The ratings are falling!! The ratings are falling!!

Doctor Who has been the linchpin of BBC One’s Saturday night schedule for a decade now. But with audience figures apparently on the decline – just 4.6m tuned in live to watch the latest series premiere – is the show facing an uncertain future?

Here, we take a long look at the tough questions being asked of the sci-fi series, and pose one of our own: Is it really as bad as all that?

Why are the ratings falling?
Much like the gulf between the interior and exterior dimensions of the TARDIS, when it comes to Doctor Who’s ratings ‘crisis’, it’s all a matter of perspective.

The way in which people consume television has changed enormously since the show’s return in 2005, and continues to change. Of course, to suggest that nobody watches live TV anymore would be inaccurate – just look at The Great British Bake Off and its insane 10m overnights.

But just because fewer people are watching Doctor Who live than 10 years ago does not mean that fewer people are watching it, full stop.

There’s still an audience there for the show – a sizeable one – but a large percentage is no longer tuning in on Saturday evenings, particularly when there’s so much else competing for their attention. ITV is presenting particularly strong opposition this year, lining up a deadly double in The X Factor and the Rugby World Cup.

Episodes of Doctor Who increasingly find their audience in the week that follows. Series nine opener ‘The Magician’s Apprentice’ managed what’s known as a live+7 rating of 6.5 million viewers – that means almost 2 million caught up in the seven days after original broadcast.

BBC iPlayer also logged 1.5 million requests for the episode – and though that original 2 million bump takes iPlayer via television into account, it does not include those who watched on their phone or tablet.

In fact, for the week ending September 20, ‘The Magician’s Apprentice’ was the 7th most-watched television episode on-demand, on all platforms. It was bested only by an episode of drama Doctor Foster (no relation), several editions of EastEnders and – of course – the behemoth Bake Off.

Perhaps the secrecy surrounding the show has reached such levels that people don’t even know when it’s on. Maybe a complete crackdown on spoilers is backfiring. Because the hard truth is that Doctor Who’s overall ratings have dipped a little.

But catch-up services are its saviour – and with everything taken into account, the overall decrease really is pretty minimal.

Is Doctor Who now written only for fans?
This is an accusation that’s been flung about a lot – that the series is increasingly being produced for an ardent few, rather than for a wider audience. Russell T Davies – some allege – made big, broad Doctor Who for the masses, while Steven Moffat makes dark, insular Who for the hardcore.

The latest series launched with a double bill that took in the Daleks, their creator Davros, the Doctor’s old rival The Master (now ‘Missy’) and featured multiple references to – even footage from – old episodes. So is the show increasingly looking inward when it should be branching out?

A decent measure of how the general public – the non-hardcore – are reacting to Doctor Who is the Audience Appreciation Index, a survey conducted on behalf of the BBC Audience Research Unit.

The Audience Appreciation Index (or AI) awards TV shows a score out of 100, based on selected viewer responses. The average score for drama across the BBC and ITV is 77, with a score of 85 or over considered excellent.

‘The Magician’s Apprentice’ and its follow-up ‘The Witch’s Familiar’ – for all their fannish nods to the past – scored 84 and 83 respectively. Not too shabby – and certainly not a dramatic drop-off from the RTD era. 84 was also the average score for series two of Doctor Who in 2006.

It’s not definitive, but certainly a strong indicator that Doctor Who hasn’t become so impenetrable as to shut out casual viewers.
Is it time for Steven Moffat to go?
“Moffit MUST GO” is the battle cry of fans unhappy with Doctor Who’s current direction. Moffat (with an ‘a’) has served as the show’s head writer and executive producer – to use an American term, its ‘showrunner’ – for six years now, substantially longer than his predecessor.

“I thought I’d be gone by now, to be honest,” he admitted in a recent interview with TV & Satellite Week. “I thought I would get tired by it, and of it. But I haven’t. So I take it a year at a time.”

Fans who want Moffat gone – whether he likes it or not – allege that he’s running out of ideas. That accusation came out a lot when it was announced that Alex Kingston’s arch archeologist River Song would be back (again!) for this year’s Christmas special.
But while he does continue to trade on old favourites – as Doctor Who writers and producers have always done – Moffat is also far more bold when it comes to rewriting the show’s mythology than many of his forebears have been.

This is not a man who’s short on new concepts – one moment in ‘The Magician’s Apprentice’ threatened to twist the show’s very origins, suggesting that something other than a thirst for adventure factored into the Doctor’s decision to leave his home planet.

Doctor Who under Moffat has changed dramatically, both on- and off-screen. Everything has changed – from cast, to production team, to story structure, to the way the show looks – so to decide that it’s grown stale under his tenure seems like a dubious judgement.
Is it time for Doctor Who to be rested?
So the ratings aren’t all that bad, the general public still seems satisfied with the show’s direction, and Moffat – regardless of what some might think of his take onDoctor Who – is certainly not tapped out.

All the same, 10 years is a long time – and perhaps the biggest problem facing the show right now is apathy. Not from the fans, not even from the wider viewing public, but from the media.

