Doctor Who Series 8 NZ Viewer Ratings

Series eight of Doctor Who recently finished screening here in New Zealand. The episodes, which screened as usual on the Prime channel, were transmitted a week following the UK broadcasts, screening here on Sunday nights at 7.30pm.

Viewer ratings indicated that these twelve episodes were watched by an average overnight rating of 123,273 people. Adding in time-shifted viewers (those who recorded the episodes and watched later), that average increases to 143,114. 

Several of the earliest episodes, all screened during September, received the strongest overnight ratings. 

Deep Breath received the lowest rating of the initial five stories on overnight results. This may have been due to the extended length of this episode, causing it to run an hour later than usual, finishing at 9.25pm. The episode’s strong performance in the timeshifted ratings, indicates that many viewers appear to have elected to record it for later viewing. The episode also premiered a week earlier in cinemas around the country, which may have also contributed to the relatively low rating for a series premiere.

The second episode, Into the Dalek, saw a sizeable increase in the overnight ratings, gaining 18,750 viewers. Ratings remained consistently high for Robot of Sherwood, Listen and Time Heist, with an average of approximately 135,000 across these four episodes. 

The Caretaker, which screened at the beginning of October, suffered a sharp decline, dropping by 28,710 viewers from the previous week. Although the following episode, Kill the Moon, gained back some of the lost ground by picking up 11,140 viewers, the series never regained its earlier highs.

The strongest performing episode from the latter half of the series on overnights was the finale, Death in Heaven, on 128,570. 

The two lowest rated episodes on overnight ratings were the aforementioned The Caretaker, on 106,520 and Flatline on 109,820.  

Consolidated ratings, which include timeshifted viewers, who record programmes and watch after transmission, give a more accurate indication of the total audience. Robot of Sherwood in particular benefitted from these additional viewers, with 24.38% of its consolidated figure coming from timeshifted rating. 

Conversely, In the Forest of the Night, which had an overnight audience of 123,070, placing it closest to the series average, suffered a drop to last place in the timeshifted ratings.

Doctor Who on Prime was placed in the same timeslot as some heavily-promoted and highly popular offerings on rival channels TV One, TV 2 and TV3. Doctor Who was usually in fourth place for overnight ratings in its timeslot, but for both of the last two weeks of the series it managed to make it into third place, edging out TV2.

TV One consistently gained the largest audience share for the timeslot. For nine weeks Doctor Who was placed against TV One’s My Kitchen Rules New Zealand (average overnight 373,161). For the last three weeks Our Big Blue Backyard instead occupied the timeslot (avg 463,370).

Over on TV3, The X Factor screened for most of the run (avg 236,956). When this ended, the movies How to Train Your Dragon (194,540), and Shrek Forever After (275,540), occupied the slot for the last two weeks.

TV2 most often came in third place for the timeslot. For the first four weeks two half hour shows, The Middle (avg 201,312) and The Neighbors (avg 169,582) were up against Doctor Who. For the next five weeks the timeslot was occupied with a family movie, including such titles as Brave and Toy Story 3 (avg 225,670). The final three weeks saw the movies replaced with The Voice (avg 110,480). This series saw a marked drop in viewers for TV2, and the final two episodes of Doctor Who gained higher ratings than The Voice.

Overnight Ratings
(and most watched on Prime chart position for that date)
1. Into the Dalek (7 Sep 14) 135,840 (2nd)
2. Listen (21 Sep 14) 135,740 (3rd)
3. Time Heist (28 Sep 14) 135,230 (3rd)
4. Robot of Sherwood (14 Sep) 133,040 (1st)
5. Death in Heaven (16 Nov 14) 128,570 (3rd)
6. In the Forest of the Night (2 Nov 14) 123,070 (4th)
7. Mummy on the Orient Express (19 Oct 14) 121,850 (3rd)
8. Kill the Moon (12 Oct 14) 117,660 (2nd)
9. Deep Breath (31 Aug 14) 117,090 (2nd)
10. Dark Water (9 Nov 14) 114,840 (4th)
11. Flatline (26 Oct 14) 109,820 (2nd)
12. The Caretaker (5 Oct 14) 106,520 (4th)

