YOUR Verdict on “The Power of the Doctor” – A Relative High

It’s time to reveal DWTV’s poll results for the Centenary special, “The Power of the Doctor”, as voted for by you over the last week or so.

“The Power of the Doctor”: Score 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 7.41. According to the Doctor Who TV score guide, this indicates the episode was generally considered to be in the “good” range.
• This leaves “The Power of the Doctor” as the 80th highest-rated episode of the whole revival (according to the DWTV ranking polls taken in 2018). More specifically, it is situated between “The Woman Who Fell To Earth” (7.35) and “Spyfall, Part 1” (7.43).
• This is the second-highest Chibnall-written episode (this excludes Chibnall episodes with more than one writer such as “Rosa”).
• The standard deviation – which is our measure of how divisive an episode is – was 2.59 making it the 19th most divisive episode of the Chibnall era. While scores over a 2 are still undesirable, the episode was less divisive than we have seen in a while.
• Overall: Following the woeful performance of “Legend of the Sea Devils”, the Chibnall era ends on a relative high. Given the massive amounts of fanservice and the return of David Tennant, it’s not unexpected to see a slight bump. Granted, the definition of “high” has certainly shifted during this era. High used to mean episodes in the 9’s, but the highest (and only) episode of the Chibnall era to break an 8/10 is “Fugitive of the Judoon“. The rest of the highs are entirely in the 7 range.

Series 13 Episode Ranking

The final Series 13 episode ranking looks like this:

• 1. “Village of the Angels” – 7.79
• 2. “The Power of the Doctor” – 7.41
• 3. “War of the Sontarans” – 7.06
• 4. “The Halloween Apocalypse” – 6.94
• 5. “Eve of the Daleks” – 6.38
• 6. “Survivors of the Flux” – 5.92
• 7. “Once, Upon Time” – 5.68
• 8. “The Vanquishers” – 4.56
• 9. “Legend of the Sea Devils” – 4.25

If we include the specials into the Series 13 rankings, the series average would now be 6.22 (still down from 6.30 without any specials). Whether you choose to include the specials or not, Series 13 is still the lowest rated of the whole revival.

Conclusion

Well, that’s it. The Chibnall era is over, and it’s hard to say it’s been a fun ride, with so many low scores across these last few years. We can only hope the second RTD era will redress the balance starting in 2023…