Saturday 22 July 2023

DWM 60th Anniversary Poll (5)


The latest poll results cover the tenures of the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. For Matt Smith stories, we only have the 2014 poll to compare with, whilst the majority of the David Tennant ones are covered by the 2009 poll as well (only his last two stories missed the cut-off for this).
Unlike the last few polls, which showed a great deal of consistency in voting over the years (mainly due to there being so few stories per Doctor), we have 36 and 39 stories respectively for Ten and Eleven. There is a lot more movement, up and down the poll.
Of the David Tennant era, only 4 of the 36 have retained their last poll position - but this includes the first, second and last placed stories.

The top rated Tennant is Blink. It has held this position in every poll. Of the top three for both these Doctors, Steven Moffat wrote the first and third placed story for each.
In second place, where it has always been, is Paul Cornell's adaptation of his Virgin novel Human Nature (Human Nature / Family of Blood). Only his second story for the TV series - and he's never written for it again since.
In third place we have another two-parter - Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead. It has moved slowly up from 7th to 3rd.
Propping up the bottom, as it always has done, is Fear Her, in 36th position. Just above is The Lazarus Experiment, and the marmite Love & Monsters is in 34th place.

Some items of interest - all of the Christmas Specials lie in the bottom half of the poll, as do all but one of the series openers. All of the series finales, on the other hand, sit in the upper half.
When it comes to movement over time, Partners in Crime is the biggest winner, having risen from 22nd in 2009 to 14th this time out.
Biggest losers are the celebrity historicals Tooth and Claw and The Shakespeare Code, which both drop 11 places (13th to 24th and 15th to 26th respectively).


Only three of the Matt Smith stories maintain their poll position, though we now only have the 2014 poll to compare results with. One of these is the top scorer - The Day of the Doctor.
In second place we have Richard Curtis' Vincent and the Doctor, and in third is Smith's debut The Eleventh Hour. These two stories have basically swapped places since 2014. 
Just outside the top three are The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang and The Doctor's Wife.
Neil Gaiman's other story - Nightmare in Silver - sits squarely in the bottom three.
It is second from bottom. Beneath it lies The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe, and just above it is The Curse of the Black Spot.
Despite getting the bottom spot with his 2011 Christmas Special, Moffat can console himself by having the majority of his self-penned stories in the top half of the poll. Let's Kill Hitler is his next worst, in 29th place.

The previous lowest ranked Smith story was The Rings of Akhaten, but it has been re-evaluated upwards by a good 5 places, to 34th.
Other lower ranked stories include Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, Closing Time and a couple of Mark Gatiss scripts - Night Terrors and Victory of the Daleks. Gatiss' The Idiot's Lantern was fourth from bottom in the Tenth poll, so between them these represent a poor opinion of him as a writer. Even the one he guested in as an actor (Lazarus) is poorly regarded.

Perhaps it's a reaction to what he did with the series when he got hold of it, but Chris Chibnall stories languish in the lower quarter of both polls.
Movement over time isn't as pronounced as with the Tennant poll. Stories have mostly moved up or down by only four or five places. Biggest winner is A Christmas Carol, which rises from 17th to 8th place. Biggest loser is Asylum of the Daleks which drops ten places to 17th place.

The final pair of poll results come next month. Unfortunately, they won't have any previous poll to compare them with, so it will simply be a case of which Capaldi / Whittaker stories were liked, and which weren't. The next stage of the process is then to have the top three for each Doctor voted on again, to determine overall winners.
Apparently they aren't going to produce an integrated list of all the polls combined. Scared to annoy Colin Baker again - or is it fear of showing the Chibnall era to be more unpopular than DWM (famous for reviews devoid of criticism) has ever cared to admit?

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