Timeshifted Ratings
(and % increase of audience watching timeshifted)

1. Robot of Sherwood 42,900 (32.25%)

2. Deep Breath 26,180 (22.36%)
3. Into the Dalek 21,360 (19.85%)
4. The Caretaker 21,140 (17.37%)
5. Listen 20,500 (16.62%)
6. Kill the Moon 19,560 (15.89%)
7. Mummy on the Orient Express 19,360 (15.72%)
8. Flatline 19,080 (15.10%)
9. Time Heist 16,130 (11.93%)
10. Death in Heaven 12,580 (9.78%)
11. Dark Water 9,770 (8.51%)
12. In the Forest of the Night 9,540 (7.75%)

Consolidated Ratings
(and % of total audience watching timeshifted)
1. Robot of Sherwood 175,940 (24.38%)
2. Into the Dalek 157,200 (13.59%) 
3. Listen 156,240 (13.12%)
4. Time Heist 151,360 (10.66%)
5. Deep Breath 143,270 (18.27%)
6. Mummy on the Orient Express 141,210 (13.71%)
7. Death in Heaven 141,150 (8.91%)
8. Kill the Moon 137,220 (14.25%)
9. In the Forest of the Night 132,610 (7.19%)
10. Flatline 128,900 (14.80%)
11. The Caretaker 127,660 (16.56%)
12. Dark Water 124,610 (7.84%)

Ratings: Nielsen Television Audience Measurement, All 5+, sourced from Throng.co.nz 

Doctor Who Talk at the Auckland Central Library

I will be giving a talk about Doctor Who this Wednesday 12 November 2014, from 6 to 7pm, at the Auckland Central Library.

The talk is to mark the 51st anniversary of Doctor Who - although of course here in New Zealand it is actually the 50th anniversary!

I'm be talking about several aspects of Doctor Who, including its long history, how it has been viewed in New Zealand, my passion for the show, my work as a writer/researcher for the BBC DVDs, and my book, The Comic Strip Companion.

The talk will be along similar lines to the very well-received one I gave at the Takapuna Library in 2013, and also at the national science fiction convention earlier this year. I'll be showing a number of images and some short video clips to illustrate my talk.

I will have limited quantities of my book and the DVDs available to purchase and get signed afterwards.

Hope to see you there!

Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary - in New Zealand

Happy 50th anniversary!

Fifty years ago today Doctor Who had its first ever overseas broadcast. 

At 7.57pm on Friday, 18 September 1964, slotted in between NZBC Reports and The Burma Surgeon, the first episode of Doctor Who, An Unearthly Child, was shown in New Zealand to the Christchurch region on CHTV-3.

With that screening, New Zealand became the first place outside the UK to screen Doctor Who.

The full line-up of the day's programming on CHTV-3 

New Zealand Listener 11 September 1964 Vol.51 No.1302 (14-20 September 1964)

Photograph and feature article from page 7 of the same issue.

Zeus Pod

Zeus Pod, a new Doctor Who podcast, may well be the first of its kind in New Zealand. Certainly it is the only locally-produced fan podcast based on the series that I know of.

It is the third incarnation of what began eight years ago as Zeus Plug, a printed A5, hand-distributed ‘pub zine’; then migrated online as Zeus Blog. Now the Zeus name has a new lease of life as a lively and upbeat weekly audio podcast, hosted by Jono Park.

Jono’s professional experience as a presenter is clearly in evidence with his confident delivery, and highly structured plan for each episode, keeping things (mostly) on track, though his desire to get episode under half an hour may be thwarted by talkative guests and the amount of material covered in each instalment.

Zeus Pod is planned to run for a ‘season’ of thirteen episodes, with each weekly programme focusing primarily on a review of that week’s new Doctor Who episode.

A spoiler warning for New Zealand fans watching on Prime, which is showing Doctor Who on Sunday evenings a full week after the UK: you’ll want to wait a week before listening in as these episodes are recorded and made available soon after the UK broadcasts.

