Well broadcasting it New Years night, vs Christmas Night I am sure affected ratings to some extend, as more people are likely to be OUT on new years night, while most people are in on Christmas Evening...
But if you look at the general ratings for the season you will see they have been in steady decline.. not as low as last season yet, but at the decline rate they will be by next season.
The problem with DR Who for years has been the WRITING... and the continued desire to pander to left wing silliness combined with that hasn’t helped its cause.
Even this season, the Parks episode which hit all the PC notes, shows just how insanely weak the writing is... the villian? A never heard of before time traveler, who has decided “everything went wrong’ when Parks didn’t move her seat....
That’s all we know.. never head of him before, seen him or his organization before, no foreshadowing... and the group or situation was NEVER EVER mentioned before or since that episode...
So lets just stick a time traveling “racist” I guess to be a antagonist...
Yet, compare that with things like Bad Wolf... or Crack In Time... where you didn’t know what they were, but they were foreboding something...
I compare the current writing of Doctor who, and the Parks Episode especially to basically the level of “PETE THE CAT” children’s book writing... 1 dimensional characters, who if they are given a 2nd dimension at all its some PC related nonsense.... that offers NOTHING to them.
Until better writing and the end of preachiness returns to Dr Who, it will continue to decline in the ratings... This season, like last seasons, was just aweful, and honestly its been bad a lot longer than that. Its not the actors fault, its the writing.
The actress and the PC COMPANION TEAM, are doing what they are asked to do and doing it well... but the problem is what they are being asked to do is crap. The Billy actress did what she was asked to do, but what she was asked to do was slop....
GET BETTER WRITING, STOP PANDERING... and tell truly good stories, and then, and only then will fortunes change.
Better writing won’t save it after the gender bend.
I think you are quite right on all points. Moffat was a genius writer of individual stories but he couldn’t write female characters (Amy, River, Clara...all sassy, witty - but their lines could practically be interchangeable) and as showrunner he allowed everything to slip after Series 5.
Russell was immensely strong as both writer and showrunner and, quite frankly, such has been the decline into the pompous dull moralizing that now passes for Doctor Who, I find myself yearning for the ‘gay agenda’ that Russell pushed. At least we were entertained during that era. Doctor Who is just not fun anymore.
Get rid of agendas and quotas, and, please, please, get rid of Chris Chibnall (the utter gall of the spotty oik, to criticize Pip and Jane Baker for their writing in the 1980s, when he churns out this turgid mess today). My ideal solution would be to give Neil Gaiman complete power over Doctor Who. He gets to choose the tone, the Doctor, the arc, everything, with no interference from the powers-that-be. Then, I think, we would see something very special indeed.
As it is, we now face a 2019 with no Who at all.
Great. Thanks, Chibnall.
I thought the bit about the call center and UNIT not being available was rather funny. It’d be what I’d expect from the UK bureaucracy.
The rest was so so at best.