I have been fascinated with the results of this year’s reader polls, especially as I compare them to last year’s. My data sets aren’t completely parallel, since Series Seven had thirteen episodes with a Christmas Special in the middle (for a total of fourteen) while Series Eight only had twelve, but I think the comparisons are interesting nevertheless.
As last year, I’m going to start with the average (mean) ratings of episodes in chronological order. For any given episode, each star rating (e.g., 5 stars) was multiplied by the number of votes it got, the results added, and the sum divided by the total number of votes. Here’s how the ratings looked for Series Eight:
Honestly, I was surprised by how low some of these scores were, as the series was my favorite of Moffat’s tenure. Clearly, YMMV. What I find stands out though, is the sharp difference from episode to episode, especially the ratings plummet between episodes nine and ten.For a different visualization of the same data, here’s how they ranked from highest to lowest scores (and I apologize that the episodes are different colors between these two charts):