Outpost Gallifrey's 2005 Doctor Who Series One Poll was conducted in late 2005 after the transmission of the series in four major countries, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. (At the time the poll was conducted, there was no indication about any broadcast in the United States; however, due to both multi-region DVD players and the modern technology of filesharing, many American fans had already seen the episodes.)

Readers were asked to rank each story on a scale from 1-5, 5 being best, 1 being worst. The votes in each rating on the scale were averaged into the total, with the number of votes suggesting the average; in other words, the ratings were on the same scale no matter if there were 4,000 or 6,000 votes.

Interestingly, the difference in number of votes between the episode with the lowest number of total votes -- Boom Town -- and the highest -- Rose -- was approximately 1500 votes. There are two explanations for the discrepancies in numbers of votes: either voters did not read the instructions that they had to vote for each episode separately, or they simply voted for ones they wanted to vote for. (In the case of "Rose," being the first on the list, it's possible that voters did not want to continue after the first vote; this same phenomenon happened in our 2003 poll with the first story, "An Unearthly Child".)