Your Verdict on Before the Flood & Episode Ranking
Joshua Yetman reveals DWTV’s community episode score and ranking for the 4th episode of Series 9.
Just over four and a half thousand of you voted in Doctor Who TV’s polls last week for Before the Flood, the fourth episode of Series 9. Now it’s time to reveal the results. As usual we asked you to give the episode a score out of 10. The results are as follows:
Each week we’ll be taking these votes and working out the average score. We’ll then use these averages to rank the episodes and get a rough idea of its placing in the series. Before the Flood received a surprisingly low (albeit only relatively) average score of 8.181. This is the lowest score attained so far this series, but it is still a very high score with regard to the rest of the revived series. The modal score (the most common score voted) was 8/10, though the top three scores attained a relatively congruent amount of votes.
So, four episodes into Series 9, the rankings look like this:
- 1. The Witch’s Familiar – 8.603
- 2. The Magician’s Apprentice – 8.479
- 3. Under the Lake – 8.434
- 4. Before the Flood – 8.181
- The Girl Who Died – TBC
- The Woman Who Lived – TBC
- The Zygon Invasion – TBC
- The Zygon Inversion – TBC
- Sleep No More – TBC
- Face the Raven – TBC
- Heaven Sent – TBC
- Hell Bent – TBC
The Series 9 average is currently 8.424/10.
(1) Interpreting the score
The score received by Before for the Flood is well above the revival average. The following diagram should add some context as to where this episode ranks in the esteemed halls of the revived series to date:
The diagram above is a box and whiskers plot, showing the distribution of episode means in the revival (based on the Rank the Revival polls earlier this year). The box in the middle represents the middle 50% of episodes in terms of quality (with the grey box being the lower quartile and the yellow box being the upper quartile) and the ‘whiskers’ represent the extremes of the revival, from Fear Her at the far left to Day of the Doctor at the far right. The black cross represents the score received by Before the Flood. This is the first episode this series to fall within the upper quartile of the revival (all the previous episodes of Series 9 fell in the upper whisker). To be more precise, Before the Flood is in the top 29% of the revival.
So, up there in the top 29% of everything in the last 10 years, what are the closest episodes to Before the Flood? Well, it’s sandwiched between The Time of Angels above (which had an average score of 8.226) and Doomsday below (which had an average score of 8.169), two highly regarded episodes which emphasise that Before the Flood performed strongly indeed in the esteemed halls of the revival. Overall, Before the Flood is the 39th highest rated episode of the revival, using the current scores.
Now, for some more flash facts:
- Before the Flood is the 9th strongest episode of Peter Capaldi’s tenure to date, coming above Last Christmas (8.096) but below Deep Breath (8.238).
- So far this series, we’ve had The Witch’s Familiar become the highest rated Episode 2 of the revival and Under the Lake become the highest rated Episode 3. Has Before the Flood completed a hatrick and become the highest rated Episode 4? Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your outlook), the Episode 4 slot has some really critically acclaimed episodes in it, namely episodes like The Girl in the Fireplace, Listen, The Doctor’s Wife and the aforementioned The Time of Angels, all of which rank above Before the Flood. Thus, Before the Flood is the 5th highest episode 4 of the revival.
- 95.54% of you gave Before the Flood half marks (5/10) or more, down from last week where 97.14% of you gave Under the Lake half marks or more. However, this proportion is still higher than either The Magician’s Apprentice (95.07%) or The Witch’s Familiar (95.46%). Furthermore, an impressive 23.52% of you gave Before the Flood full marks; this is the 46th highest case of this in the revival.
- Before the Flood is the 9th highest rated second part to a double-parter.
- Before the Flood is Toby Whithouse’s second highest rated episode to date, second only to the proceeding episode Under the Lake. Thus, this double-parter represents Whithouse’s most highly rated work to date.
The full Whithouse rankings as of 2015 are as follows:
- 1. Under the Lake – 8.434
- 2. Before the Flood – 8.181
- 3. School Reunion – 8.010
- 4. The God Complex – 7.764
- 5. A Town Called Mercy – 7.158
- 6. The Vampires of Venice – 6.778
Whithouse’s average writing score has risen to 7.721, which still puts him as the 10th best writer of the revival (and he is still in 6th place if you remove all one-off writers).
(2) Considering the overall story
Let’s consider Under the Lake/ Before the Flood as an overall story. Its combined average is 8.308, which places it as the 8th highest rated double-parter of the revival (of which there have been 21), ahead of Dark Water / Death in Heaven (which averaged 8.269) in 9th place, but below The Magician’s Apprentice / The Witch’s Familiar (which averaged 8.541) in 7th place. So, overall, The Magician’s Apprentice / The Witch’s Familiar remains as the highest rated double-parter in Series 9 so far, and by quite a margin.
Unlike The Magician’s Apprentice / The Witch’s Familiar, however, the second part of Whithouse’s double-parter received a lower score than the first. In the whole revival, there are now 10 double-parters where Part 1 is better than Part 2, and 11 vice versa.
Furthermore, the fairly significant gap between the scores of Under the Lake and Before the Flood (0.253) is the 6th highest case of this in the revival. This indicates that this double-parter is one of the more inconsistent double-parters in the revival.
