Your Verdict on Smile & Episode Ranking
Joshua Yetman reveals what DWTV readers made of the second episode of Series 10.
With Series 10 now well underway, it’s time to reveal how you voted for the second episode of Series 10 – Smile, written by Frank Cottrell-Boyce. Boyce’s previous contribution to the show – Series 8’s In The Forest of the Night – was a polarising and relatively poorly received outing that many seem to regard as the “Fear Her” of Moffat’s era, and so, naturally, there was some trepidation when he was announced as a writer for this new series. Has he made amends for this apparent transgression? Let’s take a look!
Smile: Stat Rundown
- Again, just over four thousand of you voted, and the average score was 7.095. This is a step down from last week, where we saw The Pilot attain an average score of 7.842, but it’s certainly a considerable step up over In The Forest of the Night, which scored a comparably woeful 5.324. Boyce certainly has made amends!
- That score of 7.095 leaves Smile as the 88th highest rated episode in the revival. Although that is well into the bottom half of episodes, it’s still far from a lamentable position. For context, 88th place puts it just above The Unquiet Dead (7.079) and just below Tooth and Claw (7.107), so it seems to be sandwiched in a region of “episodes that are pretty good but hardly classic”, which seems like a fair description.
- The standard deviation of this episode – which is our measure of how divisive an episode is – was 1.707, very similar to last week (which attained a standard deviation of 1.715). In other words, Smile is the 33rd least divisive episode on record, a position previously held by The Pilot (which is now 34th). This result was particularly unexpected; given the pre-broadcast controversy about the episode’s use of emojis, I was expecting this to be extraordinarily divisive much like Boyce’s previous outing. Furthermore, two largely non-divisive episodes in a row also shows that Series 10 is off to a pleasantly agreeable start, and I can only wonder how long it will last…
- If we consider all the episode 2’s in the revival, Smile is the 6th. This is mostly down to the strength of the competition, however, with last series’ The Witch’s Familiar still firmly dominating the category.
Series 10 Ranking
So far, the Series 10 episode rank looks like this:
- The Pilot – 7.842
- Smile – 7.095
- Thin Ice – TBC
- Knock Knock – TBC
- Oxygen – TBC
- Extremis – TBC
- 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
The series average to date is 7.469, excluding The Return of Doctor Mysterio. As it stands, this figure indicates that Series 10 is the 7th highest rated series of the revival, but it’s far too early to start considering that!
Conclusion
Join us next week when we examine the results of Thin Ice, the third episode of the series, written by Sarah Dollard. Until then, keep voting!