A Town Called Mercy was a fantastic slice of Doctor Who and the viewing figures are reflecting that very nicely indeed, according to early BARB figures.

Saturday’s most recent episode, written by Toby Whithouse and guest starring familiar sci-fi face Ben Browder (Farscape, Stargate) averaged a massive 6.61 million viewers which gave it an audience share of 29.1% and some of the highest overnight ratings since 2010, so for all of you worrying about the viewing figures going down-don’t!

But that’s just the initial overnights, the final figures will surface next week after letting others catch up via recorded TV or BBC iPlayer, which let’s remember gave Dinosaurs on a Spaceship an additional 2 million viewers (or thereabouts). And of course, Doctor Who remains BBC iPlayer’ s most popular download of the week so far, as we all knew it would be!

Mercy’s nearest competitor was Red and Black which managed to get 3.9 million viewers, which was a 14.9% share of the audience so in other words, Doctor Who performed fantastically!