm not referring to DWM, I never even read it myself. The Caves of Androzani is generally a very popular story amongst fans and considered one of the best swansongs for a Doctor. Obviously general viewers won't remember it much, assuming they would even have watched it. General viewers don't watch TV like that, it's more passing-by viewing.

Unfortunately, rising AI figures didn't save the show before, but viewing figures being halved before didn't bring the show to its knees. With a solid following, support from the BBC and acceptable viewing figures, with all things considered, as well as a new showrunner coming very soon, I see little to worry about for the show.

Let's not forget that posters on these forums are often very out of touch with the wider audience, even moreso than the critics, else we wouldn't have seen the revival show last very long.

Again, I don't understand why you are connecting me to the Caves of Androzani. I didn't mention it, you did. You are the one picking examples that are 30 years old to try and prove a point about today's AI figures. That's not me, that's you picking and choosing. I am simply disagreeing with the point you are trying to make.

There's a lot to learn from what happened in the past. The comparisons between the unpopular 6th Doctor and this current incarnation, for instance, are perfectly valid.

I simply don't agree with your point of view that Heaven Sent is a classic story, is universally loved by fans or is an example of Who at its best. For me, its an example of everything that's wrong with Who at the moment which is making a big chunk of the audience switch off.

Have watched Dr Who for years, turned off this year due to the time change thing. Always seemed to miss the first 5 - 10 minutes of the show. Ended up using iPlayer when I got around to it to watch the episode.

Still love Dr Who.

I have offered a more recent example with Series 6, but I also point to Series 5 with The Lodger scoring higher than Vincent and the Doctor, and the former certainly doesn't have the reputation of the latter. Or Series 3, with the popular Blink scoring a meager point higher than the not-so-popular Daleks in Manhatten two-parter. It just goes to show that your point about Heaven Sent being the second lowest score of Series 9 is invalid. The Caves of Androzani is a good example, however; AI scores may have worked differently back then but were still chosen by the audience and the fans. Doctor Who spent its first few decades within the 40-60% range, and yet it must have done something right even if a lot of the audience apparently didn't like it.

I wasn't even talking about what you thought of Heaven Sent, I merely suggested to somebody that I could see it being a classic amongst the fan base in a few decades time and apparently that bothered you. Your personal opinion doesn't dictate everybody elses' and neither are you the authority on what episodes should be remembered or not.

I think your posts are becoming increasingly disingenuous Lord Smexy.

You dismiss the Audience Appreciation Index collected from thousands of Doctor Who viewers in favour of a handful of positive newspaper reviews written by men (and they are all men) who rarely have a bad word to say about the show.

And then you seek out a specific AI result from 30 years ago to support your point of view whilst accusing other forum members of 'picking and choosing' their evidence.

My point remains that whilst some fans are raving about Heaven Sent, others are not. And the viewing public rated it the second least enjoyed episode of Season 9. And that doesn't include the (almost) 1.5m who switched off after season 8.

As I said before, if AIs didn't matter then the industry wouldn't be recording them. If the viewing figures didn't matter they wouldn't be recorded.

It worries me that some of the fans on forums like this seem increasingly incapable of seeing there are problems with the show.

It would be foolish in the extreme to churn out another season like season 8 or 9. The BBC needs to look at what is going wrong and looking at the AIs for season 9 might be a good starting point. But I would imagine the BBC has audience research available which goes beyond AI ratings or viewing figures. Hopefully its showing up exactly what it is that is turning people off to guide the writing and production of season 10.

The only evidence that counts is the ratings and they have dropped, there's no denying that. You can say episodes like Heaven Sent are instant classics, beloved by many and it still doesn't change the fact that much less people turned in for that than did for Fear Her, one of the least liked episodes on New Who. And if people have tuned out in the quantity that they have then there's issues.

I don't need to be in touch with viewers opinions to read and understand TV ratings. It's cold, hard, numbers.

I'm not saying AI figures don't matter, but that they're not a 100% definitive number that can be taken at face value, as has been proved time and time again by the fact they often haven't reflected a show's success or lack of.

I'm not talking about newspaper reviews either, I'm not sure why you keep making guesswork as to where I figured certain stories have a reputation because you refuse to believe that they do so. I'm also not sure why their gender is supposed to be relevant, but on the subject of reviews I've seen many positive ones by women.

Certainly, you're eager to reject any examples from the classic series that point against your claims of how the AI figures are solid fact of how an episode did, but you don't hesitate to use the classic series as an example of why you think Doctor Who is about to be cancelled.

You simply seem determined to convince everyone the show is a mess right now and that anyone who feels otherwise is an overly-enthuastic fanatic. You actually complained that there wasn't enough negative reception for your liking, and you're quick to shoot down any positivity Series 9 does get. I don't think it's so much that there's a problem with the show as there is that you think the show needs to please you specifically and you know how to do the show better. Certainly it's not the best the show has done, but it's hardly the worst either.

The show is a mess right now. Moffat is a lazy gimmick writer, nothing more. The gir who waited, the impossible girl oh yeah and the Doctor himself, Spare p#@ck at a wedding whilst the companion does everything. I've watched maybe twenty minutes of this season and in some ways I've not missed it. Did they have Vastra & Jenny wand err about with the giant " sonic strap on" this season? You know, to hint that they might be gay, Be helluva more subtle than last year.

Most seasons theres been some watchable episodes, a crap on or two and a couple of classics. Season eight had not one half decent episode and the majority were dire. Not one episode was worth rewatching. I would go on but I've already put more effort into this post than Moffat has the last two seasons. All I'll say is after Moffat the show should be put out of its misery

If you've only watched "maybe twenty minutes" of series 9 how can you possibly offer up an opinion of what it's like?

I'm just not living in cloud cuckoo land where rave reviews by Digital Spy forum members and a handful of TV critics outweigh the 1.5m who switched off in a single year.

I'm not ignoring the fact that Heaven Sent was the second least enjoyed episode of 2015 despite some DS members calling it a masterpiece and calling for more of the same.

It is a worry that Moffat and his team will allow their egos to be massaged by the positive reviews rather than look at the cold hard fact of a 23% audience drop over the past 5 years.

The days of blaming changing viewing habits are behind us. It's time to admit there is a problem. And that's a fact.