Your Verdict on Extremis & Episode Ranking
Joshua Yetman reveals what DWTV readers made of the sixth episode of Series 10.
The sixth episode of Series 10 was procured by Steven Moffat to initiate a trilogy of episodes subtending through the middle of the series, the so-called “Monk Trilogy”. His offering – Extremis – was a mind-bending, format-pushing oddity that was very much in Moffat’s classic style of non-linear storytelling and rug-pulling, but how well was it received? Let’s disseminate the statistics.
Extremis: Stat Rundown
- The average score for Extremis was 8.417. This doesn’t quite match up to the bar set by Oxygen last week (which scored 8.484) but, at the very least, it’s nice to see that the series is progressing in the 8/10 tier now rather than the 7/10 tier.
- The score of 8.417 means that Extremis is the 34th highest rated episode of the revival, marginally below Under the Lake (8.434) in 33rd and above Bad Wolf in 35th (8.397). This is arguably a very strong position!
- Up to and including this episode, Moffat has penned an astonishing 39 episodes since 2005 (and has co-written a further 5 episodes, bringing his total credited episodes to 44). Despite the high score achieved by Extremis, it is only the 19th highest rated episode Moffat has ever written. This is more of a testament to the sheer acclaim received by this remarkable writer over the past twelve years.
- Despite expectations, Extremis was not a particularly divisive episode. The standard deviation of the episode – our measure of how divisive an episode is – was just 1.971. This was driven by a relatively high number of 1/10 votes coupled with the highest proportion of 10/10 votes seen since Hell Bent. Admittedly this is the highest standard deviation of the series to date, but it is only the 45th most divisive episode of the revival, and is a far cry from the contentious offerings we had in Series 8 and 9.
Series 10 Ranking
So far, the Series 10 episode rank looks like this:
- Oxygen – 8.484
- Extremis – 8.417
- The Pilot – 7.842
- Thin Ice – 7.814
- Knock Knock – 7.487
- Smile – 7.095
- The Pyramid at the End of the World – TBC
- The Lie of the Land – TBC
- The Empress of Mars – TBC
- The Eaters of Light – TBC
- World Enough and Time – TBC
- The Doctor Falls – TBC
Another score above 8/10 has pushed up the Series 10 average to 7.730, which would put the series fourth overall after Series 9, Series 5 and Series 4 (in that order).
Conclusion
The ‘Monk Trilogy’ has all the potential to go down as a classic Doctor Who story, and Extremis has been vindicated as a great start to the trinity. Can the remaining two parts keep it up? Join us next week when we will see how The Pyramid at the End of the World fares. Until then, keep voting!
- See the results for episode 1 here.
- See the results for episode 2 here.
- See the results for episode 3 here.
- See the results for episode 4 here.
- See the results for episode 5 here.