DWM Poll

The latest issue of DWM was published today, and it includes the 2018 readers' poll results.
There were two versions of the magazine available - the standard one at £5.99, and a "Deluxe" one at £9.99. The latter included a 28 page supplement on the making of Series 11, plus a vinyl disc with extracts from the soundtrack to Evil of the Daleks and some other odds and sods.
I don't need another 28 pages about Series 11, thank you very much, and don't own a record player, so I'm sure you will have guessed which version it was that I bought today. (The £4 saving paid for the latest issue of Infinity magazine - hooray!).
Anyway. The poll had some interesting things to say about last season, which simply confirm what myself and a lot of other fans have been saying about it since the time of broadcast.
The top rated story was Rosa, with The Tsuranga Conundrum languishing at the bottom of the pile.
Annoyingly, despite it being categorically billed as not part of the series, and not even broadcast in 2018, DWM had elected to include Resolution. It came in 4th place.
The actual order is:
1. Rosa
2. Kerblam!
3. Demons of the Punjab
4. Resolution
5. It Takes You Away
6. The Woman Who Fell To Earth
7. The Witchfinders
8. The Ghost Monument
9. Arachnids in the UK
10. The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos
11. The Tsuranga Conundrum

As you can see, those stories written by Chris Chibnall all on his lonesome pretty much lie in the bottom half of the table (and most fans believe that the better parts of Rosa were down to Malorie Blackman). The guest writers being the better writers was something which we all picked up on as the series entered its second half, so it's hard to argue that our criticisms of Chibnall were either unfair or unfounded. The lacklustre "series finale" sitting in 10th position says a lot.
Were this poll to have an influence on future series would be both a Good Thing, and a Bad Thing. The Good Thing would be that Chibnall wrote less. The Bad Thing would be that we got a lot more of the historical stories in which the Doctor doesn't actually do anything.
The results of some of the other polls are also interesting, and say something about just what fans were offered last year.
Things weren't all bad for Tsuranga. The set design of the spaceship won in its section, and, bizarrely, the Pting managed to come in second in the "Favourite Creature" poll. The Kerblam! androids took first place. The DIY Dalek was third. Personally, I think this simply reflects what little we had to go on as far as the aliens were concerned this series.
Despite his stories coming in 6th and second to last place, the "Favourite Villain" was Tzim-Sha. The Dalek was second and Krasko was third - which definitely says something about how poor the threat levels were throughout the season. Krasko was one of the weakest characters of the entire run.
The favourite VFX was the new Vortex, first seen in Arachnids - with the Dalek / soldier battle second and the spaceship crash in The Ghost Monument third. You would have expected the series opener or, especially, the finale to have furnished something here. The new Vortex is nice, but hardly jaw-dropping.
Now, I didn't vote myself - I might have been tempted to submit a spoiled ballot, such was my relative apathy towards Series 11. In fact, I possibly didn't even see the poll. I find myself reading less and less of DWM these days, which is a sad state of affairs for someone who was there from Doctor Who Weekly Issue 1 back in 1979. I was really pleased to hear that Marcus Hearn, Hammer Historian, was taking over the editorship, but I haven't liked the magazine half as much since he took over. I have no interest in cosplay, so skip those features, don't buy Big Finish, so skip their many, many articles and reviews, and as for the opinions of teenagers about the show, well, I couldn't care less I'm afraid.