UPDATE: Further to the story below, it’s now been revealed that Doctor Who has added 1.045m viewers to its tally courtesy of iPlayer up to and including December 31st. Twice Upon A Time is still available on the service for another week or two as well. Proved to be quite the ratings success in the end, Peter Capaldi’s farewell and Jodie Whittaker’s “brilliant”.
Here’s the top 10 iPlayer chart for the end of December…
Christmas week (December 25-31) was @BBCiPlayer’s best ever week, both for requests (69.2 million) and for weekly hours (25.6 million). Don't miss your last chance to catch up on Christmas boxsets: https://t.co/ePrU8miAal pic.twitter.com/espovZoafa
— BBC Press Office (@bbcpress) January 8, 2018
EARLIER STORY
Former Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat had to do battle aplenty with ratings stories during his time on the show, that came to an end with Twice Upon A Time on Christmas day. Moffat continually argued – rightly – that overnight ratings mattered less and less, given the changing ways that people watched television. And the ratings for his final Doctor Who story have proven that.
After seven days, the show has added 2.2 million viewers in the UK to the total who watched it on Christmas Day. Just over 5.7m watched on December 25th, and after a week, the total rating is at 7.92m. Given that the episode will be on iPlayer for a further three weeks, that means that Twice Upon A Time is going to surpass 8 million viewers in the UK alone.
To give the number some context, it’s the highest number at this stage for a Doctor Who Christmas special since 2014’s Last Christmas.
Doctor Who will, of course, return in the autumn.