Doctor Who Once Again Breaks Low-Ratings Record With "Lucky Day" Only Posting 1.5 Million Overnight Viewers
Doctor Who has continually set record ratings lows in the Ncuti Gatwa era, but the latest episode, “Lucky Day,” crashed to levels thought impossible, with only 1.5 million viewers in the overnight ratings.
It’s been a bad couple of years for Doctor Who. This Disney+ era under showrunner Russell T. Davies has been met with universal fan disdain as the show has leaned heavily into identity politics and an extreme leftist agenda, with episodes being thinly veiled lectures rather than quality science fiction.
It started in the 60th Anniversary special trilogies where David Tennant returned after the show’s first push toward wokeism with a female iteration of The Doctor. Tennant was hoped to revive interest in the show, but Davies inserted cringy dialogue lecturing him on being a “male presenting Time Lord” while insulting fans by putting a transgender character and naming him Rose while referring to him as a “beautiful woman” multiple times during the episode.
It got worse under the Ncuti Gatwa era, with lectures to white people on racism, pro-abortion rants, and an infamous episode where the Doctor abandons his companion to go make out with a man. The result was a first season where fans rejected the show.
Gatwa’s first Christmas Special, “The Church On Ruby Road,” saw dismal ratings of 4.7 million for its ratings, but the audience quickly tuned out even more as each of the new “season 1” episodes as they branded this new Disney+ iteration received many of the lowest ratings in Doctor Who history as well.
The lowest came with Episode 7 of the 8-episode season, “The Legend of Ruby Sunday,” posting 2.05 million for the overnight ratings. The finale saw a small uptick, but the trend is clear—audiences are not interested in the gay, black Doctor who constantly lectures them on identity politics.
The second season opened with a paltry 2 million even for the debut of new companion Varada Sethu, as it appeared after last season’s dismal response from fans, many walked away instead of coming back to see if the producers might right the ship.
“Lux” then hit a new ratings low of 1.58 million for the second episode of the season, then followed up as the lowest-rated episode of all time once the full streaming numbers came in.
When episode three saw an uptick closer to the levels of the season premiere, we had chalked up “Lux’s” failure to it being on Easter weekend and perhaps having Doctor Who fans tuning out because of the holiday. However, now, we see that as the show enters its middle episodes, many of the viewers who were given another chance for the sequel to the David Tennant era “Midnight” abruptly tuned out again this time.
“Lucky Day” is an odd episode in that it hardly features the Doctor at all. His former companion, Ruby Sunday, played by Millie Gibson, who exited the show after only one season, has a life with a new boyfriend, but it quickly takes a political turn.
Her new boyfriend is lying to her, using her to get to UNIT to uncover the “truth” about The Doctor and live stream to broadcast how they are fake. It’s a clear political shot against conspiracy theorists and independent journalists who have upended real government conspiracies with their exposures in the last several years, and so naturally, it fell flat with audiences who aren’t going to be gaslit about the concept.
The episode landed at only 1.5 million, making it once again the lowest-rated Doctor Who episode ever, with four more episodes to go on the show before this season ends.
With rumors of Gatwa exiting and having a regeneration scene tacked on at the end of the series, the odds of Russell T. Davies and company getting renewed are becoming astronomically low.
What do you think of “Lucky Day” becoming Doctor Who’s least-watched episode ever? Leave a comment and let us know.
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Someone is actually watching this?
🎷🎺🎹 Doc went down in a burning ring of fire. Ratings went down, down, down, they got roasted much, much higher. It burns, burns, burn, the ring of no-hire, the ring of no-hire.🎵🎶🎷