Your Verdict on Face the Raven & Episode Ranking
Joshua Yetman reveals DWTV’s community episode score and ranking for the 10th episode of Series 9.
Nearly six thousand of you voted in Doctor Who TV’s polls last week for Face the Raven, the tenth episode of Series 9, written by newcomer Sarah Dollard. So, take a deep breath, tell yourself to be brave, and get ready to Face The Results.
As usual, we asked you to give the episode a score out of 10, and the results are as such:
After the dismal performance of Mark Gatiss’ Sleep No More last week, Series 9 has officially returned to normality with these simply superb results. Driven by the emotional departure of a popular and well-loved companion, Sarah Dollard’s debut episode has equitably received an enormous amount of love from the community, and has kicked off the Series 9 finale to great effect (well it does if you consider it to be part of the Series 9 finale, which I do, at least).
Anyway, as you know by now, each week we’ll be taking these votes and working out the average score, among other statistics. We will then use these average scores to rank the episodes and get a good idea of its placing in the series.
This week, Face The Raven achieved a fantastic average score of 8.800, placing it second in Series 9 and within the highest, most respected tiers of the revival. So, with only two unranked episodes left in Series 9, the rankings currently stands as such:
- 1. The Zygon Inversion – 8.994
- 2. Face the Raven – 8.800
- 3. The Witch’s Familiar – 8.603
- 4. The Magician’s Apprentice – 8.479
- 5. Under the Lake – 8.434
- 6. The Zygon Invasion – 8.325
- 7. Before the Flood – 8.181
- 8. The Woman Who Lived – 7.715
- 9. The Girl Who Died – 7.461
- 10. Sleep No More – 5.955
- Heaven Sent – TBC
- Hell Bent – TBC
The impressive score received by Face The Raven has partly remedied the negative impact that Sleep No More had on the Series 9 average, bringing said average up to 8.095 from 8.016. However, this is still a far cry from the average as it stood after The Zygon Inversion – i.e. 8.274. Hopefully the last two episodes of Series 9 can fully offset the damage done by the unfortunately poorly received Sleep No More.
(1) Interpreting the score
Series 9 has now achieved its second ‘acclaimed’ episode, a designation I define as any score above 8.75/10. Huzzah!
Furthermore, Face The Raven has procured itself a position in the top twenty episodes of the revival, comfortably taking a very respectable 18th place in the 127 episodes of the revival to date. To refine this position further, our box and whiskers diagram can be used to show exactly where Face The Raven has fallen amongst the scope of the pre-Series 9 revival:
To clarify for any newcomers, this diagram represents the spread of episode quality in the revival. The box in the middle represents the middle 50% of all the 117 episodes between Rose and Last Christmas in terms of quality, distinguished into an upper quartile (the yellow section) and a lower quartile (the grey section), with the line between them being the median (i.e. the episode right in the middle of the rankings, which happens to be Time Heist). The ‘whiskers’ represent the absolute extremes of the revival, from The Day of the Doctor at the far right, to Fear Her at the far left. All the sample data for this diagram comes from the Rank The Revival census carried out earlier this year.
So, Face The Raven fits contentedly on the upper whisker. Up there in this revered stratum, it is surrounded by gems like Human Nature (which Face The Raven came ever so close to beating; Human Nature’s average score was 8.813) and The Doctor’s Wife (which averaged 8.758, so Face The Raven did manage to beat that one). It was also very close to beating episodes such as Vincent and the Doctor (8.815), Dalek (8.827) and Mummy on the Orient Express (8.831), signifying that Face The Raven has indeed achieved significant contextual greatness.
Now, for our usual round of fabulously fascinating flash facts:
- Face The Raven achieved the 6th highest initial score on record (records are only available as far back as A Good Man Goes to War, however). The Girl Who Waited achieved the 5th highest, and The Name of the Doctor the 7th highest, if you wanted to know.
- Face The Raven is the best episode to date from Sarah Dollard. It is also the worst. And the award for the most pointless stat of the day goes to…
- Whilst Face The Raven is the 18th highest rated episode of the revival overall, it is the 4th highest rated episode of Peter Capaldi’s to date, with only The Zygon Inversion, Listen and Mummy on the Orient Express scoring higher. Capaldi’s era is becoming more and more illustrious with each episode, currently averaging an remarkably impressive 7.871 which stands considerably above the other Doctors of the revival (Eccleston’s era averaged 7.587, Tennant’s era averaged 7.446 and Smith’s era averaged 7.486). Peter’s era is also the most consistent era to date.
- A whopping 46.1% of you gave Face The Raven full marks; this is the second highest case of this so far this series (and the 13th highest case of this in the revival), with only The Zygon Inversion attaining a higher proportion of 10/10 votes. Face The Raven also received a respectable proportion of 5/10 or higher votes, at 96.1%. This is the 29th highest case of this in the revival.
- So, how does Face The Raven stand alongside the other Episode 10’s of the revival? Episode 10 is a weird one, I should first say. It carries acclaimed episodes like The Doctor Dances and Blink, but also derided episodes like Love & Monsters and In The Forest of the Night. As it stands, Face The Raven, despite its brilliantly high score, can only take 4th place here, behind the aforementioned The Doctor Dances and Blink, and also Vincent and the Doctor.
