Season 26 - The Ratings

Season 25 ends on the 4th of January 1989. Season 26 begins on the 9th of September 1989, 35 weeks later.

This season, which continues on Wednesday evenings, consists of 4 stories spread over 14 weeks. Fan opinion is divided over Season 26, some seeing it as the first green shoots of a renaissance that never came, others as the dying gasp of a once-great TV institution...that had in fact not been great for several years.

Whatever Fandom thinks though, it is pretty unequivocal what the ordinary viewing audience thought. The first 4-parter, featuring Arthurian knights and the return of the Brigadier, debuted at a mere 3.1 million. This makes "Battlefield" the worst-rated Doctor Who season opener, second only to "The Smugglers" (4.3 million) and ironically the very first episode "An Unearthly Child" (4.4 million).

By the 4th week (and the final part of "Battlefield"), audience figures have reached 4 million, but although no episodes drop below this figure, they don't climb much above it either...with the exception of the final story, "Survival", whose three episodes peak at 5, 4.8, and 5 million.

Season 26 is the lowest-performing season of Doctor Who to date, averaging just 4.2 million viewers across its 14 weeks. 

On the 6th of December 1989, just over 26 years since its first episode, Doctor Who's final episode of its final season ends. There will be no Doctor Who on Television for 16 years, until the "Doctor Who" TV Movie in 1996 which does not result in the renewal of the series despite an audience of 9.1 million, figures that the last 4 years could only dream of.