Doctor Who continues to do what it’s always done, and well, but that’s not always enough to grab a headline. Moffat has even spoken about his fear that the show will become ‘part of the furniture’: “That’s when a show dies – when people think it’s fine, that it’s okay, and it’s reliable like a pair of slippers.”
If it wants to makes headlines again – not just when a Doctor is cast, or a companion leaves, but every single week, maybe the best thing for Doctor Who is to go away for a while. Then, when it returns, the appetite for new episodes will be at all-time high.

There just needs to be a concrete plan in place for the show to return, and from the moment it disappears. The last thing anyone wants is a repeat of ’89, when the original show went out with a whimper rather than a bang.

Doctor Who is not in serious trouble. It’s a massive international phenomenon, and makes so much money for BBC Worldwide that overnight ratings are almost irrelevant. But resting the show certainly couldn’t hurt. There’s nothing that makes us appreciate something like threatening to take it away.

News Source: Digital Spy

The Doctor Who Experience is offering you thr chance to ask the 6th Doctor all of your cosmic questions.

Colin Baker will pilot the TARDIS directly into the Cardiff exhibit on Saturday, October 10 for a Q&A session with fans of the Time Lord.

It’s your chance to quiz the 6th Doctor on grappling with the Sontarans, surviving his companion Mel’s insane exercise regimen and his trial on Gallifrey.
You can book tickets now through the official Doctor Who Experience website.

The Doctor Who Experience is also celebrating the return of Davros in series nine with a special Dalek Week, where fans can take an interactive tour of Skaro, encounter the fearsome pepper-pots first hand and even learn how to operate them.

Dalek Week is scheduled to begin on Saturday, October 24 at the Doctor Who Experience.
Fans in the UK can also meet current Doctor Peter Capaldi, showrunner Steven Moffat, writer Mark Gatiss, Michelle Gomez and Ingrid Oliver at the Official Doctor Who Festival in London.

The event will be held from November 13 to 15 at the ExCeL, with fans having the opportunity to purchase exclusive merchandise and go behind the scenes withDoctor Who’s production team.

Doctor Who returns this weekend with ‘Under the Lake’ on Saturday (October 3) on BBC One in the UK and BBC America in the US.

News Source: Digital Spy

BBC One controller Charlotte Moore has not ruled out the possibility of the next Doctor Who being a woman.

Moore, who is responsible for the strategy and all the shows commissioned on the flagship channel, said she would never “put a bar” on the direction in which producers wanted to take the programme.   “Peter Capaldi is a fantastic Doctor, and he’s broken the mould. But I’d never put a bar on that,” she told Radio Times. “The great thing about Doctor Who is that anything is possible.”

In the revealing interview, Moore also discussed the controversial decision to sack Sir Tom Jones as judge on talent show The Voice.
Sir Tom spoke out at the time and said he was “unaware” he was being fired after four years on the show.

“It’s not that I was let go, it is how it was handled,” he told the Mirror. “The executives in charge couldn’t be ladies and gentlemen about it, that they were filled with paranoia about a “leak” above all is deeply insulting to our professionalism.”
Moore rejected the idea that Sir Tom was badly treated and said it was simply “the way the pop industry works”.

“No one wanted to upset him, but I have to say it’s in the nature of The Voice. It’s inherent to change coaches,” she said. “Everyone knows it’s the way the pop industry works … we told Sir Tom as soon as we could.”
She said the decision to keep original judge Will.i.am on the panel was about “getting the chemistry right, with a new line-up”.

The Voice is part of a successful stable of programmes controlled by Moore, but was singled out by former BBC chairman and past controller of BBC One Michael Grade as a “clone” and derivative in format.

“Unless you are saying that the BBC can’t do talent shows at all, the way The Voice is made – its warmth and tone – is BBC in its nature. it is distinctive because of the way the BBC does it. And eight to 10 million people rick up to watch Strictly and The Voice, so I know we’re getting it right,” she responded.

One of BBC One’s perennial hits is Strictly Come Dancing, which is currently scheduled to clash with ITV’s prime time talent show The X Factor.
Speaking of the scheduling conflict, she said: “We’re scheduling Strictly in the place we’ve always scheduled it, and I think our audience expects it to be there at that time.”

“I think it’s when the flagship entertainment show is expected to be shown on a Saturday night,” she added. “There’ s no evidence that it’s had any [negative] effect on ITV’s entertainment over the years. Knowing that the BBC is giving people an alternative is absolutely right.”

Moore took over the role of controller in June 2013 and is now in charge of a £1.4bn budget. In 2014, the BBC Trust published a report which criticised BBC One as risk-averse and lacking distinctiveness and ambition – something Moore dismisses.

“I didn’t agree with it then, and I certainly don’t agree with it now,” she said.
During her two years in the job, Moore acknowledges that there have been failures in the entertainment format arena, including gameshows Tumble and Prized Apart.

“We took some game-changing risks in Prized Apart. Not everything pays off – it didn’t reach the audience we wanted it to – but we genuinely attempted to do something different,” she said.
“And I’ll go on doing that. because of the way we are funded, we have the creative freedom to do those things.”

