Moffat talks Dr. Who

The Sparrow

Stephen Moffatt recently did a Q+A about taking over as lead writer for Dr Who. He doesn't reveal much but it is interesting nonetheless:

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/s7/doctorwho/tubetalk/a184561/steven-moffat-talks-doctor-who-future.html

What with all this 'Waters Of Mars' madness in the last few days, it may have slipped your minds that change is a-coming. The Who team are now about halfway through filming on series five, which boasts a new Doctor, new companion, new showrunner, new logo, new TARDIS... well, pretty much everything is new. On Thursday night, Steven Moffat - the aforementioned new showrunner - gave his first real interview about taking over the Who reins at the annual Screenwriters' Festival in Cheltenham. We dispatched Ann-Marie Corvin to report live.

7pm: The four-day Screenwriters' Festival in Cheltenham comes to a promising close as delegates wait for new Who exec Steven Moffat to take the stage.

7.15pm: Delegates start to pile into the auditorium. On stage is a big screen with the title of the interview beamed down for all to see. It reads: ‘Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who’ - suggesting the writer is set to reveal more about his vision for the fifth series. There are no bodies on stage yet but there is a massive model of a Dalek and a coat stand with a very familiar looking hat and scarf hanging from it.

7.30pm: David Pearson, director of the Screenwriters Festival, comes on stage and reassures the audience that the circuit has been removed from the Dalek and won’t zap the audience of screenwriters.

7.31pm: He introduces Moffat’s interviewer for the evening, Benjamin Cook. Ben is a writer and interviewer for Doctor Who magazine and collaborated with Russell T Davies on an extensive email correspondence that formed the basis of the book Doctor Who – The Writer’s Tale.

7.32pm: BC and Moffat appear on stage. Round of applause. BC jumps in and asks SM what we can expect from the 2010 series - more of the same, a ‘reboot’ maybe or even a departure? SM replies by saying it’s been the same series since 1963. SM is then asked whether he plans on tweaking any familiar elements relating to the show, such as the TARDIS. SM won’t be drawn but confesses to being rather partial to Peter Cushing’s TARDIS. He adds that if they were going to change anything major there would have to be a very good plot reason in order to do so.

7.35pm: Since the casting of 26-year old Matt Smith as the new Doctor 2010 there has been much speculation that the fifth series will not be in sequence as the previous four have been. So, BC asks SM what he will be calling the 2010 series since everyone on the production team seemed very reluctant to refer to it simply as ‘Series 5’. Moffat is extremely evasive in his reply, simply stating that in real life the audience doesn’t refer to a new series of something by a number. "You can call the new series what you like. You could always call it ‘really good’ if you wanted," he jokes.

7.37pm: Because Moffat’s previous episodes have been perceived by fans as little darker in general than Russell T’s episodes BC wants to know whether the new series will take a darker, maybe more adult turn. SM refutes that he’s any darker than RTD – citing the latter’s ‘Midnight’ episode as darker than anything that Moffat has ever written. SM adds that sometimes the new show will be dark, but only because Doctor Who is dark – sometimes people die.

7.38pm: SM emphasises that Doctor Who will always be a kids' show – as it has been since 1963. He says: "If Doctor Who does not address kids then it’s not Doctor Who. That’s where the 1996 film [starring Paul McGann] went wrong. It was far too grown up and even had one scene of the Doctor at a cocktail party – how boringly dull! Doctor Who is supposed to be a fanatical hero who does amazing things!"

7.40pm: BC asks Moffat who he writes Doctor Who for. SM replies: "For me! Who else would I write for? I think I have a good viewer’s eye of Doctor Who." SM adds that the show is very challenging because it is a mix of so many genres. "The show has to entertain by any means possible. It has to be funny, entertaining. It has to blaze out of that screen. It’s part SciFi, part horror and yet it completes with shiny floor shows on the other channels every Saturday evening."

