Doctor Who: What are the ratings expectations for Jodie Whittaker’s debut?
Well, for the time being we’d say that the curiosity is a reason for some cautious optimism come Christmas Day. In terms of consolidated viewing figures out of the UK, the two most-recent Christmas Specials for the series are actually the two lowest-rated on record, with both of them posting less than 8 million viewers. However, this special has an advantage on those even if you take Jodie out of the equation. This marks an opportunity to see the final appearance of Peter Capaldi as The Doctor, and regeneration episodes do tend to produce a nice ratings bump for all parties involved. “The Time of the Doctor,” which was the regeneration episode for Matt Smith into Peter, ended up drawing as a whole over 11 million consolidated viewers.
At the moment, we’d argue that around 11 million should be the expectation for what we ended up getting with Jodie for a rather simple reason: There are so many other ways to watch TV these days! There’s more enthusiasm for Whittaker than we’ve seen for a new Doctor in some time, and we do think that there will be some people who flock to the show specifically for that. It may even be enough to compensate for some of the viewers who have departed the franchise over the years.
Is it true that there are some people out there who are angry about Jodie’s casting? Sure, but we perceive them to be a vocal internet minority and they’ll still watch to say goodbye to Capaldi. Also, none of these people have actually seen the new Doctor yet. She may turn up on the screen and they could fall in love with her!
Here in America, we anticipate the special to break the record of last year’s Christmas Special, which drew about 1.7 million consolidated viewers. Doctor Who has slowly built an audience stateside over time and Whittaker may help to make it all the more mainstream. Whether or not she keeps many of these viewers after the fact remains to be seen.
What do you think the Doctor Who ratings expectations should be for the debut of Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor? Be sure to share in one way or another below!
Did you see CarterMatt’s take on the end of Class?
Yesterday we officially confirmed the cancellation of this series, and you can read more about that just by heading over to the link here. (Photo: BBC.)
Timothy Tegel
October 7, 2017 @ 3:51 pm
This is more SJW bull. Another character appropriated just because the left can’t think of original ideas. I will not watch the new season and the last season they have been pushing thier leftest agenda down our throats. It stopped being about the Doctor. It stopped being about the story. It is now only about identity politics and leftist ideals.
Peter Evans
September 10, 2017 @ 9:34 pm
I regret to say that I’ll be among that “minority” who will no longer be watching in 2018 – and I’ve been a loyal fan since the show began in the UK in November 1963, when I was a small child. My now adult children have watched since the 2005 reboot, as have my grandchildren. None of us will be doing so from now on.
I have nothing against the talented Jodie Whittaker. I just despise the compulsory politically correct dogma that has driven this casting decision.
The Doctor has been a male character for 54 TV years and 2,000 of his own, despite 13 incarnations. Male each time. If you flip a coin, you get a one-in-two chance that it’ll land heads up. Flip it three times and the chance of getting heads each time rises to 1-in-8. Flip it 13 times and the odds of getting heads (male) each time rise to a whopping 1-in-8,192. Forget the “it’s only sci-fi” naivety. He’s now morphing into a woman to fit in with the shrill militants who deny biological science in order to promote their “gender fluidity” dogma.
As Jon Caldara (president of the Independence Institute think tank) put it in The Denver Post recently:
“Of course they’re symbolically turning the Doctor transsexual to make a grand, politically correct, gender-bending social statement. It’s forced and over-the-top and worth the eye-roll many of us fans are giving it. Like so much lately, they’re pushing transsexual acceptance so hard it’s backfiring.”
This decision would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Chibnall now thinks it’s the height of fashion, because he lives within the same hermetically-sealed, wealthy (and decadent) ideological bubble the militant gender-morphers inhabit.
Why not cast Ms Whittaker as a lost Gallifreyan, a new ally or foe of the Doctor? Why not pitch an original script for a female space-time traveller (I’d have certainly watched that)? Why destroy an established show to promote PC propaganda?
It seems to me that the ideological hijacking by hardline s*x revolutionaries of TV entertainment – entertainment that’s popular among impressionable young children and teens – purely in order to peddle a doctrinaire ideology of s*x morphing into their impressionable young minds is deeply manipulative and utterly reprehensible.
Chibnall probably isn’t even aware that he’s endorsing the lunatic dogmas of the postmodern s*x radical Left. He just thinks it’s the height of chic fashion, the new black. But shrill s*x militants are the ones who’ve made this batsh*t crazy casting decision virtually compulsory, even though we’ve seen the effects of such swivel-eyed reboots already (such as the execrable Ghostbusters): a smouldering financial crater, despite highly talented actors, caused by barely existent audience numbers.
Moral of the story? People hate having PC dogmas rammed down their throats.
After 54 years of loving the show – most of my life (I was six when it began) – I personally now hope it crashes and burns. I don’t want it being used to warp and twist young minds into thinking that gender morphing is a thing, when it’s a tragic psychopathological delusion. And I say that with a deep sense of sorrow and mourning rather than anger.
Burrunjor
September 11, 2017 @ 1:52 pm
Bravo Peter you summed it up superbly. This is just anti men spite. There already WAS a female time lord character set up. Romana. I would have LOVED a Romana spin off.
But the female Doctor advocates didn’t want a Romana spin off because they aren’t motivated by a love for female heroes, or even a desire for representation.
Its just to take a role away from men who they all see as entitled, racist, privileged, sexists. Thus even if you did a Romana spin off that was amazing they wouldn’t care. They are bullies and they are the true racists, and they’ve ruined Doctor Who so I will not watch a second of their crap.
Peter Evans
September 11, 2017 @ 3:09 pm
Thanks, Burrunjor. As you might have gathered, I share identical sentiments.
I feel as though I’ve lost a dear life-long friend. Well, in fact, I have: Doctor Who, who set a great example to me and my brothers when we were kids because he fought his foes without fisticuffs. He used formidable intelligence, deep learnedness and profound compassion for the less strong instead.
But he was a white male, so in our new (not so) covertly totalitarian regime of compulsory political correctness, he was a privileged oppressor who had to go.
RIP Doctor Who, 1963-2017