January 12, 2019

YOUR Verdict on “Resolution” – Not the worst scoring Dalek story (But not much better)

It’s time to reveal DWTV’s rating poll result for the 2019 New Year’s special, “Resolution”, as voted for by you over the last week or so.

“Resolution”: Stat Breakdown

As always, we asked you to rate the episode on a scale from 1 to 10. We then took an average.

A few thousand of you voted, and the average score was 6.54. According to the Doctor Who TV score guide, this indicates the episode was generally considered to be in the “Average+” range.
While this is not the highest result, and is firmly situated in the back half of episodes, this is an improvement on Chris Chibnall’s last few stories, which sit at the very bottom of the rankings of the run (and revival). The return of a classic foe very likely helped EL-E-VATE voters impressions this time around.
This leaves “Resolution” as the 118^th highest rated episode of the revival (according to the DWTV ranking polls taken from earlier in 2018). More specifically, it is sandwiched between “The Doctor’s Daughter” (6.55) and “The Beast Below” (6.53).
This is not the worst scoring Dalek story, but it’s not much better. It only manages to beat “Victory of the Daleks” and the “Daleks in Manhattan”/”Evolution of the Daleks” two-parter.
The standard deviation – which is our measure for how divisive an episode is – was 2.91. Wow… If Series 11’s results proved anything, it’s that it was extremely polarising, with votes for every episode all over the shop. “Resolution” doesn’t buck the trend unfortunately, instead exterminating “It Takes You Away” to become the new most divisive episode of the whole revival.
Extreme divisiveness aside, this is an “okay” result. It’s certainly not amazing and a disappointing end to Whittaker’s first year, but it’s also not quite as bad as we have seen things go.

2018-19 Episode Ranking

After eleven episodes, the 2018-19 ranking looks like this:

1. Rosa – 7.94
2. The Woman Who Fell to Earth – 7.35
3. Kerblam! – 7.26
4. It Takes You Away – 7.12
5. Demons of the Punjab – 6.85
6. The Ghost Monument – 6.84
7. The Witchfinders – 6.65
8. Resolution – 6.54
9. The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos – 5.93
10. Arachnids in the UK – 5.91
11. The Tsuranga Conundrum – 5.17

If we include “Resolution” into the Series 11 rankings, the series average would be 6.69. This result doesn’t improve the ranking and would still make the run the lowest rated of the whole revival. We can only hope Series 12 performs better. Much better.

Conclusion

Well that’s it for our episodic polls for a while. Though we have a long wait until the next series, the polls won’t stop on DWTV. Join us next week to vote in our annual “Best of” awards.