7.42pm: SM talks some more about the challenges of writing for Doctor Who: "You have to be funny but also you have to have a huge amount of story. At least in Buffy they get to sit down and have a bit of a chat and then go off and have an adventure. Doctor Who is much more action based. You need to get out there and get in the TARDIS."

7.45pm: BC asks Moffat if there is extra pressure writing something that some people will go on to watch 15 or 20 times. SM says that you don’t write the show for box set geeks because these are the sorts of people who will buy them whatever. It is more of a challenge writing for the casual viewer who may not be watching the show every week but who must still understand what is going on.

7.47pm: Hurrah - finally some concrete details about the new series emerge! SM is writing six episodes. The team is currently in the middle of filming a two-parter which he refers to as part of "block 4". He adds that it’s sometimes hard to keep tabs on where one block ends and the other starts!

7.49pm: SM talks some more about his new role as lead writer and says that he likes everything about the job apart from the actual writing of it! "The reason I’m talking so much now is that I haven’t seen a soul in days. Writing is horribly hard, appallingly difficult." On writing, he adds: "It’s hard to talk about writing. The thing you know as a writer is what a good script should look like and it’s all about being honest with yourself and keeping on trying and rewriting until it does look good. That can be properly hard because sometimes you don’t have a clue how to fix it. Have no idea how I am going to get to the end sometimes."

7.50pm: SM won’t confirm the rumour mill that there are going to be some pretty high profile guest writers attached to the next series – including Richard Curtis. All he will says is that Doctor Who is not a show for beginners, it’s a show for people who really know what they are doing and who also really ‘get’ Sci-Fi.

8pm: Given the fact that everything is tipity toppity secret squirrel on Who, BC wonders whether this has driven the production away from locations where they are surrounded by fans and paps and into the studio. SM thinks this would be ridiculous. "I remember when The Sun got hold of my ‘Library’ script before it had aired and threatened to publish it. I just said ‘let them’ – I’d like to see The Sun publish that many words in a day!"

8.05pm: SM talks about casting Matt Smith in the role of The Doctor. "We originally said that it needed to be somebody in their mid 30s or 40s and he’s just 26! He was the third person we auditioned and we knew then that we had found our man. Andy Pryor, our casting director, should get a mention here. He’s the one who draws up the list and makes suggestions."

8.07pm: BC asks how SM would describe Matt Smith’s Doctor. "He’s the best one of course! In a new, different, strange way. Considering he’s so young he comes across as surprisingly ancient. He’s not going to be the youthful doctor that people might expect – he’s a proper grown-up. The Doctor has to be played not just by someone with great acting ability but someone who you can’t take your eyes off and you can’t take your eyes off Matt Smith when he walks into a room. His presence just screams ‘alpha male’ – but in a really odd way. If he walked through here now you would immediately get it. He walks like a drunk giraffe!"

8.10pm: The conversation moves into Moffat’s other main casting – Karen Gillan in the role of The Doctor's assistant. She was also suggested by Andy Pryor following her performance as a soothsayer in the series 4 episode 'The Fires of Pompeii'. "Andy suggested her but for some reason I thought she looked short and dumpy – despite her being 5 foot eleven in real life – which goes to show what I know!"

8.12pm: The companion’s role in Doctor Who, he thinks, is absolutely pivotal to the plot. "The story happens to the companion, not The Doctor. It’s only when he’s got someone to show off to that its happening. That’s why I think the story starts again every times a new person takes that decision to go into that blue box."

8.15pm: BC asks SM whether there is any of himself in The Doctor. "I don’t think you identify with The Doctor, he’s very strange... I don’t think I ever wanted to be The Doctor when I was watching it at home. I’d prefer to be James Bond - but not The Doctor - he’s mad. He’s more like your fabulous uncle or your best dad in the universe."

8.20pm: The conversation takes a slightly diverting turn as they start to talk about SM’s first writing gig on the classic late 80s early 90s kids TV show Press Gang. He says that in many ways the series [about a bunch of kids who set up a school newspaper] was almost like a self-portrait because in most cases the cast and the crew were working on a TV series for the first time.