(2) The divisiveness of the story
Face The Raven received a standard deviation of 1.716, which is middle-ground territory when it comes to divisiveness. To clarify, the divisiveness of an episode can be measured using standard deviation, a very handy statistic which measures how spread out votes are from the average. The higher the standard deviation, the more divisive the episode. To make additional sense of what this number means, I have generated the following rough scaling system for interpreting standard deviation in the context of Doctor Who episodes:
- Less than 1.5 – very high agreement amongst the fanbase; whatever the overall opinion is of this episode, positive or negative, the vast majority of people conform to it.
- Between 1.5 and 1.75 – not particularly divisive.
- Between 1.75 and 2 –fairly divisive
- Above 2 – considerably divisive; opinions vary far and wide for such an episode.
So Face The Raven stands as a “not particularly divisive” episode according to this scale, though it still received a higher standard deviation than I had originally anticipated. This is possibly down to the handling of Clara’s exit being slightly more controversial than I had expected.
Regardless, it is still the 33rd least divisive episode in the revival, and the third least divisive episode this year. It is comparably as divisive as The Name of the Doctor (1.715) and The Big Bang (1.707), two episodes which don’t stand out to me as being infamously inharmonious. Quite the opposite in fact.
The full divisiveness rankings of Series 9 currently stand as such:
- 1. Sleep No More – 2.775 (most divisive…ever)
- 2. The Girl Who Died – 2.235
- 3. The Woman Who Lived – 2.178
- 4. The Zygon Invasion – 1.984
- 5. The Magician’s Apprentice – 1.815
- 6. The Witch’s Familiar – 1.758
- 7. Before the Flood – 1.723
- 8. Face The Raven – 1.716
- 9: The Zygon Inversion – 1.600
- 10: Under the Lake – 1.548 (least divisive)
- Heaven Sent – TBC
- Hell Bent – TBC
Under the Lake continues to be the least divisive episode of the series and, as series finales tend to be divisive affairs, it will probably retain its position and become the least divisive episode of the entire series (though, admittedly, Heaven Sent does have potential to usurp it). Sleep No More will almost certainly retain its position at the top of this leaderboard; I’d be incredibly surprised if Sleep No More is surpassed as the most divisive episode at all within the next few years, let alone in the remaining episodes of Series 9.
(3) Series 9 to date
As stated earlier, Face The Raven has party alleviated the damage dealt on the Series 9 average by the poorly received Sleep No More, pushing up the Series 9 average to 8.095 from 8.016. Series 9 is once again outperforming Series 8 as it stood 10 episodes in, the Series 8 average standing at a relatively low 7.545 at said point (though, to be fair, it had just suffered from the negative impact of In The Forest of the Night).
As a consequence of the increase in the Series 9 average, the Qualityometer – our informal measure of how much better Series 9 is doing compared to the pre-Series 9 revival average – has also risen, from 6.81% better to 7.86% better than the pre-Series 8 revival average of 7.505.
How far will the Qualityometer go before the series end? With Heaven Sent and Hell Bent likely to receive community acclaim, the answer is – probably – quite far indeed!
(4) Evaluating the projections
A few months ago, I produced a set of statistical projections for the initial community averages of each upcoming episode in Series 9. The purpose of this was to compare them to the actual results as they became available, in order to gauge how sensible it is to use statistical models to forecast such potentially unpredictable variables.
The estimate using my Oswald Model was 8.05, a figure which represents an error of 8.55% now that we know the actual figure was 8.800.
At this point, I think I can confidently conclude that the Oswald Model was a bit rubbish.
(5) Best Writing Debuts– Poll Results
Moving on from the main poll, DWTV asked you to rank the best debut episode (from a new writer to the show) in Capaldi’s era to date. The average weighted ranks are as such:
Remember, the lower the weighted rank, the better. So Jamie Mathieson’s acclaimed Mummy on the Orient Express is seen as the strongest debut episode from a new writer in Capaldi’s era to date, whilst In The Forest of the Night, unsurprisingly, takes last place. Face The Raven takes an admirable second place.
(6) Conclusion
Managing to attain second place in a series as strongly received as this one is no mean feat, but Face The Raven managed it. It also performed strongly in all statistical areas, and ranks very high within the entire revival. Of course, Clara’s beautifully emotional demise may be a significant reason for the high placement of this episode, but I’d like to think the wide array of imaginative concepts, superlative dialogue and fantastic characterisation entrenched by Sarah Dollard in this episode were other significant reasons. Certainly, Sarah Dollard is a name I’d like to see again in the future.
Join us next week for what will perhaps be the most interesting Your Verdict On… article so far this series, as we examine the potentially record breaking Heaven Sent, an episode that has received universal critical acclaim and is being seriously considered by many as the greatest episode of Doctor Who in years, if not in its history. Will it truly be a heaven sent episode, or end up in episodic hell (though, seriously, that’s not even a realistic option at this point). Until then, keep voting!