I was the guest on Zeus Pod’s second episode, titled ‘BB’ (and yes, appropriately enough, it does name-check The War Machines). Jono and I discussed what we thought of the first Peter Capaldi episode, Deep Breath, and tried to make sense of the mystery set up in that episode. I’d avoided going online to see what others were saying about it, so at the time of recording I believed my theory about the identity of Michelle Gomez’s character was original. I subsequently discovered that many fans appear to have reached the same conclusion. We’ll probably all be proved wrong by the end of this series.

In addition to critiquing the debut episode of Series 8, I took part in the ‘60 Second Story Smackdown’. This is a regular segment on Zeus Pod, in which Jono offers up random pairs of stories and the guest has to make snap judgements over which one is better. I doubt I’ll soon be living down one particularly controversial decision …

Jono also challenged me to a ‘first lines’ quiz, involving guessing the correct story from a reading of the opening line of dialogue. I must confess that I felt some trepidation about this segment. I should make a confession here: I don’t re-watch Doctor Who very often. Yes, it’s true! Where possible I prefer to leave a few years in between viewing a particular story, so that when I do see it again I find enjoyment in re-discovering what I’ve partly forgotten in the interim. This means of course that details – such as opening lines of dialogue – rarely linger in my memory. Consequently I was expecting to be thoroughly humiliated in this quiz. Have a listen and see how I did.

I’ve been a guest on a number of overseas Doctor Who podcasts, but it was a pleasure to finally get to take part in one originating in my own country.

I thoroughly recommend Zeus Pod. It can be listened to and downloaded on Soundcloud here.

Conclave 2 Guest Appearance

I'm delighted to report that I will be a guest speaker at Conclave 2, this year's New Zealand National Science Fiction Convention (or 'Natcon'), which is being held in Auckland from Thursday 24 April to Sunday 27 April 2014. At the time of writing this is two weeks away.

I was initially invited as a 'Fan Guest of Honour', a position traditionally bestowed on a notable member of the local SF fan community. I was delighted to be asked, of course, but in subsequent discussions with the organiser it was clear that I had been invited so that I would talk about my professional work as a writer so it was mutually agreed that I should be 'upgraded' to Guest of Honour status, joining fellow guests Dave Freer and Lyn McConchie.

I'm not entirely sure the con will be like. The last time I attended one of these events was eleven years ago. I used to be a regular at SF conventions. My first was Conscience in 1989 and the last was Emoticon, in 2003. I've lost count of how many SF cons I attended during those fifteen years, but was a lot.

I have some very fond memories of these weekend-long social events. My favourite recollection is of striking up a conversation with a fellow con-goer from Auckland called Rochelle when we passed on a stairwell at a convention in Wellington. Just last month we celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary, so I have an SF convention to thank for bringing us together.

The closest I've come to experiencing a convention in recent years has perhaps been at the Armageddon expo that takes place several times a year in various places around New Zealand, but these are very different affairs. I'm always working on our Retrospace shop stand, so I encounter hundreds if not thousands of fans but very rarely get out from behind the stand to see any of the panels or other events. Armageddon expos are frantic, noisy, high-energy, media-driven events, quite unlike the more relaxed pace and social environment of the SF cons.

The main item for me at Conclave 2 will be my Guest of Honour speech on Friday, where I'll be talking about writing info text subtitle scripts for the Doctor Who DVDs and The Comic Strip Companion book.

Here's my schedule of appearances for the convention:

Thursday 24 April
7:00pm - Opening Ceremony

Friday 25 April
9:00am - Panel: The Mainstreaming of SF
3:00pm - Guest of Honour Speech
4:00pm - Panel: The Pasts and Futures of Doctor Who

Saturday 26 April
2:00pm - Panel: SF Series Seriously Sought
4:00pm - Panel: How Writers Do It!
7:30pm - Banquet and awards ceremony

Sunday 27 April
10:00am Guest of Honour Meet-Up
12:00noon Closing Ceremony

Details for Conclave 2 can be found here. Perhaps I'll see you there!

A Year Without Doctor Who

The Sixth Doctor arrived in March 1984, thirty years ago this month.

Just a couple of weeks ago I got to discuss this milestone with both Colin Baker (the Sixth Doctor) and Nicola Bryant (his companion Peri) when I hosted a series of talks with them in Dunedin and Christchurch, at the Armageddon Expo events.

