May 8, 2017

Your Verdict on Thin Ice & Episode Ranking

Joshua Yetman reveals what DWTV readers made of the third episode of Series 10.

In 2015, Sarah Dollard enchanted – and broke the collective hearts – of the fanbase when she penned the tragic and emotional Face The Raven for Series 9. Naturally, after such a strongly written performance, she was asked to return, and return she has – with Thin Ice, the third episode of Series 10.

Has she lived up to the bar set by her previous episode? Let’s take a look at the stats!

Thin Ice: Stat Rundown

Just over four thousand of you voted yet again, and the average score was 7.814. This is a step up over last week, and is only a smidgen below the score received by The Pilot, but the score falls short of the 8.800 received by Face the Raven two years ago. That said, as the latter was an emotional send-off (well…sort of) for a much loved companion, it’s hardly a fair comparison.
That score of 7.814 means Thin Ice is the 60^th highest rated episode of the revival, and is sandwiched between The Pilot in 59^th place (7.842) and Army of Ghosts in 61^st (7.802). Thus, it’s firmly in the median ground of the revival.
The standard deviation of this episode – which is our measure of how divisive an episode is – was 1.689, which is – for the third week in a row – quite a low value, indicating that the episode wasn’t particularly divisive. In fact, it is the 31^st least divisive episode on record. Thus, so far, Series 10 has progressed with little controversy and discord amongst the fanbase.

Series 10 Ranking

So far, the Series 10 episode rank looks like this:

The Pilot – 7.842
Thin Ice – 7.814
Smile – 7.095
Knock Knock – TBC
Oxygen – TBC
Extremis – TBC
The Pyramid at the End of the World – TBC
The Lie of the Land – TBC
The Empress of Mars – TBC
The Eaters of Light – TBC
World Enough and Time – TBC
The Doctor Falls – TBC

No episode is yet to escape the 7/10 threshold. This indicates the series has been consistent, but has not experienced a true classic yet.

The series average to date is 7.584, excluding The Return of Doctor Mysterio. As it stands, this figure indicates that Series 10 is the 6^th highest rated series of the revival. However, if we consider only the first three episodes of each series, Series 10 is the second strongest start to any series of the revival, second only to Series 9. This is primarily because almost all series find at least one dud in its opening three episodes, but Series 10 has escaped this tendency just like Series 9 did.