As we approach the 60th Anniversary of Doctor Who, revisit the story of Doctor Who, the occasional series written for the 50th Anniversary, explaining the origins of the programme.

Episode 31 - An Unearthly Series - The Origins of a TV Legend: First published 23 Nov 2013

Ratings UpdateBookmark and Share

Tuesday, 5 December 2023 - Reported by Marcus
The Star Beast: The Wrath (Credit: BBC Studios ())

The first special starring David Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor, The Star Beast, had an official 7-day rating of 7.61 million viewers in the UK.

The rating is the highest figure for Doctor Who since The Tsuranga Conundrum in 2018.

Doctor Who was the 10th most-watched programme on British Television for the week, behind seven episodes of I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and two of Strictly Come Dancing.

The official rating includes those who recorded the programme and watched it within a week.

Globally the episode is the 61st watched movie on Disney+. It has been most successful in Australia, New Zealand and Turkey.

The Appreciation Index, a measure of how much the audience enjoyed the episode, was 84.

The second episode, Wild Blue Yonder, had an overnight rating of 4.83 million, third for Saturday behind the dancing and grub-eating reality shows. 7-day figures will be released next week. Its Appreciation Index was 83. 





FILTER: - Ratings - fourteenth Doctor

The Power of The Doctor: consolidated viewing figuresBookmark and Share

Monday, 31 October 2022 - Reported by Chuck Foster
The Power of the Doctor

The weekly consolidated ratings for the week 17-23 October have been released by BARB, indicating that Jodie Whittaker's swansong The Power of the Doctor achieved 5.295 million viewers, making it the second most watched programme on the Sunday and the fifth most watched programme overall for the week.

Top of the week went to Saturday's Strictly Come Dancing (which saw contestant Tyler West and dance partner Dianne Buswell performing the Tango to the Doctor Who theme) with some 9.894m, followed by Sunday's Results show with 8.634m; third place went to Channel 4's The Great British Bake Off with 7.794m, and ITV's Doc Martin was fourth with 5.610m.

The episode achieved 5.1m via TV viewing which placed it sixth (with Wednesday's Coronation Street some 46000 viewers more),; however, once other ways to watch were factored in (4-Screen) it enabled the episode to overtake the soap into fifth place by some 45000 extra viewers! Sunday's BBC News at 10 (which featured an interview with David Tennant on his return to the role) which originally was ahead of Doctor Who on overnights eventually settled into 23rd place with 3.919m viewers (very few people tend to watch the news on catchup  unlike soaps and drama!)

Breaking down the ratings, the episode was watched by 2.37m viewers live, gaining another 1.25m/1.34m overnight via TV/4-Screen respectively (VOSDAL). The last seven days saw an additional 1.48m/1.59m catch up on the show.

The position marks the highest place the show has achieved since Whittker's first few episodes back in 2018 (where her debut hit the top spot and the next three episodes all made 4th place). It is also the highest veiwing figure for the show since The Halloween Apocalypse a year ago today.  

The signed repeat of the episode broadcast early Saturday morning on BBC2 was watched by 35000 viewers. 

Figures for other regions include ABC in Australia with 103000 viewers, and BBC America in the United States with 317000 viewers (64th place in the cable charts with a Neilsen 18-49 rating of 0.06).





FILTER: - Doctor Who - Ratings - Jodie Whittaker

The Power of The Doctor - Appreciation IndexBookmark and Share

Tuesday, 25 October 2022 - Reported by Chuck Foster
The Power of The Doctor: Cybermen (Credit: BBC)

The Power of the Doctor achieved an Audience Appreciation Index score of 82.

The appreciation index or AI is a measure of how much the audience enjoyed the programme. The score, out of a hundred, is compiled by a specially selected panel of around 5,000 people who go online and rate and comment on programmes.

The score of 82 is the highest figure Doctor Who has achieved since the same score was recorded against the 2020 series finale The Timeless Children, with the intervening eight episodes of 2021/22 only averaging 76.6.

Jodie Whittaker's tenure saw the audience appreciation index range from its lowest score of 75 for Once, Upon Time to its highest of 83 with her debut story The Woman Who Fell To Earth alongside Rosa, Arachnids In The UK, and the following season's Fugitive of the Judoon.

The overall average for the whole of the 13th Doctor's era of 31 episodes is 79.6.

 

You can review the complete list of AIs scored over Doctor Who's history via our guide.





FILTER: - Doctor Who - Specials - Ratings

Legend Of The Sea Devils - Official 7 Day RatingsBookmark and Share

Monday, 25 April 2022 - Reported by Marcus
Legend Of The Sea Devils: Ji-Hun (ARTHUR LEE) (Credit: BBC Studios/James Pardon)

Doctor Who - Legend Of The Sea Devils, had an official 7-day rating of 3.47 million viewers.

The figure includes all those who watched the episode within 1 week of transmission. The figure is a substantial increase over the initial overnight figure and was enough to make Doctor Who the highest-rated programme on BBC Television for the day.

Overall Doctor Who was the third most-watched programme on British Television for the day, with ITV's drama The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe taking top place.

Doctor Who was the 24th most-watched programme for the week.

The rise from the overnight figure was enough to prevent The Legend of the Sea Devils becoming the lowest-rated episode in Doctor Who history.  That accolade is still held by episode one of the 1989 story Battlefield with 3.1 million watching.  It does however mean that the Sea Devil episode is the lowest-rated story since the series returned in 2005.

