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Month: July 2017

Reader Poll Roundup: Series Ten Edition

Every year when I examine the readers’ reactions to the series’s episodes, I have more data from previous years (S7, S8, S9) to compare and contrast, thus giving context to the current year’s ratings. Because I eliminated the zero-star option in all of the Reader Polls this year, I won’t be able to do an “apples to apples” analysis, but will do what I can with what I’ve got.

I’ll begin, as usual, with the average (mean) ratings. For each episode, I multiplied any given star rating (e.g., 5 stars) by the number of votes it got, added the results, and divided that sum by the total number of votes. The relatively even-keeled results are below:

Although the separation between best and worst scores are not as extreme, this year there’s a slightly wider spread in the middle half of the data than last year. The six middle-ranking episodes span a bit more than half a star (0.58), as opposed to S9’s three-tenths of a star. S7’s middle seven episodes were separated by 0.46 stars; S8’s middle half by 0.44. For ease of visualization, here are the S10 ratings from best to worst (note that different colors have been assigned to the episodes between the above and below charts; I couldn’t help that):

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Confession #112: I’m Psyched for Thirteen

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As I scrolled through my news digest from The Washington Post on Sunday around noon, I came across a headline saying that Roger Federer had won an unprecedented eighth time at Wimbledon. “What?” I screeched. “The men’s final is over?”

I scrambled for a new browser tab so I could search for the announcement. If I’d been clever, I’d have gone right to the BBC’s Doctor Who page so I could watch the announcement trailer myself, but I was in too much of a rush. And then—there it was, in picture after picture splashed across my Google results page: the Thirteenth Doctor will be played by a woman. Chibnall actually had the ovaries to break with tradition and cast a woman.

I’m not even sure what sort of noise I emitted; it was enough to make my 11-year-old daughters ask what was up. When I told them they’d announced who would play the next Doctor, they scrambled to look over my shoulder—and started screaming. They jumped up and down. They made their own set of incoherent excitement noises (driving their poor father from the room in a desperate act of self-preservation). I had almost managed to calm them enough to save my own ears when it dawned on them that she’d be number Thirteen—their favorite number(!)—and they went hypersonic again.

Needless to say, our household is on the pro-change side of the equation.

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The Doctor Stands

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Review of The Doctor Falls
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

The fact that I came out of this episode without a bad taste in my mouth pretty much makes it the best Moffat finale ever, as far as I’m concerned. Not to say that it was an over-the-top awesome episode—it was very good, though not great—but it didn’t have the characteristic “tripped at the finish line” feeling I usually get from a Moffat two-part finale.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2017 BBC

Coming off last week’s gut-punch, I was truly worried about how Bill’s story would be resolved. I honestly expected either full-on tragedy (as implied by the end of World Enough and Time) or something out of left field that left me squinting in puzzlement at the screen.

Frankly, I found a combination thereof most likely, e.g., a Frankenstein’s monster replacement body in the same style that Nardole seems to have accumulated parts over his adventures (h/t to Verity! podcast for that thought). You can imagine my unease, then, when the first character we follow in the pre-credits sequence is a young Black girl; my first, disturbing thought was that she would end up providing the body that Bill’s mind would eventually occupy. I cannot fully express my relief that such was not the case.

Given how focused I initially was on Bill, it’s a testament to the execution of this plot that I didn’t feel that everything else—and there was so much else!—was a mere distraction. With five main cast members, there was a lot to cover to keep them all relevant, and damned if Moffat didn’t manage it.

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