Midnight (Doctor Who) - Broadcast and Reception

Broadcast and Reception

"Midnight" was watched by 8.05 million viewers, a 38% share of the total television audience, making it the fifth most-watched programme of the week. The episode received an Appreciation Index score of 86 (considered Excellent).

The episode received a number of reviews in British national newspapers. The Guardian's TV reviewer Sam Wollaston described the episode as "great... it's tense and claustrophobic, and gnaws away at you." He praised the fact that all the action happened in one confined space with an unseen enemy, saying "this is psychological drama rather than full-blown horror; creepy-unknown scary, not special-effect-monster scary." William Gallagher of Radio Times was generally positive about the episode, but he said he would have "liked just a beat more, just a tiny further step before the resolution; can't even tell you what was missing but I needed one more stage in the journey". The Times's reviewer Andrew Billen wrote that Tennant's Doctor was becoming "increasingly irritating", that the episode was "sheet upon sheet of dialogue" that "felt too much of a writing exercise to be really scary" and an example of how the 2008 series "fails as often as it succeeds". Billen praised the episode for its claustrophobic atmosphere and for showing the series was "not afraid of variety," but instead "dead scared of repetition".

IGN's Travis Fickett rated the episode 8.6 out of 10, commenting that it was "a nice change of pace" from the more complex and emotional two-parter that preceded it. He thought the most successful aspect of the episode was the creature and praised the fact that it was "tightly written" and allowed the viewer to get to know the different passengers. In 2010, Matt Wales listed "Midnight" as the second-best Tennant episode of the series in an IGN article. Sam McPherson of Zap2it listed it as the third-best Tenth Doctor episode.