Friday 4 July 2014

Cricket & Dates

As I mentioned last week this week in 1963 was the first time that Doctor Who was missing from the Saturday schedules since it started thanks to Tennis at Wimbledon and The 3rd Ashes Test from Leeds. Many years later Cricket returns the favour by using an unscheduled repeat of The Sea Devils to plug a gap where a game of Cricket that was due to be televised was rained off. Then off course there's the Doctor's interest in cricket which starts with a visit to the test in the 8th episode of the Dalek Masterplan, claiming to have taken 5 wickets for New South Wales bowling Chinaman and the near obsession of the Fifth Doctor.

But the absence of Doctor Who on this date in in 1963 brings an interesting fact to light: Doctor Who has never had a first run episode broadcast on 4th July! Doctor Who has usually been shown either from Spetember or January onwards, with the 60s episodes running over a longer period of time from the autumn. Both of these mean the middle months of the year are when less episodes occur. Looking at the classic series these are the 54 days it hasn't been shown on:

June 15
22
28
29
30
July 4
5
6
7
8
12
13
14
15
19
20
21
22
23
26
27
28
29
30
31
August 2
3
4
5
6
7
9
11
12
13
14
16
18
19
20
21
23
25
26
27
28
September 19
26
October 3
10
17
24
December 20
27

To be honest I'm a bit surprised that there's so many days in the later half of the year that have never had Doctor Who shown on them!

Since the advent of the new series of Doctor Who in 2005 five of those dates have had episodes of Doctor Who shown on them:

28-Jun-08 The Stolen Earth
30-Jun-07 Last of the Time Lords
05-Jul-08 Journey's End
08-Jul-06 Doomsday
27-Aug-11 Let's Kill Hitler

If there are 54 days with no DW in them, which date has had the most episodes of Doctor Who shown on them?

Well it truns out there are SEVEN dates with 6 episode shown on them:

04-Jan
12-Jan
08-Feb
15-Feb
02-Mar
09-Mar
16-Mar
Here's how many dates have had how many episodes shown on them:

Episdoes Dates
6 7
5 16
4 28
3 35
2 132
1 94

Adding in the new series skews this data slightly as there's been a Chirstmas special every year since 2005:

Episodes Days
10 1
9 0
8 0
7 0
6 8
5 17
4 28
3 82
2 119
1 62
0 49

But returning to our non showing episode on 4th July: the closest Doctor who has got to showing an episode on this day was the following year, 1964, when the first episode of The Time Meddler aired on the third and in 2008 when Journey's End aired on the fifth. Both remain the only episodes eired on those dates.