I think it's pretty obvious that, as with Strictly Come Dancing the judges increase the scores as the weeks go by and yes the contestants do improve vastly and hence the marks go up.

I wonder though if someone in week 1 did a performance which was on a par to Suzanne Shaws final performances would they be given a 6 or a lesser mark because it is week 1. Personally I think the maximum anyone could achieve at this stage even if they preformed Bolero to Torvill and Dean standards would be a 5.

What do you think?

I don't think so. I think they'll cap it at 5.5 even if it's amazing. They want somewhere to go.

Unlike SCD, on DOI they give a 6.0 when there was sometime extra special about it whereas on SCD they give a 10 when they didn't go wrong at all which makes them harder to get perfect scores on DOI. The chance of them doing sometime extra special week 1 is highly unlikely as they haven't not yet seen them perform so do not yet know the standard which then can fully achieve. There will be a 5.0/5.5 within the next few weeks though probably

yes but if they did do this incredible preformance week 1 would it get a 6? I think not.

If someone genuinely deserves a 6 in week one, they should be representing the UK in the next Winter Olympics, not entering a fun Sunday evening celebrity skating competition.

The 6s that get awarded towards the end of the series are all relative to the context of what is reasonable for a celebrity to achieve, so by default they have to start them out lower or it makes a mockery of the scoring.

You can get a 5.0 in week one, like Clare and Ray, but that's the tops.

The judges seem to want to hold back, at least for a little while. Why, I don't know.

Just to give the celebs somewhere to go, if you're getting 30 in week 3 then any improvement can't be reflected in the scores.

The earliest we've had a 5.5 is week 3 isn't it?

The whole scoring is relative to what they are being asked to do in the routines they are given, rather than bearing any relation to a real skating competition. So getting a 6.0 in this certainly doesn't qualify them to be an Olympian.

Kyran for example from previous series, would actually struggle to get past the current 'learn to skate tests' at skate UK 'passport' level since he cannot spin and doesn't have the levels of footwork necessary (and there are 10 further levels of national tests before he could hope to qualify for a championship). What he does do quite well is lifts.

I would think if any of the celebs proved to be so good they could do the routine they are given in week 1 with no mistakes, then they'd maybe deserve a 6.0 for it (but it wouldn't mean the same as an Olympic 6.0 or a national opens competition 6.0). In DOI the scores tend to increase with the difficulty and the difficulty increases by the week, so the 6.0 scores don't come out at the beginning.

As DOI bears no direct relation to any known discipline of figure skating, (it's a bit of a mix of free dance, free skate elements, and adagio pairs) the scoring doesn't either.

As you say, the 6.0 scoring in figure skating was always a 'relative' system and I think this confuses a lot of people.