With Doctor Who put out to tender by the BBC, the British science-fiction show is on a hiatus and former showrunner Steven Moffat lends his advice to the series’ future custodians.
Steven Moffat’s history with ‘Doctor Who’
“There are few things I can speak from experience on, but I can speak from experience on this,” Moffat told Doctor Who Magazine.
Moffat’s claim is easy to back up.
The Scot succeeded Russell T Davies as showrunner in 2010, having already penned amazing single episodes and two-parters.
Overseeing the tenures of Doctors Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi, Moffat’s run on the show ran through Christmas 2017.
He then returned to pen two episodes during Davies’ second, and rather more calamitous run as showrunner, Boom and Joy to the World.
READ MORE – TV news: ‘Doctor Who’ placed ‘out to tender’ as Russell T Davies leaves
‘Doctor Who’ is ‘all-year-round work’
So, Moffat knows exactly what it takes to run Doctor Who, and he believes many production companies will be “excited” by the prospect of taking over the show.
“I’m just guessing, but I think there will be a huge number thinking, ‘Wow, if we had Doctor Who on our books, that would be great,'” he said.
But with that, Moffat warns that whoever takes over Doctor Who must understand the scale of the challenge, and believes experienced TV veterans are best suited to the task.
“It’s all-year-round work doing Doctor Who – it kind of blocks out doing other things,” he said.
“So I think it will have to be production companies of a size and prestige that are capable of it.
“Everyone thinks, whenever you read about these things, that Doctor Who is a show to give new people a chance.
“Like hell it is. You do 20 shows before you do Doctor Who, because it’s a monster.”
Whatever does happen, however, Moffat has urged anyone to avoid a complete reboot, feeling that would be a “bad idea”.
In the event of a reboot, he argued that “most people casually watching would just be assuming, ‘Oh, it’s the next version of Doctor Who, he’s changed again’.
“Then they’ll say, ‘Why doesn’t he know who the Daleks are?’ And you start getting confused. You’d have to keep reminding the audience, ‘We started from the beginning again.'”
New show custodians will ‘need a moment’
Furthermore, Moffat believes that it will be an entirely new, albeit experienced, team that wins the Doctor Who tender and thinks they will need time to get their feet under the table.
“If it’s an entirely new team, which I think it will be, they need a moment,” Moffat told the Half the Picture podcast.
“They need a moment to sit back and say, ‘Okay, what’s it going to be this time? Who’s it going to be this time? What sort of show is it going to be?'”
While Moffat believes a new team will come in to run Doctor Who, it has been confirmed that BBC Studios will compete in the tender process so that it could remain quite close to home.
Doctor Who fans feeling uneasy during this hiatus needn’t worry, as Moffat boldly claimed in his Half the Picture conversation, “So long as everybody is talking about the future of the show, do you know what the show has? A future.”
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