Your Verdict on The Return of Doctor Mysterio

Joshua Yetman reveals what DWTV readers made of the 2016 Christmas special.

Doctor Who finally returned to our screens last month with The Return of Doctor Mysterio, the twelfth Christmas special overall and the seventh one written by Steven Moffat. The Christmas special is a usual and expected custom of the modern incarnation of the show, but The Return of Doctor Mysterio was particularly special as it was the only episode of Doctor Who broadcast in 2016. The wait endured for this episode – of 366 days (damn that leap year) – was the longest wait for an episode during the revival, so was it worth it? Well let’s find out.

Thousands of you have voted in Doctor Who TV’s poll for The Return of Doctor Mysterio and now it’s time to reveal the results. As usual we asked you to give the episode a score out of 10, and the score distribution of this episode looked like this:

These scores collate together into a rather disappointing average score of 6.970, a tantalising fraction away from the 7/10 “good” benchmark but also one of the lowest scores of the Twelfth Doctor era to date. Whether it was the superhero aesthetic, the brand of humour, or something more systemic with the episode overall, it’s clear that Doctor Mysterio himself returned with a bit of a whimper, rather than the bang we were all hoping for.

Furthermore, as far as DWTV polls are concerned, it was also the lowest rated televised Whoniverse-related episode of 2016, polling lower than every episode of new spin-off show Class. However, it should be noted that the poll for The Return of Doctor Mysterio attracted far more fans, and probably fans of the more critical variety, than the polls for Class.

In the coming months, the statistics of Series 10 will be disseminated and evaluated to no end, and we will be including The Return of Doctor Mysterio amongst them. However, for this one article, we will consider The Return of Doctor Mysterio amongst the episodes most fresh in our memory, i.e. Series 9, purely for comparison purposes. Thus, the 2015-2016 DWTV rankings are officially as follows:

1. Heaven Sent – 9.344
2. The Zygon Inversion – 8.994
3. Face The Raven – 8.800
4. The Witch’s Familiar – 8.603
5. The Magician’s Apprentice – 8.479
6. Under the Lake – 8.434
7. The Zygon Invasion – 8.325
8. Before the Flood – 8.181
9. The Husbands of River Song – 7.984
10. Hell Bent – 7.760
11. The Woman Who Lived – 7.715
12. The Girl Who Died – 7.461
13. The Return of Doctor Mysterio – 6.970
14. Sleep No More – 5.955

Amidst some staggering competition, and thanks to its own low score, The Return of Doctor Mysterio can only poll 13^th amongst 14 episodes. It performed considerably worse than the preceding episode and Christmas special, The Husbands of River Song, which is more than a whole point higher scorewise.

(1) Interpreting the score

Overall, The Return of Doctor Mysterio is the 95^th highest rated episode of the revival, which, for reference, now contains 131 episodes. Thus, it is unfortunately closer to the bottom than the top. Interestingly, it achieved virtually the same score as Voyage of the Damned, the 2007 Christmas special. The “neighbourhood” of episodes surrounding The Return of Doctor Mysterio are given in the following chart for additional context:

So, quality wise, The Return of Doctor Mysterio is sandwiched between Voyage of the Damned and Dinosaurs on a Spaceship. This is hardly an awful place to be, but it’s not great either.

We now have, as usual, our round of rapid statistics:

• Moffat has written or co-written an astonishing 42 episodes now, but unfortunately The Return of Doctor Mysterio is apparently not the answer to the life, the universe and everything: it only ranks 40^th. In other words, it is Moffat’s third worst episode in his Doctor Who writing career. It was rated lower than Let’s Kill Hitler (7.056), but above The Beast Below (6.761).
• In the Twelfth Doctor era, it is fifth from last amongst 27 episodes, sandwiched between The Caretaker (above, at 7.108) and Kill The Moon (below, at 6.809).
• Roughly 84% of you deemed this episode was average or better (5/10 or higher). The most common score was 8/10. This is the first episode since The Woman Who Lived where the most common score was not 10/10 (even Sleep No More attained that, if only just). A staggering 6.15% of you thought the episode deserved a 1/10, the 6^th highest case of this in history.
• As The Return of Doctor Mysterio was the only episode in 2016, 2016 is officially the worst year for Doctor Who in the revival, at least in terms of average score. Previously 2006 held this honour, which averaged 7.060 over its 14 episodes.

(2) Performance Score

We shall now introduce a new statistic called the Performance Score, which will be used henceforth to alternatively grade an episode’s individual performance. This is a statistic of my own creation which takes into consideration an episode’s score relative to the highest and lowest rated episodes in history (The Day of the Doctor and Love & Monsters respectively) along with its overall rank in the revival, to produce a consolidated score out of 100; the higher the performance score, the better the episode. It essentially offers a simplistic and concise summary of an episode’s performance. The performance score of The Return of Doctor Mysterio is as such:

So we’re off to a low start, thanks to the episode’s middling score and low ranking.

(3) Christmas special rankings

So far in our analysis, The Return of Doctor Mysterio has not performed particularly well. Can it salvage some pride by beating its fellow Christmas specials? After all, Christmas specials tend to be rated lower than the average episode, so if it can perform well anywhere, it’s here, surely? Well, in short…no. The ranking of the 12 Christmas specials to date are given below, and The Return of Doctor Mysterio is all the way down in 10^th:

A Christmas Carol remains Doctor Who TV’s highest rated Christmas special for another year. The Return of Doctor Mysterio does avoid last place – which is hardly difficult, given the particular episode that occupies that position – but it does not join the set of Moffat Christmas specials which resolutely dominate the top 5.

(4) Divisiveness

Was The Return of Doctor Mysterio a divisive episode, or did most people agree that it was a relatively mediocre episode? By taking the standard deviation of the poll results, we can infer just how divisive this episode was. For reference, standard deviation is a very handy statistic that measures how spread out votes are from the average. The higher the standard deviation, the more divisive the episode.

The standard deviation for this episode was a remarkably high 2.487, the fifth highest in history! Whether it’s a temporary trend or something more endemic to the Twelfth Doctor era, we have had a staggering number of divisive episodes lately, so much so that five out of the top ten most divisive episodes come from the Twelfth Doctor’s era (with the #1 and #2 positions filled by such episodes as well). The top ten are given below for reference:

Hell Bent remains the most divisive episode of all time, but another entry into the top ten is certainly a cause for concern for the show. Contention does inspire debate, which has always been an enjoyable aspect of our community, but highly divisive episodes may indicate that the show in its current state is struggling to appeal to significant parts of the fanbase. This divisiveness trend is certainly one to watch in the future.

(5) Conclusion

Statistically speaking, The Return of Doctor Mysterio was a disappointment. Though its score was a whisker under the “good” benchmark, when ranked amongst other episodes, it is far below average. It is one of the lowest ranked Moffat episodes, Twelfth Doctor episodes, and Christmas specials, and is another episode in recent times to make it into the top ten most divisive episodes. Quality wise, it was far below the general Series 9 standard, so let’s hope the rest of Series 10 does not follow suit.

So that’s the end of yet another batch of stats! In the unlikely scenario you are left craving more numbers, fear not, for Series 10 lies just around the corner and, with it, the stats shall be comprehensive and plentiful. Join us here on DWTV as we dissect the poll results for each episode in detail, and answer the important questions: Will Series 10 be as highly regarded as Series 9? Will Heaven Sent be trumped by a finale that not only ends a series but an entire era? Will Moffat’s final run as showrunner be as highly rated as (most of) his other series? Will we get any more episodes in the top ten most divisive episode list?! Only time, and stats, will tell. Until then, farewell, and thank you for voting!