Matt Smith as the Doctor
With the news that Doctor Who will be hitting our screens this week in the first instalment of the tenth Doctor’s final three episodes, we couldn’t help but analyse the odds bookmakers have offered on who will replace David Tennant and become his new companion. As with any hit television show, bookmakers are often eager to venture into the world of “novelty bets” and with the announcement that Tennant would be leaving after a run of specials, Paddy Power, the Irish bookmakers quickly announced their own Doctor Who odds However, as those who viewed the betting options when they were first announced will remember, they were all a little, well odd.
In October, a variety of websites ran Paddy Power’s odds, which named Paterson Joseph as the most likely actor to become the next Doctor, with 3-1 odds. Interestingly, David Morrissey was second tipped to take the role (he featured 5-1 chances of becoming the new Doctor), but as viewers of “The Next Doctor” will recall, Morrissey’s Doctor was actually a confused gentleman in search of his own identity and family. Interestingly, Paddy Power’s October odds didn’t even feature the man who we all know (and will presumably love) as the eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith. Even further back in time, William Hill carried odds in June which featured Daniel Radcliffe and Catherine Tate (12-1 and 25-1 odds respectively) as likely contenders to take the role. Much speculation later, as well as James Nesbitt’s alleged announcement that taking the then-vacant Doctor Who role would be “career suicide”, the BBC put everyone out of their misery and revealed that Matt Smith would become the latest incarnation of the Doctor.
The question remains though: Why couldn’t Paddy Power or William Hill accurately predict who the next Doctor was going to be? While we will never know the direct answer to this question (if we did, we’d be taking advantage of skewed novelty bets odds with our insider knowledge), today we’ll be blogging about various factors which we think have clouded the aforementioned bookmakers’ judgements.
Unlike sports bets, when it comes to novelty bets, you really are taking a risk on the relatively unknown. Dictionary.com defines “novelty” as “state or quality of being novel, new, or unique; newness”. However, even though novelty bets are based on the sheer uniqueness of their proposition or predicted outcomes, this doesn’t explain why so many famous names, previously never linked together with Doctor Who, appeared in the running for the next doctor. For this, we believe you have to turn to the media. As suggested earlier, Paddy Power, up until the very Saturday that the BBC announced the new doctor, billed Paterson Joseph as the eleventh incarnation. In the running up to the BBC’s big reveal, it seemed almost a certainty that Joseph was going to take charge of the TARDIS and many of us were slightly perturbed and confused when Matt Smith’s cheery face popped up on the screen.
The Doctor's TARDIS
However, the movement behind the campaign stemmed from publicity for Survivors, a BBC program which featured Doctor Who’s very own Freema Agyeman. In November, the BBC website ran a news story on Joseph as a “hotly tipped” replacement for David Tennant. While Joseph skirted around the direct issue at hand, he did note that the Doctor’s “parameters are so vast. I don't see why he can't have more regenerations than the 13 that those who know think a Time Lord can have”. Whether the BBC’s story, which essentially boils down to “man may or may not take job, if it has been offered to him”, was newsworthy isn’t to be analysed here, but what is interesting is that it provided fuel for an ever growing eleventh doctor media fire. After the BBC published its article on Joseph, over thirty news items published from the 20th of November to the 31st of December contained the terms “Doctor Who “Paterson Joseph””. Compare this with the term “Doctor Who “Matt Smith””, which appears in Google News’ archive (if you remove unrelated Matt Smith’s) just three times during the given period.
Given the media coverage a front runner like Joseph received, it’s not surprising that the bookies offered such low odds on the likelihood of him becoming the Doctor. It seems that bookies, when attempting to understand media reports on entertainment and TV shows, apply the lessons they’ve learnt from judging sports reports when deciding the odds. Chances are that if several well-known football commentators suggested that Manchester United would beat Hull in a match, a bookmaker would quite rightly side with the commentators. However, as the Doctor Who odds have proved, just because several bloggers and reporters are all tipping one man as the next big thing, the case is that really they know as much, or as little as the average person on the street. No one really knew who would become the next Doctor (with the exception of Matt Smith and Steven Moffat) but plenty of people tried to predict the casting choice and, in the case of the BBC, even used it to their advantage to drum up interest in one of their own TV shows.
So, what have we learnt from Paddy Power and William Hill’s recent mistakes when predicting who will be the next Doctor? Well, it appears that the real movers and shakers keep their casting choices close to their chest and the names you hear the most about probably won’t become the next Doctor. However, when there were reports that Torchwood, a Doctor Who spinoff, probably wouldn’t gain another series, we contacted Paddy Power asking for odds on the likelihood of a further series being commissioned. Interestingly, the bookmakers refused to offer odds on the outcome, suggesting that for now, they’re steering clear of odds relating to the Doctor...Or a further series was, to use a bettor’s terminology, a “dead cert”.
