Who Is Moffat Making The Series For?

[Yminale]

My question is, is Moffat now making the show for the mainstream family audience the show is intended for or for the dedicated SF-lovers who previously were just a subset of the whole? (Forget anything to do with Americans or Americanisation.)

How about you just lay back and enjoy the show? Honestly people are so paranoid these days about investing in a show. If it gets cancelled next season who cares. Doctor Who is like Star Trek and Star Wars. It's so big that it can't be killed. Moff and the gang will do their best to entertain and if they fail and it won't be because of a lack of effort or even poor quality.

The fact that discussions of the ratings now get put in the context of how they're great for the time of year / the timeslot / the weather, when they used to be just great, period, is definitely something I've noticed both at the end of last series and now this week.

Ratings have been put into context since the beginning of the second season. Doctor Who is in decline, that's natural. There is simply no way to hold the audience attention forever. Personally I don't want Doctor Who to continue forever driven simply by inertia. Let it end and be done with it.

 

[StCoop]

Have you been watching Doctor Who since it returned in 2005?

No, seriously, have you?

I'm guessing you haven't.

RTD's "arcs" were purely background stuff, references that you could miss completely and still follow the series finale. Saxon was slightly more involved in Series 3 but you can drop out every refence to Bad Wolf and Torchwood or Rose-cameo without effecting the episodes in question.

"The Impossible Astronaut" makes no sense without full knowledge of Series 5 and River's first story and makes no attempt to bring new viewers up to speed.

 

[StCoop]

Ratings have been put into context since the beginning of the second season. Doctor Who is in decline, that's natural.

A decline that only started when Moffat took over. The averge ratings went up every year from Series 1 to 4.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

I think there's 2 major things about the ratings. The kids who started watching Doctor Who when it returned are now teenagers and have other things to do and aren't interested in spending Saturday night with their parents. Another is Time Shifted viewing and online viewing are much more prevalent than they were back then.

Of course there may have been audience loss even taking in to account those things, but as long as it manages to stay a popular show and be good I'm not sure I care. I'll just keep watching and enjoying.

 

[Sindatur]

I think there's 2 major things about the ratings. The kids who started watching Doctor Who when it returned are now teenagers and have other things to do and aren't interested in spending Saturday night with their parents. Another is Time Shifted viewing and online viewing are much more prevalent than they were back then.

Of course there may have been audience loss even taking in to account those things, but as long as it manages to stay a popular show and be good I'm not sure I care. I'll just keep watching and enjoying.

Also hard to tell if It's Moffat Running the Show, or Tennant left after 4 years. Eccelstone was only the Doctor for 1 year, so, that was much easier for Tennant to overcome. I've heard there are still those who are bitter that Tennant is no longer the Doctor. Yes, Dr. Who is all about the Doctor changing every few years, but, after Tom Baker left, I beleive the ratings continued shrinking year after year, until it was cancelled with Doctor 7. So, really, S5 of NuWho, was the first example of an extremely popular Doctor leaving the role, since Tom Baker left.

 

[Yminale]

Ratings have been put into context since the beginning of the second season. Doctor Who is in decline, that's natural.

A decline that only started when Moffat took over. The averge ratings went up every year from Series 1 to 4.

The number of viewers watching every season opening have been in decline since the second season. I'm not sure of the average but the percentage have always been stable (around 36%-37%). You can check the Doctor Who news page. In fact someone always starts a thread about the decline of Doctor Who EVERY DAMN SEASON.

 

[Whofan]

I think the current Moffat era is a bit like Peter Davison's era, when you think about it. A lot of Davison's episodes dealt with time paradoxes and out-there concepts, and of course Matt is arguably in the same position Davison was when he took over from Tom Baker. Also the ratings slipped a bit during Davison's run (Although the decline really started with Tom's final season), although not to the extent they did during Colin Baker and McCoy's run.

Moffat is also of course a big fan of Davison, as his writing for Time Crash suggested.

 

[davejames]

A decline that only started when Moffat took over. The averge ratings went up every year from Series 1 to 4.

I was a big fan of the RTD years, but artistically I don't know how anyone can say Moffat's DW isn't a huge improvement. If that means a small decline in ratings, so be it.

Besides, I get the sense from interviews that Moffat is kind of a restless sort, and won't be around longer than a few years anyway. And then we'll probably have another mainstream, more family-friendly guy running the show again and that will be that.

 

[Butters]

On the ratings. It aired in the middle of four days off work with excellent weather. With i-player, sky+ and the BBC3 repeat to fall back on. Yeah the ratings were disappointing. I didn't even watch it live, and I really wanted to.

 

[Whofan]

At least we don't have Michael Grade causing problems this time.


Then again, it wasn't really Grade that got WHO cancelled (Although it certainly didn't help). It was John Powell, who pulled the plug due to the low ratings of the McCoy era.


