Dr Who Season Two Overview

Saturday’s Dr Who season finale managed to bring in a peak of 6.5 million adult viewers, all sitting on the edge of their seats as Rose Tyler tried to fight off Daleks and Cybermen but ended up getting whisked off into another dimension.

The emotional final episode saw Billie Piper leave the show, although surprisingly the peak audience was actually down on the previous week, from 6.9 million adults.

The second series, starring David Tennant as the Doctor, began back in April, with a peak of over seven million adult viewers for the first episode, picking up a 38% share of the television audience.

The second episode gained the highest figures of the entire series, peaking at 7.9 million adults and averaging 7.6 million (a 40% audience share). However, by episodes eight and nine, the audience had dwindled somewhat, with episode eight getting an average figure of 4.8 million adult viewers (a 37% audience share) and episode nine an average of 4.7 million (a 34% audience share). Of course these slighlty lower figures were recorded when the sun was shining and the football World Cup had only just begun.

The programme’s lowest audience share came with episode seven, which had an average share of 31% (5.4 million adults). Over the entire series, the average audience share ranged from a low of 31% to a high of 41% for the penultimate episode.

The Dr Who Christmas special, by comparison, managed a peak audience of 8.3 million adults (a 41% audience share) and an average of 7.9 million (a 41% audience share) when it was shown on Christmas Day, up against the twin behemoths of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? on ITV1 and the Kevin Costner blockbuster movie, Dances With Wolves, on Five.

Overnight data is available each morning in mediatel.co.uk’s TV Database, with all BARB registered subscribers able to view reports for terrestrial networks, ITV2 and Sky One.

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