YOUR Verdict on Spyfall, Part 1 – An Overdue Step-Up for Chibnall
It’s time to reveal DWTV’s poll results for the first episode of Series 12, “Spyfall, Part 1”, as voted for by you over the last week or so.
“How Excited Are You For Series 12?” – Results
Before we reveal the episode score, a few days before Doctor Who returned to our screens we asked you to vote on how excited you were for the new series from a choice of five. Here’s how you voted:
As we can see, this was a fairly split result between the polar opposites. No doubt Series 11’s mixed reception contributed a large factor here. Ultimately though “Extremely excited!” still came out top, just about.
“Spyfall, Part 1”: 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 7.43. According to the Doctor Who TV score guide, this indicates the episode was generally considered to be in the “Good” range.
- After Chris Chibnall’s poor performance with most of his Series 11 episodes, this is a noticeable step-up. In fact this is Chibnall’s highest rated solo-written episode yet. His second highest is the Series 11 opener “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” with 7.35. We’re still waiting for this era to break an 8 though…
- This leaves “Spyfall, Part 1” as the 76th highest rated episode of the revival (according to the DWTV ranking polls taken from 2018). More specifically, it is situated between “The Lodger” (7.44) and “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” (7.35)
- “Spyfall, Part 1” is the 8th highest opener in the revival to date, ahead of “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” (7.35), “Partners in Crime” (7.29), “Smith and Jones” (7.24) and “New Earth” (6.04).
- The standard deviation – which is our measure for how divisive an episode is – was 2.47. Like we saw in 2018-19, this series begins with an extremely polarising score, though not quite as high as we have seen it go.
- Divisiveness aside, this is overall a good result, and a more promising start to Series 12.
Series 12 Episode Ranking
So far, the Series 12 episode ranking looks like this:
- 1. Spyfall, Part 1 – 7.43
- 2. Spyfall, Part 2 – TBC
- 3. Orphan 55 – TBC
- 4. Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror – TBC
- 5. Fugitive of the Judoon – TBC
- 6. Praxeus – TBC
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
With just one episode on the list rated, clearly there is not much to see here yet! But things will get more interesting in the coming weeks…
Conclusion
Join us next week when we examine the results of “Spyfall, Part 2”, the second episode of Series 12. Until then, keep voting!