Moore also gave details of the new autumn commissions, which includes Troy, “a multi-part epic”; Dickensian, a 20-part costume-drama series from Tony Jordan; 10 new episodes of Poldark and more Luther.

News Source: The Daily Mail

It’s hard for true Whovians to explain Doctor Who to a noob at the best of times, so we don’t envy Jenna Coleman having to do so on Conan last night.

Conan O’Brien asked The Doctor’s current companion to give him a quick lesson on the BBC’s long-running sci-fi series, and it’s likely that she was squirming inside every time he called the Time Lord ‘Doctor Who’. He has a long way to go.

Jenna gave Conan some sage words of advice when it comes to watching the show: “Do not apply logic, ever”.
Conan was particularly confused as to how the hell Father Christmas got involved in the festive special last year, played by Nick Frost. It’s a long story, but it worked at the time. Just about.
Jenna Coleman recently confirmed that she’s quitting her role on as Clara Oswald in Doctor Who, but later said she’d be open to a return one day.

News Source: Digital Spy

Final numbers for Doctor Who’s series 9 premiere have arrived, and it’s good news for fans of the BBC sci-fi series.

Originally aired September 19 on BBC One, ‘The Magician’s Apprentice’ has a consolidated 7-day rating of 6.54 million viewers.
That’s an increase of 1.96m from the original overnight figure of 4.58m.

The final figure includes those who recorded and watched the show within one week of transmission, or watched on BBC iPlayer through their television.

It does not include audiences for repeat showings, which would bump the total average audience to 7.33m.

Total iPlayer figures for the episode – on television, PC / laptop, tablets and smartphones – amount to 1.53 million requests.

Saturday night’s episode, ‘The Witch’s Familiar’, pulled in 3.7m viewers in the overnights, so Whovians will be hoping for a similar bump when those final figures emerge.

Doctor Who continues this Saturday (October 3) at 8.25pm on BBC One.

News Source: Digital Spy

Slipknot’s Corey Taylor is turning his hand to TV, lending his voice to a villain from Doctor Who.

The musician’s signature scream will allegedly be used on next Saturday’s (October 3) show, The Mirror reports.

Taylor will lend his scream to the evil Fisher King, which will reportedly be heard on the next episode of the show as the new villain battles Peter Capaldi’s Doctor
The Slipknot star shared his excitement at his involvement on Twitter, writing: “You have NO idea how hard it’s been to keep this awesome secret…”

Elsewhere, Jenna Coleman recently confirmed that she’s quitting her role on Doctor Who, but she would be open to a return one day if the story was good enough.

Doctor Who airs its next episode, ‘Under The Lake’, on Saturday (October 3) at 8.25pm on BBC One.

News Source: Digital Spy

It seems we definitely won’t be seeing more than one series of Doctor Who a year anytime soon – as Peter Capaldi has said an increase in the number of episodes made would create “casualties”.

The actor, who plays the 12th incarnation of the Time Lord, told an audience at the Radio Times Festival that the cast and crew don’t have enough energy to make more than one series a year.
“We’ve been going since January 6 and the crew, who are wonderful, are exhausted,” he said, reports The Mirror.

“There reaches a point where you can’t drive people any harder. We do the best we can to produce our show to an immensely high quality.
He added that executive producer Steven Moffat would not be able to commit to more episodes, saying it would compromise his vision.

“It’s absolutely vital that we have Steven working on it and having a vision on the whole thing,” he said. “He only has so much energy, I’ve only got so much energy.
“You want people running on all cylinders. So it’s not going to happen.”

It looks like we’ll have to content ourselves with just the one series per year for now.

Doctor Who airs its next episode, ‘Under The Lake’, on Saturday (October 3) at 8.25pm on BBC One.

News Source: Digital Spy

Fans of Doctor Who companion Clara Oswald might be able to stop weeping into their fish fingers and custard.

Actress Jenna Coleman may have confirmed that she’s quitting her role on the BBC sci-fi hit last week but she’s said she’d be open to a return one day.

“I would always be happy (to return) if there was a good story,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “But I think we’ll have to see what happens.”
Coleman said that her exit has been planned for some time and that her final story is “really cool”.

“We decided last year, it had only been one season with Peter, and there was a lot more to do,” she said. “So that’s what it was, really.

“It was just about telling the best story we could. So, I’m hoping that’s what was done.
“I’m really pleased with it. I think it’s really cool. People will have to wait and see what happens!”

The actress, who will soon play the young Queen Victoria in ITV’s Victoria, added that leaving Doctor Who after three years “did not feel real at all”.

“It was just really weird,” she said. “I was really overwhelmed. I recognise that it’s a special part of my life. The storytelling is so dynamic, and big, and whimsical, and magical. You feel like you’re in a fairy tale and it’s really hard to walk away from that.

“It’s a lot more than just a job — the friendships I have with the crew and Peter, it’s very hard to say goodbye to it.”

News Source: Digital Spy