(3) The divisiveness of the episode
As expected, Before the Flood is considerably more divisive than its preceding part. Its greater focus on timey-wimey concepts and some other controversies led to a standard deviation of 1.723. Remember, the divisiveness of an episode can be measured using standard deviation, a very handy statistic which measures how spread out votes are from the average.
To make sense of what this number means, I have generated the following rough scale for interpreting standard deviation in the context of Doctor Who episodes:
- Less than 1.5 – very high agreement amongst the fanbase; whatever the overall opinion is of this episode, positive or negative, the vast majority of people conform to it.
- Between 1.5 and 1.75 – not particularly divisive.
- Between 1.75 and 2 – only fairly divisive
- Above 2 – considerably divisive; opinions vary far and wide for such an episode.
Regardless, then, Before the Flood still fits into the “not particularly divisive” camp. Plus, it is still less divisive than both The Magician’s Apprentice and The Witch’s Familiar, and currently stands as the 33rd least divisive episode of the revival. To put this figure into greater context, Before the Flood is almost as divisive as Day of the Moon (1.731), but slightly more divisive than The Vampires of Venice (1.722), two fairly harmonious episodes.
So, as for a divisiveness rank, we currently have:
- 1. The Magician’s Apprentice – 1.815 (most divisive)
- 2. The Witch’s Familiar – 1.758
- 3. Before the Flood – 1.723
- 4. Under the Lake – 1.548 (least divisive)
- Before the Flood – TBC
- The Girl Who Died – TBC
- The Woman Who Lived – TBC
- The Zygon Invasion – TBC
- The Zygon Inversion – TBC
- Sleep No More – TBC
- Face the Raven – TBC
- Heaven Sent – TBC
- Hell Bent – TBC
(4) Series 9 to date
So far, Series 9 has attained an average score of 8.424/10. The four rated episodes so far in this series represent the highest rated run of four consecutive non-special episodes since The Pandorica Opens to Day of the Moon, a considerable achievement.
Over the series, I will be measuring just how well Series 9 is doing through my rather informal ‘qualityometer’, which measures how much better Series 9 is doing compared to the pre-Series 9 revival average. Currently, it is 12.25% higher than the pre-Series 9 revival average of 7.505, and so the Series 9 qualityometer looks like this:
The grey dashed line was the Qualityometer last week, and the solid black line is the Qualityometer as it stands now. It has fallen ever marginally (from 13.33% to 12.25%), as Before the Flood’s average is far below the prior Series 9 average. However, yet again, Series 9 is still well within the green region of the Qualityometer, and Series 9 – as it currently stands, with just four rated episodes – is still the highest rated series of the revival by a considerable margin (though this is still an unfair comparison to make at this stage).
However, what is a fair comparison (bar the potential for recent episode syndrome to take effect) is looking at the average score of the first four episodes of each series, and ranking them accordingly. Series 9, with its current average of 8.424 continues to dominate this ranking, with the closest contender still being Series 6 at 7.854.
For an even fairer comparison, let’s now consider the Series 8 initial scores, which are directly comparable to the Series 9 initial scores. The average of the first four episodes of Series 8 was 8.191 initially (boosted considerably by Listen). Thus, Series 9 is continuing to outperform Series 8 in the rankings.
(5) Evaluating the projections
A few weeks ago, I produced a set of statistical projections for the initial community averages of each upcoming episode in Series 9. The initial projection for Before the Flood was 8.12/10, which represents a tiny error of just 0.9% now that we know the actual score of 8.181! This is the closest projection to date, rectifying the mass undershoot that was last week’s projection. So, the Oswald Model is back on track (though I strongly feel next week’s projection is going to be catastrophically wrong).
(6) Favourite Whithouse story: Poll Results
Moving on from the main poll, DWTV asked you – as part of Connor’s brilliant article earlier this week – to rank all the Whithouse stories of the revival, both in Doctor Who and in Torchwood. The weighted ranks have been calculated, and the results are as such
Remember, the lower the rank, the better. Thus, Under the Lake / Before the Flood has officially become the highest rated Whithouse story of the revival, agreeing with the community averages. In fact, the above order is exactly the same as it is with the averages (excluding the Torchwood story Greeks Bearing Gifts, of course).
(7) Is Class a good idea?: Poll Results
In other Whoniverse related news, it was revealed a few weeks ago that, in 2016, Doctor Who will get its first spin-off in nearly five years, a spin-off set within Coal Hill School called Class. DWTV asked you whether or not you thought this spin-off, based on its premise, was a good idea or not, or whether you were unsure, and the results are in:
It turns out the DWTV community is considerably divided when it comes to this new spin-off, with opinions being divided almost perfectly into thirds. Still, the “Yes” camp has the highest proportion of support, albeit only very slightly. It looks like the new spin-off has got a lot of convincing to do, with just over 65% of you saying no outright or stating that you are unsure.
Join us next week for what will be a very intriguing Your Verdict On… article indeed, as we explore the statistical impact of what has already been one of the most divisive episodes of the show in some time – The Girl Who Died. I think it’s safe to say it will come bottom of the Series 9 rankings to date, but how will it perform in the grand scheme of things? Until then, keep voting!