If WHO gets cancelled again, we still will probably have it continue in some form. "The Wilderness Years" weren't exactly that bad-there were the new adventures books (As well as the BBC books stuff) and the audios, from where a lot of the new series writers got their start writing WHO, and even some elements of those books and audios ended up in the series itself.

 

[davejames]

Also hard to tell if It's Moffat Running the Show, or Tennant left after 4 years. Eccelstone was only the Doctor for 1 year, so, that was much easier for Tennant to overcome. I've heard there are still those who are bitter that Tennant is no longer the Doctor. Yes, Dr. Who is all about the Doctor changing every few years, but, after Tom Baker left, I beleive the ratings continued shrinking year after year, until it was cancelled with Doctor 7. So, really, S5 of NuWho, was the first example of an extremely popular Doctor leaving the role, since Tom Baker left.

Yeah I tend to think that's the bigger factor. More than Moffat's writing, I think Smith's Doctor is probably just waaaay too geeky, weird, and bizarre for a lot of people (I certainly can't imagine a lead character like that working here in an American drama, so I'm sure that's a drawback over there too).

Tennant was able to cross over into that more mainstream audience because he was hip and cool and a whole lot easier to relate to.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

On the ratings. It aired in the middle of four days off work with excellent weather. With i-player, sky+ and the BBC3 repeat to fall back on. Yeah the ratings were disappointing. I didn't even watch it live, and I really wanted to.

The ratings weren't bad though, it had 36.7% of everyone watching telly at the time, 1/3 of the country were watching TV and more than a third of them were watching Doctor Who.

 

[Jax]

^ Exactly,

Doctor Who can't be expected to force people to watch TV but to get a dam good share of those watching. Over one third is very very good. I loved the Daily Mail headline stating fans leave in droves...

Overnight ratings not final and they neglected to mention I player records set last season.

 

[Sci]

"The Impossible Astronaut" makes no sense without full knowledge of Series 5

Sure it does. Hell, it's only because of behind the scenes interviews that we even know the Silence are the ones behind the TARDIS explosion, which is only alluded to once. The Cracks never once are mentioned or alluded to.

and River's first story and makes no attempt to bring new viewers up to speed.

Nonsense. They go out of their way to explain that River is a time traveler who meets the Doctor out of order and is in love with him.

 

[Jax]

and River's first story and makes no attempt to bring new viewers up to speed.

Once again why does Moffat need to keep catering for new viewers in his 2nd year of tenure and the 7th year of Doctor Who?

 

[DWF]

Yes, if I could go back an restart the thread again I'd leave any mention of America out of it.

Hey-ho.

You raised a good question, though, StCoop. When even an apologist for the series like Jon Blum can express misgivings at the narrative failings of "The Impossible Astronaut," it's a fair question who the target audience for this episode of Who was.

I take it this Jon Blum has a history of sticking up for the series under any and all circumstances?

Oh you have no idea but he does have alot of good knowledge about the show old and new.

That said, I can understand the concerns that some folks appear to have, over losing at least a portion of the show's identity. Doctor Who has been a uniquely British product since its inception. Even as a proud American myself, I would not want that to ever change in any way. Seriously.... I don't think it's possible for the show to ever lose that British feel.

WE kind of dodged the bullet after the TV movie in 1996, had Fox or Universal taken over the show it would've lost that British feel.

 

[Neroon]

WE kind of dodged the bullet after the TV movie in 1996, had Fox or Universal taken over the show it would've lost that British feel.

Thank God for small miracles.

 

[DWF]

WE kind of dodged the bullet after the TV movie in 1996, had Fox or Universal taken over the show it would've lost that British feel.

Thank God for small miracles.

Don't get me wrong I liked the movie and Paul McGann was an excellent Doctor I wish he had more screen time than just the one movie. But here's some story ideas that were dreamed up before the movie became a reality, they were stories that more than likely weren't going to happen but you can see what they thinking of before the movie was thought about.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/thebatgranny/mcg.htm

 

[Blamo]

Ratings have been put into context since the beginning of the second season. Doctor Who is in decline, that's natural.

A decline that only started when Moffat took over. The averge ratings went up every year from Series 1 to 4.

No they didn't, there was a distinct drop in series 2 ratings which they only managed to claw back in series 3.

Once again why does Moffat need to keep catering for new viewers in his 2nd year of tenure and the 7th year of Doctor Who?

Viewer turnover.

 

[Jax]

No they didn't, there was a distinct drop in series 2 ratings which they only managed to claw back in series 3.

Season 1 dropped under 7 million by the end, season 2 not only started higher than that it also finished higher than that. Live ratings have gone down under Moffat but the show is 7 years old so not surprised even for Doctor Who. However the total audience is not that different due to I Player + DVR + Repeats.

Moffat does not have to keep catering for audience turnover, thats what the start of last season was for.