Only the TV numbers have been released right? I don't remember seeing anything about how it's doing on iPlayer unless some new info has come out.
Oh man. This blows lol. I really hope it gets better as the season goes on and hopefully word of mouth spreads and stuff. That said, like you mentioned, it's by no means the end of the show, and Davies has said how the show will always endure even if the budgets very low. But the Disney boost in visuals is very nice lmao.
For UK ratings, the live +7/screen numbers should be released officially tomorrow for episodes 1 and 2. I wonder if they'll release some kind of breakdown as to how many people are watching at midnight etc.
Absolutely. As someone who grew up with the original RTD run, I just want Doctor Who to have its moment again!
I'm not a ratings expert or anything, and don't know what BBC's metrics will be especially as it relates to iPlayer viewership but to try and break it down a bit mostly for my own curiosity:
I donno if it's a storm of things between launching the show in May and the weather being really good here in the UK (if you're a fan of sunshine and warm temperatures that is), the change in broadcast pattern with iPlayer up first followed by linear transmission on BBC One in the evening breaking that tradition of watching, a shorter run of episodes making people think they can binge it at the end of the season, and the surge in negative videos that seem to be on places like YouTube claiming about the show being "woke" and such (had to block an idiot friend for sending me some yesterday while discussing the ratings claiming it was why the show was in a bad state and that the show is "too preachy" now based on the first few episodes.)
I guess The Church on Ruby Road didn't click with a lot of people, the gap between it and the new season was too long, Space Babies was a poor choice for a first episode, and in the US I think maybe on top of that maybe Disney didn't advertise it right. I also think everything they said about this being a great place for new viewers to jump in wasn't true, so far it feels like it leans into the previous stuff really heavily which might have turned some new viewers away after the first two episodes.
It's the weather. Straight up. The first two episodes dropped in the first heatwave that the country's had in months and months, and it hasn't really abated since.
It's only been back a week!
...Then you end up getting punted around the schedules by Strictly Come Dancing and unable to hit a consistent timeslot, as well as being knocked around by a generally busier time for TV and events - remember series 9 getting hammered by the Rugby World Cup?
That's also true. It's tricky for sure. You may be right about January to March for sure
I think you're right, but the image of Doctor Who producers explaining this to the Disney execs sounds hilarious.
I wonder if changing the episode order here wouldn't be better. I mean, Space Babies, come on. Devil's Chord was a better choice and even had a better display of the musical theme of this new Doctor
I can't speak to America, but it's a huge thing for British ratings - you can see the ratings for every series of Doctor Who that started in the spring and carried on into the summer dip as the weather starts to turn. You can see the overall trend quite clearly by looking at the overall charts - for all that the UK ratings are underwhelming, it still hit the top 10 for the week, because no one's watching anything... because the weather's good, and no one ever does when that's the case. If I had to guess, it's because good weather for us is so infrequent that we genuinely do drop everything to go and enjoy it, which isn't so much a factor in much of the States.
By all accounts, the merchandisers were severely burned by the Whittaker era - they were always going to wait and see before dropping more stuff. We're apparently expecting more as we head into the autumn, so we'll have to wait and see.
It's hard to tell, and it's all anecdotal - I've seen way more people talking about the show than I have for years, and there does seem to be at least a little buzz on this end of things (the Doctor Who Prom sold out in record time last week, for instance).
Yeah. If the next season drops then I think we'll be in trouble but I think people are holding off for now either due to Chibnall and wanting feedback, or to binge it all.
Yeah, I think that the first 2 episodes and maybe the Christmas special just didn't click with a lot of people, but the quality after those is bringing people back. It also might be slowly building a new audience from the word of mouth of the 3 newest episodes.
It alongside Space Babies and The Devil's Cord really made it seem like the season would be rather silly and campy, the tonal shift after was wild.
Yeah, my spouse was telling one of her coworkers about the show just ahead of the season's start and reccomended it. After watching the first two, she was thinking that maybe she should have told him to start with one of the earlier Doctors. But after the most recent episodes, I think she went back and told him that he needed to push through the first two and keep going, because it got better.
Stage and screen actor who was part of the original cast of Doctor Who
William Russell, left, as Ian Chesterton, with William Hartnell as the Doctor, Jacqueline Hill as Barbara and Carole Ann Ford as Susan in the Doctor Who serial The Keys of Marinus, 1964. Photograph: BBC
On 23 November 1963 – the day after the assassination of President John F Kennedy – the actor William Russell, who has died aged 99, appearing in a new BBC television series, approached what looked like an old-fashioned police box in a scrapyard, from which an old chap emerged, saying he was the doctor. Russell responded: "Doctor Who?"
And so was launched one of the most popular TV series of all time, although the viewing figures that night were low because of the political upheaval, so the same episode was shown again a week later. It caught on, big time, with Russell – as the science schoolteacher Ian Chesterton – and William Hartnell as the Doctor establishing themselves alongside Jacqueline Hill as the history teacher Barbara Wright and Carole Ann Ford as Susan Foreman.
Russell stayed until 1965, returning to the show in 2022 in a cameo appearance as Ian and, since then, participating happily in all the hoop-la and fanzine convention-hopping, signing and schmoozing that such a phenomenon engenders.
Before that, though, Russell had achieved prominence in the title role of the ITV series The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1956-57) – he was strongly built with an air of dashing bravado about him; he had been an RAF officer in the later stages of the second world war – and as the lead in a 1957 BBC television adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby, transmitted live in 18 weekly episodes.
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William Russell on the set of the 1950s television series The Adventures of Sir Lancelot. Photograph: Mirrorpix/Getty Images
When Sir Lancelot went to the US, the first British TV import to be shot in colour for an American audience, Russell rode down Fifth Avenue on a horse in full regalia, like some returning, mystical, medieval knight in the heart of Normandy. The show was a smash hit.
www.theguardian.com
