Doctor Who sixth season finale tops 7 million viewers

Alex KingstonThe Wedding of River Song had nearly 8 million viewers final figures released by BARB today reveal.

The sixth season finale of Doctor Who, The Wedding of River Song, had nearly 8 million viewers according to final ratings. The episode resolved a lot of the story-arc established by new producer Steven Moffat when he took over last year – the episode also set up a possible new story-arc for further episodes to develop.  Overnight figures placed the number of viewers at 6.1 million viewers but final figures are far more accurate and they also take into account those who recorded the programme and watched within seven days.

According to final figures The Wedding of River Song was seen by 7.67 million viewers – a rise of around 1.5 million viewers. Doctor Who’s sixth season has seen substantial rises in its ratings through consolidated ratings proving that viewers are still watching the series – despite tabloid stories to the contrary – but are choosing to watch episodes at a time of their choice rather than the broadcast time.

The sixth season finale met with a mixed reaction from viewers and critics. ATV Today’s critic, Queenie, was mostly positive about the episode in her review ‘The episode certainly had a whacky feel to it with Churchill (Ian McNeice) re-imagined as Caesar, trains coming out of pyramids and cameo appearances by the Silurians and Daleks. At times this episode had more of a feel of Indiana Jones than Doctor Who not that is a bad thing – it rather worked in the universe that never existed. So the reset switch was used again – it all boils down to everything in *that* universe never happened and all is fine again. But it worked and the episode was managed to pull it off. As for the question, well what else could it have been? It’s the question that has been asked many times over the years but never answered.’

The twist which revealed it wasn’t the Doctor (Matt Smith) that was killed in the season opener The Impossible Astronaut but was in fact a robot double was also criticised by some reviewers as a cop-put Matt Smithbut Queenie had this to say ‘Okay so I saw the twist with the Teselecta coming as soon as the robot appeared – it was then obvious than it was the robot on the beach and not the Doctor. We all knew it really wouldn’t be the Doctor on the shores of the lake, didn’t we? No matter how much the programme tried to convince us it was really him we know that somehow it wouldn’t be. No doubt quite a few viewers assumed it would be a ‘flesh ganger’ but what else could it have been but a Teselecta robot.’

With the final ratings figures for all the season six episodes of Doctor Who now released ATV Today will present its traditional Ratings Review of Doctor Who in due course. Until then why not read Queenie’s other Doctor Who reviews here >>