Series 10: A Numbery-Wumbery Breakdown (Part 2)

Joshua Yetman presents a statistical breakdown of how Series 10 performed overall.

• See part one the breakdown here.

Welcome back to the second part of this epic statistical perusal! The first part focused on the statistics underlying Series 10 and how it compares to other series over several measures. This second part will zoom out even further to consider how the overall revival, as well as certain subsets of the revival, have been impacted by Series 10.

The overall revival

Below is a time series showing every episode of the revival as a single line graph. All 143 episodes. Quite the bumpy ride, right?

• Series 10 takes the form of a relatively smooth contour at the latter end of the graph. Compared to some of the sheer peaks and troths of other series (Series 6 and 7 especially), the ongoing conclusion that Series 10 was consistent seems even more justified!
• The overall average of all 143 episodes since 2005 is 7.597. So, effectively, an episode is only truly ‘above average’ if it’s above this threshold. 9 episodes in Series 10 were thus truly above average.

Showrunner comparisons

Which showrunner does the DWTV community prefer? With the Moffat era still one episode from true completion, this might be a bit premature to consider, but it’s a relentlessly interesting one in my personal opinion!

In case you were unaware, Doctor Who has had two showrunners since 2005, with a third taking over very shortly; Russell T Davies, who executively produced Series 1-4 and the 2008-10 specials, and Steven Moffat, who has executively produced everything from Series 5 onwards, but has now stepped down with the 2017 Christmas special acting as his final episode. Chris Chibnall will subsequently take over for Series 11 and beyond.

The Moffat era is more prolific (83 episodes, compared to the RTD era’s 60), but is it preferred? Let’s look at the averages post-Series 10:

• From these averages, it can be shown that the Moffat era has a 76% lead on the RTD era, which would make the DWTV community a slightly ‘Moffat-leaning’ community, if I was to politicise the concept somewhat. I affectionately refer to this percentage as an era preference ratio.
• However, it must be noted that all the data used for Series 9 and Series 10 in these averages is from initial polls (there has been no retrospective poll for Series 9 yet), i.e. immediately after broadcast. Usually, averages falls over time, a curious phenomenon colloquially referred to as ‘recent-episode syndrome’, so the current averages may be lower, and the era preference ratio thus more subdued.

The Twelfth Doctor era

On DWTV, the Twelfth Doctor era (Series 8, 9 and 10) has been well received and highly rated. Again, it may be slightly premature to consider its average score when one episode still remains, but we will proceed anyway.

The Twelfth Doctor era currently consists of 39 episodes, which average a remarkably high 7.905. This makes the Twelfth Doctor era the best Doctor era on DWTV, as shown in the following graph:

• The Twelfth Doctor era tops this list by quite the margin, with a 0.318 lead on the Ninth Doctor’s era, which is ranked in second place.
• That said, it again has to be noted that the data for 2 of Capaldi’s 3 series come from initial polls, so there may be some inflation in the above figure.

So, if the Twelfth Doctor era is so highly rated, what are its best episodes? Some obvious ones should come straight to mind (Heaven Sent, anyone?), but the top ten best Twelfth Doctor episodes to date are comprehensively as follows:

• Thus, this era has supplied three episodes to the top 10 episodes of the entire revival, including one which takes second place!
• Note, only two of the top ten Capaldi era episodes come from Series 10. Out of the remaining eight, Series 8 and Series 9 contribute four each.

Best writers of the revival to date

The revival has been penned by 28 talented writers, and they all deserve credit for their contributions. That said, some contributions are better received than others, and so some writers are better received than others. The best writers – by average episode score, and excluding showrunners from their co-written episodes – amongst those who have written at least two episodes are given below:

• Paul Cornell yet again tops this list, bolstered by his highly regarded Series 1 and Series 3 contributions. Jamie Mathieson, who made his fourth contribution this year, and Sarah Dollard, who made her second contribution, rank second and third overall; these are certainly two writers that should stick around for Series 11 and beyond!
• Moffat himself ranks 4^th with an average of 8.280, which is all the more impressive given he has written 41 episodes!
• Future showrunner Chris Chibnall has only averaged 6.813, but it’s unwise to use this as any basis for the quality of his upcoming era – after all, Chibnall was the showrunner for Broadchurch, which received acclaim!
• Thanks to Frank Cottrell Boyce’s second contribution (Smile), he is no longer the lowest rated writer on this list. That position returns to Matthew Graham, of Fear Her and The Almost People

Dream Run and Nightmare Run

What is the hypothetical perfect series? We can construct a notional ‘dream run’ of episodes by simply taking the best Episode 1, Episode 2, and so on. Similarly, we can construct a ‘nightmare run’ of episodes by taking the worst episode in each slot. This has been a regular part of statistical analysis on DWTV since the 2014 Series 1-7 face-off.

Note: Series 1-7 have 13 episodes, whilst Series 8-10 have 12 episodes. As such, the Episode 13 entry in the following runs can only come from Series 1-7.

The Dream Run and Nightmare Run, subsequent to the completion of Series 10, are as follows:

• Series 10 makes only one contribution to the Dream Run (episode 5 – Oxygen). It makes no contribution to the Nightmare Run, however.

Conclusion

So that brings us to the end of another numbery-wumbery breakdown! None of this would be possible without your fevered and passionate voting week in and week out, to which I am greatly appreciative. I hope you found these statistics interesting and, crucially, candid and fair. I’ll return at Christmas to examine the stats of the final Twelfth Doctor episode, which, as a multi-Doctor episode, should be a highly rated affair for Capaldi and Moffat to bow out on. Until then, farewell and thank you for voting this year!