10 Times Doctor Who Jumped The Shark (And Nuked The Fridge)

9. Ratings Were Massacred By The Massacre

From 1964 to 1966, viewing figures fluctuated between eleven and eight million per episode with Dalek-centric stories doing better than some others, as might be expected. Bearing in mind the average viewership of Doctor Who over its first three years, eight million was good - and a number that modern producers would love to get. Fortunately, stubborn, hard to rectify dips to figures as low as the ones earnt by Marinus were not seen again until February 1966. In the end, it was The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve that caused next ratings collapse - of over 2 million during course of the story. It could be said that the Massacre massacred the ratings. This viewing exodus was not fully corrected until Patrick Troughton took over the controls of the TARDIS in November 1966's The Power of the Daleks. But what factors could possibly have led to such a deep slash in interest in the programme? A preposterous plot device is present and correct - but that's not so unusual for Doctor Who. In this case, there happens to be an exact doppelgänger of the Doctor walking about the place - a coincidence that's admittedly hard to entirely swallow. The icing on the rancid cake comes from the writer, John Lucarotti, though. He stated that, in his opinion, the serial was a "botched-up idea with frequent inconsistent rewriting and a denouement I thought ridiculous". Morever, the idea of the serial, including the historical setting, was imposed on Lucarotti, hardly helping strained relations between him and both the producer and the story editor. Lucarotti wasn't happy with what he was being told to write and that's never a recipe for great television. Although the story has aged well and can be appreciated by fans on its merits now, audiences at the time were clearly unhappy and found other things to do. The lessons here seem to be clear. Try to avoid a behind-the-scenes falling out affecting what makes it to the screen. And there's no good way of overcoming a script so bad even the writer doesn't like it. Curiously, some fans aren't so keen on the NuWho episodes with characters who look exactly like the Doctor, either. The Rebel Flesh, especially, gets a beating in some quarters. Clearly, duplicate Doctors are a gimmick that comes perilously close to shark jumping.