We’ve come to the end of the line with these articles.  Eventually there will be new episodes to review, but for now, Roger and I have given a rating to every episode televised.  Since my real life is all about data analytics, it’s only natural that some of that bleeds over into my hobbies.  Having completed the series, I wanted to know which season of the show we felt strongest about.  Color me surprised with my findings…

Yeah, it’s a bit of a tough thing to really sink your teeth into when you cover the entire run of the series.  And one thing we need to remember is that Doctor Who was a different style of show before the great hiatus.  Right up until season 26, the show might have 4 stories in a season but they could be broken up into a handful of episodes.  So it might be unfair to look at them in one big data dump.

A big takeaway is that, while Rog and I didn’t agree entirely, we were never far from each other with our numbers.  It seems the biggest variance for us was Season 23, which is unsurprising.  So much of The Trial of a Time Lord was hit or miss.  I saw it at a time in my life that I was probably far more forgiving of the series.  Roger’s least liked season was season 21 and his favorite was season 5 during Troughton’s era.  Who could blame him: The Tomb of the Cybermen says it all!  My least liked was season 22, Colin’s first full season, while the season 13 was my favorite; was there a weak episode in the bunch?!

By and large, I was more critical of the modern era of Doctor Who than Roger was, though that shifts towards the newer stuff.  Maybe I’m a bit more forgiving in that regard.  I did love Capaldi’s last season which might have softened my ratings for some of Jodie’s stuff.  Roger’s least favorite of the modern era was Jodie’s first season while his favorite was the Eccleston era.  Ironically, if we exclude the Specials which scored slightly higher for me, we were in sync here, even if not to the exact same score.  (Rog: 8.7, 4.82.  Mike: 8.0, 5.36)

Numbers like this just give us an idea of what we think and it does tell you something that even with all the variation, Roger and I do come in with the same overall opinions of the show during the modern era.  Make of it what you will.

It’s important to remember that Doctor Who, like any show, might hit a person differently at different times in their lives.  10 years from now, we may love Orphan 55 and want to change our ratings.  I might suddenly see value in Hell Bent or fall out of love with The Seeds of Doom.  Unlikely in both cases, but you can never tell.

Overall this has been an insightful journey and I’ve enjoyed looking at the series like this.  I can now tell people what season was my favorite or where I think it was weak, with just a glance and maybe entice them to try these episodes for themselves.  Of course, it’s never going to be the same for everyone.  One man’s Twin Dilemma is another’s Twice Upon a Time.

ADDENDUM, after the fact: Roger asked me which Doctor came in highest, which entails a bit of work since the first Doctor ends midway through his 4th season, and Colin starts at the end of Davison’s final season.  McGann has 2 episodes as well, which entails a bit of moving around.  Without a graph, I can report that Eccleston came in highest with Roger’s ranking of 8.7 for his episodes, and mine at 8 (tying Patrick Troughton for me; Roger’s ratings gave us an 8.4 for Pat).    Of supreme strangeness is that I carried out the decimals several places to find that Tennant’s era tied for me and Roger with 7.657895!  Our least favorite era was Colin’s.  Roger’s rating was 3.6 while mine was slightly higher at 4.8.

I hope you’ve enjoyed taking this journey with us.  We’ll take on Series 13 whenever it comes and I’ll update these numbers. It’ll be interesting to see where it goes.  But until then, just remember that travel isn’t the only thing that broadens the mind… sometimes data does too.  Allons-y!  ML