8.23pm: A clip from Press Gang is shown featuring the moment when Dexter Fletcher and Julia Sawalha’s characters meet for the first time. After the clip is show Moffat reveals that he learnt 98% of everything he knows about television working on that show.

8.25pm: Moffat’s other hit, the BBC2 comedy Coupling, is also raised and BC points out that, until Doctor Who came along most people saw him as a comedy writer. SM says that this perception has never bothered him. "If you can write decent comedy you’ll probably never starve. Few people can write. Fewer can write comedy."

8.30pm: SM tells BC why he thinks the US version of Coupling was a failure. "I don’t think it would ever have been a really big hit because it was essentially written as a small BBC Two show – but interference from studio executives made it worse. They come from a one-liner culture so they tended to cut the farcical instruction which would make the jokes funny and just skip straight to the punchline." SM seems really disappointed in the way (TV executive and head of NBC Universal) Jeff Zucker handled the whole thing. "He started slagging off the cast, who then just went back to waiting tables."

8.35pm: The conversation returns to writing for Doctor Who – how conscious is he of the budget when writing fantastical scenes? (Who producer) Phil Collinson has already talked about putting his head in his hands when he read one scene where a girl dangles from a hot air balloon above London. "I remember it looked amazing when we found a way to do that. It was a stunning sequence. The thing is that if we are doing space ships you are always going to be compared to George Lucas. But a girl hanging from hot air balloon over London no one is going compare that to anything else. You are always thinking to yourself 'What is brand new and mad?'"

8.40pm: For Children in Need SM wrote a 10-minute episode called 'Time Crash' where two incarnations of the Doctor – David Tennant and Peter Davison - meet. Now SM is the showrunner on Who, BC asks whether he will turn this premise – or something similar - into a full-blown episode. "It depends whether the good story is good enough to justify it," he says. "'Time Crash' was a gimmick and gimmicky ideas last 8 minutes, which was basically the length of that episode," he says.

8.44pm: BC asks SM what he thinks makes a good Doctor Who monster. "I think removing a human face always works, so monsters with blank, expressionless faces that you can’t reason with are very scary. That’s why the Daleks are scary, isn’t it? You can’t reason with them."

8.45pm: With that the conversation between SM and BC ends and a Q&A follows. A Spanish lady at the back of the auditorium wonders whether, as the casting of the Doctor seems to get younger and younger, how long will it be before a 14-year old boy gets cast in the role. SM replies: "As you get older and older you have more of a desire to become younger – I think The Doctor just fancied becoming a 26 year old! Seriously, there was no casting agenda involved in getting in a young man – Matt was just the best in the audition."

8.49pm: Another bloke at the back asks an interesting, if slightly academic question about themes. He notes that, from Rose and The Doctor to Bob and Rose, Russell T Davies tends to explore the theme of unrequited love in much of his work. What can we expect Moffat to explore? SM is a tad dismissive in his answer: "Nobody does themes. It’s a lie. Who have your heard say 'I’ve thought of a good theme?' They happen accidently. You repeat yourself once too often and so it becomes a theme. We tell stories - that’s what people talk about, not themes."

8.50pm: Someone asks what the biggest challenge has been writing for Doctor Who. SM replies: "The biggest challenge is always the next one – which is, at the moment – the writing of episode 13."

8.54pm: The inevitable question gets asked – When you watch an episode of Doctor Who now, do you ever hide behind the sofa? SM replies: "Not really. I’m 47 and show is designed to reasonably terrify 8 year olds."

8.55pm: The interview winds up. There is applause followed by a mob of closet and no-so-closet Who fans who are making their way towards the stage in a stealth-like way reminiscent of the Angels in ‘Blink’. They probably only want to get their pictures taken with Moffat and The Dalek but it doesn’t look like he’ll get to leave this venue any time

spongeman

Moffat is a better writer than Davies. Looking forward to next year already.

Hopefully we will get a decent final episode this time, as opposed to the usual excellent 3rd and 2nd last episodes, followed by the big let down.