Doctor Who will return for one more story in 2022, a climactic regeneration story shown to mark the BBC's 100th birthday, before a new production team, headed up by Russell T Davies, takes over for series 14. 





FILTER: - Ratings - UK - Broadcasting

Legend Of The Sea Devils - Overnight Viewing FiguresBookmark and Share

Monday, 18 April 2022 - Reported by Marcus
Legend Of The Sea Devils (Credit: BBC/Getty Images)

Doctor Who - Legend Of The Sea Devils, had an audience of 2.2 million according to unofficial overnight viewing figures. 

The figure is disappointing for the series, making Doctor Who the 11th most-watched programme on Easter Sunday. 

Doctor Who was pitched against  Britain's Got Talent on ITV 1,  which won the day with 5.2 million watching.  The new ITV drama The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe on ITV had an overnight audience of 4.71m.

Final figures, released next week, will include those who recorded the episode and who watched it later. 

The current lowest rated episode of Doctor Who was the first episode of the 1989 story Battlefield, which has 3.10 million viewers

 





FILTER: - Ratings - UK

Eve of the Daleks - Appreciation IndexBookmark and Share

Tuesday, 4 January 2022 - Reported by Chuck Foster
Eve of the Daleks - Dalek (Credit: BBC/James Pardon)

Eve Of The Daleks  achieved an Audience Appreciation Index score of 77.

The Appreciation Index or AI is a measure of how much the audience enjoyed the programme. The score, out of a hundred, is compiled by a specially selected panel of around 5,000 people who go online and rate and comment on programmes.





FILTER: - Doctor Who - Series 13(39) - Ratings

Eve of the Daleks - Overnight Viewing FiguresBookmark and Share

Sunday, 2 January 2022 - Reported by Marcus
Eve of the Daleks -  Sarah (AISLING BEA), Yasmin Khan (MANDIP GILL), Dan (JOHN BISHOP), The Doctor (JODIE WHITTAKER) (Credit: BBC/James Pardon)

Doctor Who - Eve of the Daleks has an audience of 3.21 million viewers, according to unofficial overnight figures.

 

Doctor Who was the sixth most-watched programme of the day, with BBC One's The Tourist taking top spot with 4.59 million watching. 

The figure is a drop of over a million from last year's New Year's Day episode on a day where ratings were down across the board. 

Final results, including those who watch the programme within seven days, will be released next week. 

 

 

 





FILTER: - Ratings - UK

Series 13 RatingsBookmark and Share

Monday, 13 December 2021 - Reported by Marcus
Episode 1 (Credit: James Pardon / BBC Studios)

The final episode of Series 13: Doctor Who Flux, The Vanquishers, had a seven-day rating of 4.61 million viewers.

 

The rating made Doctor Who the 6th most-watched programme on BBC Television for the week and the 26th most-watched on all British television.  The chart was dominated by ITV's I'm a Celebrity... Get me out of here with 6 of the top ten places. The most-watched programme of the week was Strictly Come Dancing on BBC One. 

 

The rating gave Doctor Who an average rating of 5.15 million for the year 2021. This is the lowest annual rating since the programme returned in 2005. However, the series scored lower than 5 million in 1986, 1987 and 1989.

In terms of chart position, each episode appeared in the list of top 30 programmes of the week. 

With the conclusion of Series 13, Doctor Who has broadcast 868 episodes which, if you watched them back to back, would last 17 days, 20 hours and 40 minutes. 

 

Series 13 Ratings
TITLE Time Length  7 Day Rating AI Position
Chapter One: The Halloween Apocalypse  6:26 pm  49:55  5.81m  76   8th
Chapter Two: War of The Sontarans  6:16 pm  59:24  5.13m  77  13th
Chapter Three: Once, Upon Time  6:30 pm  49:03  4.70m  75  19th
Chapter Four: Village of the Angels  6:19 pm  56:35  4.57m  79  18th
Chapter Five: Survivors of the Flux  6:26 pm  50:34  4.83m  77  21st
Chapter Six: The Vanquishers  6:22 pm  59:16  4.64m  76  26th

some data has been updated by BARB following the initial release

 

The full list of Doctor Who Ratings since the launch in 1963 can be found on the Doctor Who Guide

 





FILTER: - Ratings - UK

The Vanquishers - Appreciation IndexBookmark and Share

Wednesday, 8 December 2021 - Reported by Chuck Foster
Flux Chapter 6 - The Vanquishers: Swarm (Sam Spruell) (Credit: BBC Studios (Sam Taylor))

The Vanquishers: Flux: Chapter Six  achieved an Audience Appreciation Index score of 76.

The Appreciation Index or AI is a measure of how much the audience enjoyed the programme. The score, out of a hundred, is compiled by a specially selected panel of around 5,000 people who go online and rate and comment on programmes.

With the last episode of the series now broadcast, this brings the series average to 76.7.





FILTER: - Doctor Who - Series 13/39 - Ratings

Ratings LatestBookmark and Share

Monday, 6 December 2021 - Reported by Marcus
Flux Chapter 6 - The Vanquishers:  (Credit: BBC Studios (Sam Taylor))

Doctor Who The Vanquishers was watched by 3.58 million viewers according to unofficial overnight figures. This is a slight drop from episode 5's 3.82 million

It was the day's fifth most-watched programme of the day.

The seven-day consolidated figure, which includes all those who watch the episode within one week. for Episode Five: Survivors of the Flux was 4.72 million. 

Doctor Who was the 9th most-watched programme on BBC Television for the week and the 25th most-watched on all British television for the week. 





FILTER: - Ratings - UK - Broadcasting