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

8. What Happens When The Audience Is Bored For Weeks On End?

The last great tailing off of viewer interest in the black and white era came over the interminable course of the Space Pirates. This serial simply bored the audience rigid throughout March 1969. With real life Apollo missions happening, the production team perhaps felt they had to show realistic space missions in an attempt to look up to date and relevant. The model work for the various spacecraft was, indeed, quite good for the time. The trouble was, there wasn't a decent story to go along with the nifty little homemade rockets. Viewers noticed. Especially after the much better The Seeds of Death which had preceded it. Spacemen in dumb-looking helmets were no substitute for Ice Warriors. This tedious trudge through deep space was followed up with The War Games, which was a tedious trudge through trenches for many. By its end, ratings were down to five million. To give a flavour of the adventure to those fans who've not watched this story, David J Howe referred to it as a "ten-part exercise in staying awake." True, the final two episodes featured the unnamed home planet of the Doctor's people for the first time and gave his species a name, but two months is a long time to fight off a coma before getting to the good bit. This shark jumping didn't involve a gimmick or absurd plot contrivance - viewers were just bored to death. Actually, they were bored into changing the channel. NuWho can be accused of many things but boring the audience isn't one of them. Moffat has avoided this pitfall to be sure. The good news for Classic Who was that upon the programme's transition to colour, Doctor Who turned its fortunes around and enjoyed much higher viewing numbers throughout the entirety of the Third Doctor's reign. The Fourth Doctor's era also fared well, right up until a profound change occurred behind the scenes.