Rachel I can understand as she is technically brilliant, so I don't mind if she gets more than Alesha, but Lisa is nowhere near the standard of Alesha, so I hope she doesn't get so many 10s.

Rachel's Argentine Tango was technically brilliant but she did nearly fall over in the last lift that was messed up so that dance should never have had 3 tens.

10s are given out way too much on Strictly nowadays. When you look back at some of Jill's latin dances and how low they were scored, people now are getting 10s for dances of a much less standard, it's silly.

And it seems like some of the contestants now expect to get 10s, its like 8s or 9s aren't good enough. I thought getting an 8 was good.........

8 should be seen as a decent mark; it's my mark for a well-executed dance with a few glimpses of the WOW factor.

(I give a 9 for anything memorable or moving and a 10 for something that has me glued to the screen from start to finish [I'm as fussy as Craig in many respects]. 7 is my indifferent/meh mark for an alright, but completely forgettable dance, and I start knocking points off after that for anything which is just bad)

This shows how ridiculous the marks have been this year. I'm stunned by that.

I'd like to see Brendan's opinion on this. Would he agree Lisa is being well over marked??!!

Other than Lisa and Natasha being so high and Louisa maybe being a little low, I'd say that actually quite accurately reflects the top dancers.

Is there any indication on how the marks have increased? Has the average score risen?

For me, that's been the hallmark of the last couple of series, not the overuse of the 10 but that the lower marks are higher, if that makes sense

When we were watching Karen Hardy's 'My Dance Life' section on ITT a few weeks ago they showed Mark and Karen's salsa and hubbie commented that he remember that dance and it was ridiculous that it got a 36 on it's first performance (i.e not the one in the final) and some of Lisa and Rachel's pretty but not wow dances are getting 39 or 40's and he's right.

Monkseal points out that the Matteshian waltz and Mavian salsa only managed 39 points in the final - and they had more of a wow factor and are likely to be remember for longer than Rachel's foxtrot and Lisa's semi-final quickstep both 40 scorers. The fact there have been two 40 dances before we get the final this year says it all about over-marking it's another arguement alongside rudeness to each other and John Sargeant (yes you are there to say if you don't like someone's dancing but to call someone lazy (Arlene) or label them a coward for quitting (Craig - as much as I love you) is beyond the pale. James Jordan was out of line too but at least he's not paid stupid amounts of money to be a judge.

The marks ARE NOT ridiculous, your language is just a little bit hyperbolic in line with the scoring (maybe?).

Just a few observations to temper the righteous indignation of the posters on this thread:

Professional dancer experience - a number of the pros have been doing the programme for 6 years and so know what is expected by the judges and choreograph accordingly

Longer series - this is week 13 (?), series 1 & 2 finished after 8 (?) so there have been not only more opportunities to win 10's but also crucially the celebs have been in training for the best part of 5 months. The pros will have also worked out what they can and can't do cf Flavia's comments about the technical diificulty of the A Tango Vincente was asking Rachel to perform

Expectation inflation - as the audience gets more sophisticated as each series goes go on it/you have heightened expectations of the technical capacity of the celeb dancers. Possibly just possibly the celebs this year are better - Len's comment on Austin "Best first round dance by a male celeb ever"

Also the judges get swept along by the event and I do believe that ordering of dances on the evening causes marks to fluctuate.

THE VITAL ISSUE

All scores given within a programme are comparable to each other and consistent with themselves - it is not whether Rachel's rhumba is more worthy of 40 than Jill's jive but when compared with Tom's Salsa because that is dance it is in competition with.

I wasn't a big fan of Jill at the time but looking back the scores for all her Latin dances were silly, by today's standard they all deserved a 40. Actually even by season 2 standards they were a bit under marked considering Natasha got similar scores the year before and she wasn't nearly as good.

Lisa being given a 10 for a first dance which contained errors and a stumble is at odds with this, for example.

I agree with Robin about relative scoring, which is another reason why I want to bop Len for giving Lisa's AT a 10 when it was obvious that Rachel & Vincent were going to attempt a much more challenging routine.

However, I often wish the judges behaved as people who were looking back at their past marks/comments with the aim or trying to be consistent (in an attempt to avoid some of the mark inflation that we've seen), but they obviously don't. Craig has managed to hold out for a while, but he was dishing out 9s like confetti last year and this year I think he has given out some undeserved 10s too (definitely for Austin's Paso and probably for Lisa's QS; I'm not sure about Rachel's foxtrot because I wasn't paying that much attention and because I find ballroom much harder to rate than Latin).

When Len admits he over-marked both Rachel and Lisa's AT's and then gets grumpy and picky and gives Rachel's AS an 8 in the same program that internal consistency arguement flies out of the window. I also think that the over-marking of Lisa's jive had consequences for Austin but I realise that one's a debatable point.

There are many Alesha fans who have issues with Len getting picky on a whim during her final waltz and they're right too when he admitted he was going to over-look faults in Gethin's and award him a ten earlier in the series because he was in a good mood (I've nothing against Gethin it's not his fault - and you tube his waltz and watch the judges comments if you don't believe me). A lot of Alesha fans think Len displayed favourism towards Matt in the final - I'm not sure about this but things like the waltz mark I can understand why this impression was created.

Exactly the fact he didnt give Alesha;s waltz a 10 was ridiculous when you think hes giving Lisa and Rachel them constantly despite them making footwork errors probably moreso then Alesha did in her waltz. Hes even admitting to US they have made errors but hes going to ignore them.
How is that fair, Its a shame really but nowadys if the couples gets 8s or 9s they'll probably be devastated.

First can I just say I think it would have been polite to add imho somewhere in the section of your post I have highlighted?

Lots of posters have made these points before and there is loads of support for them, but that doesn't mean the scores are not questionable. Yes, the show has been going for 6 years, but a lot of people have watched all 6 series or at least several series, so there is not much point in arguing that each show should stand on its own and no one should look back at what has happened before. Even if you do just look at this series on its own, this series possibly more than any other has generated so much discussion about the inconsistency of the judges' votes.

There is also the fact that through out each show there is constant comparison with previous series e.g. records being broken, comparison to celebs who have taken part. Plus how many well established pros have been told this year that their choreography was not what was expected for the particular dance?

You can't just ignore it imho.

I remember Brendan saying earlier in the series that 10's means nothing - as no dance is perfect! Maybe now that's a mute point. Question for Claudia me thinks

another problem is that they mark so high so early

Austin got 9s for his first dances, as did Cherie and others - where the hell do you go from there?

If I was a judge (professional or SCD or whatever), I would find it hard to justify giving an opening couple more than an 8 unless I could be almost certain that the following dancers were either just not going to be as good or were not going to attempt a routine that would be amazing if they managed to pull it off. A 9 for a first dance is OK in those circumstances.

Len's 10 for Lisa's AT was just bonkers, or did he really think that he had an 11 (or even a 12) paddle under his desk.

Excellent post.
Even if it were the case that "all scores given within a programme are comparable to each other and consistent with themselves".. why then do they keep talking about records, highest mark for a Rumba, Quickstep etc ?
If a "Jill 8" is now a "Lisa 10"..why dont they say so ?..or just tell us that marks for one particular show are not comparable with the marks given for others.
We all "know" the marks are inflated, if the judges would admit that, we could ignore any comparisons.

Amazing when you see two winners only ever scored one 10.

I dont see how you can say that.
Austin and Tom rate above Mark Ramprakash, Rachel and Lisa above Jill Halfpenny..I am sure there are many others.