Doctor Who seems to be going through a bit of a rough patch. After season 11 broke ratings records, figures for season 12 have declined. I didn’t think much of the opening two-parter, “Spyfall” and episode 3, “Orphan 55,” was pretty terrible. But things have picked up as the season has gone on, with the last episode, “The Haunting of Villa Diodati” serving up a classic, well-executed haunted house story.
Hopefully, this trending uptick in quality will continue through the two-part season finale. That’ll begin with “Ascension of the Cybermen” on February 23rd and conclude in season finale “The Timeless Children” on March 1st. Whatever the case, the BBC still has confidence in showrunner Chris Chibnall, who confirmed yesterday that he’s onboard for season 13. In an interview with EW, he said:
“I do know I’m coming back for a third season. Yeah, absolutely. We are already planning the stories. Once you see the end of this series, you’ll realize there are some stories we’re already setting in train for next series. We have very big, ambitious plans for our third series together.”
And when pressed for exactly when we’ll see new episodes, he said:
“It will be next year sometime, hopefully, unless my holiday goes on for a really long time, which is always tempting.”
One thing that probably should be addressed is the story that season 12 has been some kind of disaster for the show’s ratings. Several outlets have been trumpeting extremely low viewing figures for this run. I’m not sure where they’re getting their data from, but they’re consistently reporting much lower figures than the ones everyone else is using. Perhaps they’re intentionally just counting the viewership for the live broadcast rather than taking into account the many people who catch up later on iPlayer?
Either way, even though Doctor Who is facing some stiff competition in its timeslot this year, it’s still comfortably amongst the most-watched shows produced by the BBC. Here’s hoping they can stick the landing for the season 12 finale.