Bernard Marx wrote:To be honest, I’m not exactly sure what caused the considerable ratings decline by season 18 (I’ve heard a few explanations, mainly that of the presence of the Buck Rogers American import serving as a more expensive and glossier alternative to Doctor Who and thus attracting a larger audience brought up on Star Wars, though this can’t be the main and sole reason), so if anyone has any knowledge of how the decline took place, let me know.
From what I've read, *most* of the BBC's Saturday night programs suffered in the ratings that year. For some reason it just suddenly didn't seem to be seen as the audience event it used to be.
It's perhaps natural enough that viewers chose Buck Rodgers because they wanted the Star Wars experience again that Doctor Who didn't seem able to provide anymore.
It's possible that the show had seemed too safe for too long, and that audiences had forgotten the higher stakes and suspense of the Hinchcliffe era, or had just gotten bored with Season 17's old party tricks in the end.
Personally I do think if I'd been a fan watching at the time, The Leisure Hive honestly would've made me give up on the show in frustration. But the ratings suggest it wasn't even given a first look.
Overall, one can easily interpret season 20’s ratings as a disappointment when compared to previous years (especially considering its status as the 20th anniversary year), although I’d hardly call it an absolute failure or a genuine disaster given that lower than usual ratings were not unseen prior to this point. Once again, I must ask: What specifically resulted in this season garnering lower than usual ratings?
Objectively, I would say the arrival of Channel 4 and availability of home video would've had some effect. And I think it got moved about again in the schedules (the BBC seemed to be treating the show as a guinea pig for where best to eventually place their new soap Eastenders)
My gut, however would pin the blame on the disappointment of Time-Flight. It seemed there was an enthusiastic audience for Davison in his first year, but I think unfortunately Time-Flight would've left them feeling cheated. Nothing about the story seems to make sense or matter. It's a terrible followup to Earthshock, and seems to tarnish any ability to care about the show's events ever again.
What I think is troubling about that ratings dip is that back in 1972, The Three Doctors was seen as a massive event and caused a massive spike in ratings that seemed to single-handedly turn around the lows of Troughton's era, and restore the show to ratings health again.
The Five Doctors ideally should've had the same effect, but instead seemed to fare poorer than Time-Flight did.
It was put up against The A-Team, so that almost certainly had a lot to do with it. Maybe it was the fact Tom wasn't going to be in it that made viewers less interested, or maybe Season 20 had been too much of a chore to them already. Maybe there would've been more public interest if the Dalek story hadn't been postponed a year, and had happened.
But either way, The Five Doctors did not manage to save the show in the way The Three Doctors had ten years earlier.
Season 21 is an improvement on 20 overall in terms of ratings, ranging from 5.6-8 million viewers, and garnered a higher average at 7.18 million- higher than season 20’s average of 7.08 million (and season 7’s average of 7.17 million).
I suppose it might've benefited from the return of the Daleks, and to a lesser extent, the Sea Devils (so maybe I was wrong that attempting a revival of them was a mistake from the start, though Warriors did see a ratings decline from episodes 3 to 4).
Season 22 ranges from 6.0 million to 8.9 million, indicative of a gradual upturn in terms of ratings from season 21, which was itself an upturn from 20. I fail to understand the argument proposed by many that season 22 suffered from bad ratings (as reiterated by those who push the narrative forward concerning Colin’s era being a dismal failure on all fronts)- in terms of peaks, it nears season 7’s 9.3 million, and well exceeds it in terms of lows (6 million > 4.8 million). This can also be applied to Troughton’s first season, and indeed his last (where The War Games Episode 8 garnered a worrying 3.5 million viewers).
I think indeed fans do have a need to find anything worrying in the ratings that might coincide with Grade's arrival and decision to get shot of the series. They know it was his vendetta against the show, but perhaps they want to believe that if the show had been doing just a bit better it would've changed his mind or he wouldn't have been able to justify the decision enough, or there would've been others in the BBC who protected the show from him.
But, there is a part of me that thinks it'd been in the cards for a while. That the BBC might've forgiven the low ratings of Season 18 or 20 as a blip, and that the show had been too successful beforehand and had too much potential to be successful again, to justify taking it off then. But maybe by Season 22 they decided things hadn't been looking that up for a while, and their gambles on what another year or a new production team might still yield had been spent.
The post-hiatus period sees the considerable decline in ratings that the era is renowned for, where the tabloid press provided to the programme in 1986 (coupled with Grade and Powell’s often contradictory indictments provided to season 22 and the fucking awful “Doctor in Distress” video) caused the series to be viewed as an embarrassment in the eyes of the general public.
Nitpicky point, but I don't think Doctor In Distress even made much of a public impression either way. It ended up getting no airplay because huge portions of its lyrics are impossible to make out. I'm not sure the video got aired much either.
That, and the overall quality of seasons 23 and 24 was widely perceived as subpar, with the slashed budget and pantomime sensibilities reinforcing the notion of Who as an exhausted and weightless embarrassment.
I would say Season 23 was the double-edged sword. For some it was far too silly, pantomime and mired in its own continuity. For others who were concerned about the show's nastiness of late, I imagine Peri's death was the last straw.
Then again, I think once a show gets messed about in the schedules, people can just get fed up of having to chase it when they used to know when it was reliably on. There's a few shows I used to love or at least have a residual loyalty to, that slowly lost me purely on the fact I got fed up of being stood up once too often. Dawson's Creek, Buffy, Angel, Enterprise. And if there were elements of the show I didn't like as much anymore, then the erratic scheduling made it all the easier to break that commitment.
In conclusion, although the declining quality of the programme can indeed be attributed to the programme’s decline in ratings during the decade, there were many extenuating factors at play later on, and I don’t think it’s as simple as to blame JNT entirely for the ratings decline. They were, after all, very gradually improving up to season 22, and didn’t represent the programme at its absolute worst in terms of ratings. I do not ascertain that ratings are directly proportional to quality by any stretch (the RTD era is evidence of that), and whilst I recognise the flaws of the era, I don’t think it’s as simple as to blame one single entity for what took place concerning the ratings decline.
I'm not terribly able to be objective on it.
My gut feeling is that the reason the ratings were not great is because the show in the main, wasn't really giving the audience anything to root for anymore. The Doctor didn't seem to be the affirming capable hero he once was.
He seemed, much like the production team to be a bit meandering, indecisive and unfit for purpose, and even when he did achieve something (Castrovalva) it was usually undone the next time the Master showed up.
I think the show defied the audience to go elsewhere for heroes that were worth rooting for, and eventually (after waiting in vain for things to improve) they did.
Home
I expect nothing else from such a bitter and twisted section of fandom.