The first female Doctor Who is already a huge ratings hit

Oh brilliant. After introducing its first female lead, Doctor Who is soaring to new ratings heights.

Sunday night's premiere, the first full episode featuring Jodie Whittaker's incarnation of the iconic time traveler, scored 8.2 million viewers in the U.K., per Deadline. These are the best overnight ratings the show has had for a regular episode, i.e. one that is not a holiday special or anniversary event, since the Series 4 finale in 2008, io9 reports. This one was a big deal, though. After all, for the first time in the show's 55-year history, The Doctor, an alien who every so often "regenerates" into a new form, was played by a woman.

The numbers are better than the debuts of the last two Doctors; Peter Capaldi's first episode scored 6.8 million viewers in the overnight ratings in 2014, while Matt Smith's drew 8 million in 2010. Last night's numbers were lower than that of David Tennant's debut in 2005, but as io9 points out, that was a Christmas special and not a regular episode, so it's not really a fair comparison.

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This 8.2 million figure only represents the number of viewers who actually tuned in live on BBC One; it doesn't factor in those who watched it later or those who watched it on BBC America, where the episode aired at the same time as it did across the pond. American Whovians had grown accustomed to watching episodes hours later, but that wasn't the case this time.

The show also moved to Sunday nights rather than Saturdays, another likely factor in the strong debut. It remains to be seen whether Series 11 will be able to sustain these numbers, but with critics and fans praising Whittaker's performance, the odds are looking good.