City of Death - Broadcast and Reception

Broadcast and Reception

City of Death was broadcast on BBC1 over four consecutive Saturdays beginning on 29 September 1979. At this time, industrial action had blacked out rival broadcaster ITV and as a result, the serial scored very high ratings, averaging 14.5 million viewers over the four episodes; 16.1 million watched the fourth episode, the largest audience ever recorded for an episode of Doctor Who.

Audience appreciation ratings were taken for the first two episodes of City of Death and both episodes attained a respectable score of 64%. Listings magazine Radio Times published two letters from viewers regarding City of Death. Les Rogers of Hastings praised the serial's cast and the location filming; less impressed, however, was Paul R. Maskew of Exeter who felt the show was being played for laughs. Responding to similar criticisms from viewers, Douglas Adams wrote, "If the programme didn't move and take a few risks then it would have died of boredom years ago". Several viewers wrote to point out the discrepancy between the start of life on Earth of 4,000 million years ago and the date given in City of Death of 400 million years ago. Graham Williams replied, "The good Doctor makes the odd mistake or two but I think an error of 3,600 million years is pushing it! His next edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica will provide an erratum". Another viewer wrote to point out that the atmosphere of the primordial Earth would have been poisonous to the Doctor and his companions; Douglas Adams responded to this criticism, citing dramatic licence.

City of Death was voted into seventh place in a 1998 poll of the readers of Doctor Who Magazine to find the best Doctor Who story; the magazine commented that it "represented the height of Doctor Who as popular light entertainment for all the family". In 2009, Doctor Who Magazine readers also voted it in seventh place. A 2008 article in The Daily Telegraph named City of Death one of the ten greatest episodes of Doctor Who. John Condor, writing in the fanzine DWB in 1991, hailed the story as "the best blend of kitsch, surrealism, fantasy and comedy-drama seen in our favourite Time Lord's annals". Vanessa Bishop, reviewing the serial's DVD release, described it as "imaginatively written, well-performed and beautifully made, City of Death is a story where pretty much everything works". Reacting to the serial, as part of Doctor Who Magazine's ongoing "Time Team" feature, Jacqueline Rayner said "you're suddenly, almost violently, made aware this is happening in our world... with people just getting on with their business and two Time Lords walking through it. I don't think I've ever experienced that with Doctor Who up till now... it's the tiny touches of mundanity amid the fantastical that lift the story even higher". Charlie Jane Anders and Javier Grillo-Marxuach of io9 included it on the list of "10 TV Episodes that Changed Television". The A.V. Club reviewer Christopher Bahn described City of Death as the "gem" of the seventeenth season, finding Adams' subtle comedy script "easily the funniest and most quotable the series ever achieved". While he praised Scarlioni's costume and the mask, he felt that more could be done with using Paris as a filming location.

However, Doctor Who fandom's initial response to the serial was not so positive; John Peel, writing in the fanzine TARDIS in 1979, decried it as "total farce... I simply couldn't believe this was Doctor Who... the continual buffoonery is getting on my nerves". A similar view was held by Gary Russell who, reviewing the VHS release in 1991, said, "City of Death, like most Douglas Adams material is overrated and misses the mark for me, falling between the stools of good pastiche and bad parody and making fairly unsatisfactory viewing". This line was countered by Vanessa Bishop who called it "the Doctor Who story it's alright to laugh at... we must now accept that City of Death is funny — because if we didn't the Crackerjack-style sleuths, scientists and all... would leave it knocking about near the bottom of all the Doctor Who story ranking polls" and, responding to the criticisms about the levels of comedy, that "it's precisely these things that make it seem so special". Reviewing the serial in 2011, Patrick Mulkern of Radio Times stated he disliked the serial, finding it smug with overdone humour.