Just wanted to share my terrible viva voce experience that I had a few days ago.

I was assigned a godsent of a supervisor and she had helped me a lot throughout the entire process of the thesis writing. We even took a whole day before the thesis submission to make sure everything is in the best condition before submitting to the panels.

We were assigned two internal panels, both of them are PhD holders in their respective fields. After the viva voce session I received the scoring sheet from both panels. One panel gave me perfect scores for all aspects. Whereas the other one gave me the lowest score possible for each aspect.

During the viva voce, the examiner that gave me the perfect score gave constructive comments while complimenting the idea and the thorough discussion of the thesis. However, the other examiner straight up downgrades my thesis. And in the thesis, there was one section where I thoroughly explain about the theory that I use with the intention to help readers understand more about the theory. However, during the viva the panel straight up told me that I was 'obsessed' with the theory as I was explaining too much about it. I don't really get it. Is being thorough when explaining is not the point of a thesis?

I felt like I was unfairly treated during the viva voce by the examiner. However I didn't really want to make a big deal out of it since my supervisor also advised me to not be hurt by the said panel.

To be fair, I didn't expect one can be so hateful towards a thesis when one refuses to comprehend the thesis, straight away diving in to downgrading one's work.

I'm confused a bit, as a typical viva has an internal and external examiner. To be honest if this was an actual viva (i.e. would award the PhD - or not) it seems like a procedural failing if there was nobody external. Of course, I can't speak for all systems, but to have an entirely internal process seems odd.

If it was more a progression review (which I'm thinking it was, if you didn't want to make a big deal out of it, since you probably should make a big deal of it if you just failed a PhD outright!), then you may find in some cases examiners are extremely harsh if the stakes are lower, on the belief it's in the best interests of the student to shred their work so they can improve it prior to viva. This is almost longstanding tradition, and at many places a panel review or mock viva can be much rougher than the actual viva, since the outcome is often meant to alert the student to any weaknesses, rather than assess them, unless it's an extreme condition where it would be a waste of their time and money to continue. Bear in mind an examiner saying - or indicating - they do not comprehend the thesis or theory may be them suggesting your thesis and argument was, well, hard to follow, and if this was done in the spirit of a panel that you can amend/respond to, then I'd listen to that rather than writing them off immediately.

I'd think they possibly had a heated discussion if one examiner was convinced on ones, and the other responded by giving the maximum grade to 'balance out' the score. This could have gone many ways on this; perhaps the critical examiner was annoyed by the incredibly positive assessment of the other, so deliberately dropped their assessment so the average was where they wanted it to be. Ultimately the numbers don't really matter, it's more the actual feedback/outcome you want to consider. If it was a viva, did you pass/fail/corrections?