As I talked to these two actors about the anniversary of their first appearance in Doctor Who I couldn't help but think that the relevance was slightly lost on myself, and perhaps also on those members of the audience who were old enough to remember what it was like to be a fan thirty years ago in New Zealand.

1984, the year in which Peter Davison's third and last season aired and Colin Baker commenced playing the Doctor, was entirely devoid of any televised Doctor Who at all in this country. Not one of Colin Baker’s stories screened here until November 1988, several years later and indeed some time after Colin had departed the role.

The series had abruptly halted on TVNZ following ‘Mawdryn Undead’ in late November 1983. This was an unfortunate point at which to break the series as it left hanging the ongoing plot involving Turlough and the Black Guardian.

At first it appeared as though TVNZ were giving Doctor Who a brief respite over the summer months. I can remember being relaxed about this break at first, possibly even relieved. My family were in the habit of going away camping on a remote beach - without a television set - for two weeks in January. I’d have been most upset if the show had been on at the time.

I’m sure I would have been even more annoyed had I known that it would be a very long wait. That summer of 1983/84 came to an end without any sign of Doctor Who’s return. It became a weekly ritual to scan the New Zealand Listener’s television listings, eagerly searching out a billing for the next story, only to be deflated week after week, month after month. The series finally returned in April 1985, after a hiatus that lasted about 18 months. There was a bittersweet twist to this. The return was not the anticipated latter half of the Fifth Doctor’s era (which should have resumed with ‘Terminus’). Instead we were treated to older stories from the 1960s and 1970s. I was thrilled to get to see these vintage episodes, many which I’d never viewed and those I had seen were dim distant memories. It did mean however that it would be years before TVNZ got around to screening those much delayed new episodes.

The prolonged absence was made all the more agonising because for the first time ever I was well informed about what was screening in the UK. At the beginning of 1984 I discovered Doctor Who Magazine. My grandmother most generously set up a standing order with her local newsagent in East London, and started posting me a copy every month commencing with issue 84, which arrived in early January.

Doctor Who Magazine was a treasure-trove of previews, set reports, reviews, and photographs. I studied these issues in obsessive detail, scrutinising every word and picture, trying to imagine what thrilling-sounding stories such as  ‘Frontios’, ‘Planet of Fire’ and ‘The Caves of Androzani’ must be like.

I witnessed through the pages of the magazine the departure of the familiar TARDIS crew of the Fifth Doctor, Tegan and (for me, the newly arrived) Turlough, to be replaced by the Sixth Doctor and Peri. My impression of these two characters, played by unfamiliar actors, was entirely based on what I saw and read in the magazine.

A large part of my understanding of what the Sixth Doctor was like came from reading the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip. Of course I knew from the photographs elsewhere in the issues that he had a tasteless and gaudily colourful costume but in the uniformly monochrome strip it actually looked quite stylish. The new Doctor seemed good-humoured with an easy-going personality.

The Sixth Doctor’s stories were extraordinarily imaginative, at least in comic strip form. Even without having seen ‘The Twin Dilemma’ I think I must have realised that the surreal mind-bending visuals of stories like ‘Voyager’ and ‘Once Upon a Time-Lord’ were nothing like what was happening in the television series, but these strip stories gave me a deep and enduring admiration of Doctor Who in the comic strip medium.

1984 and the arrival of the Sixth Doctor has been occupying my thoughts a lot lately, and not just because of the thirty-year anniversary or talking to Colin and Nicola. I’ve reached the point in the writing of the second volume of The Comic Strip Companion in which I’m covering the earliest strip exploits of the Sixth Doctor. Thirty years is a long time, but as I re-read the pages of ‘Voyager’, marvelling at the gloriously surreal twists and turns of Steve Parkhouse’s surreal script and John Ridgway’s absolutely stunning illustrations, I can’t help but be transported back to that time when this was the only new Doctor Who.

I turned sixteen in 1984. I wish I could tell myself at that age that one day I’d be the author of a series of books about the comic strips, that I’d write the production information text for DVDs of those 1984 stories that I used to speculate about, and that I’d be chatting to the actors who played the Sixth Doctor and Peri. I’m not sure which of these facts would impress my younger self more. I’m not even sure he’d even believe me.