Steven Moffat’s Ten Greatest Legacies to Doctor Who
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Everyone loves Verity Lambert. People adore Patrick Troughton. David Tennant is a sex symbol around the world. But there is one individual in Doctor Who history who, despite constantly polarising the views of the fandom, has changed it for the better.
Although Steven Moffat often divides fan opinion, few other individuals have made a greater impact on Doctor Who. A BAFTA award-winning television writer, Moffat is known around the world for the class and quality of his scripts. His name is strongly associated with thrilling family entertainment. Throughout his eight years as showrunner and twelve as a script writer, the programme has seen a radical transformation. After Doctor Who became a hit in the UK again thanks to his predecessor Russell T Davies, Steven Moffat took the show to new heights around the globe. Doctor Who may have lost some of its national consciousness, but on an international level, it is now more popular than ever before.
The following list compiles what I consider to be Moffat’s ten greatest legacies to the programme. If you’re cracking out the champagne at his impending departure this Christmas, just pause to reconsider after reading this article.
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The Paternoster Gang
It’s hard to believe that it is now over six years since a Sontaran, a Silurian and a Victorian woman first came together to form the Paternoster Gang. A Good Man Goes to War signalled many firsts for Doctor Who. The lesbian relationship between Madame Vastra and Jenny, combined with their comic relief butler Strax, was certainly an unorthodox debut. The three went on to be visited by the Doctor in their contemporary Victorian setting in several more episodes. Classics such as The Name of the Doctor and gothic horror favourite The Crimson Horror. Strax has even appeared in the Big Finish audio series Jago and Litefoot, featuring the two Victorian characters of the same name from The Talons of Weng-Chiang.
With their untapped spin-off potential, it’s more a question of when rather than if we see the Paternoster Gang make another appearance in the Whoniverse. The three are always a delight to behold onscreen and Strax, in particular, has managed to supply laughs aplenty. Perhaps it was unwise to include the Gang in Capaldi’s debut adventure Deep Breath for the sake of breaking with the past to usher in a brand new era. But for me, the trio will always be one of Moffat’s greatest legacies to the programme.
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Minisodes and Online Marketing
Since 2011, Doctor Who underwent a huge overhaul regarding the way it is received by its global audience. Gone are the days of merely clicking on the red button for exclusive material, now the Doctor Who Facebook page streams live Q&A feeds of post-episode reactions. In many ways, Doctor Who is the ideal programme to exist in the internet age, where its extensive chronology is now at the fingertips of its fans.
Minisodes, extra online content
Minisodes and extra online content have formed a key part of this development that the BBC have implemented as a multi-platform broadcaster. Moffat indicates in the video below that these minisodes are not spin-off material. They are part of the main show, like deleted scenes posted before or after their main features.
After writing the first official Doctor Who Children in Need minisode, Time Crash, in 2007; Moffat realised that a whole new market existed for this extra material online. The serialised Pond Life achieved impressive viewing figures on BBC iPlayer in August 2012. However, Paul McGann’s return as the Eighth Doctor in The Night of the Doctor broke online broadcasting records. DVD Boxsets continue to contain exclusive content mini episodes, such as the popular Rain Gods or First Night/Last Night, both of which featured River Song. I look forward to seeing more of the same under Chris Chibnall, but let’s not forget that it was Moffat that got the ball rolling!
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The Twelfth Doctor
On Sunday 4th August 2013, I was aghast. Steven Moffat had just cast Malcolm Tucker from The Thick of It as the Doctor. Malcolm Tucker? Are you serious? Almost immediately my vocal powers returned to me. I uttered a scream of condemnation towards the BBC for casting someone who brought too many associations from another part to Doctor Who.
Four years on and I realise that I couldn’t have been more wrong. Peter Capaldi has completely shaken off the mantle of The Thick of It spin-doctor and made the role of the Doctor his own. Perhaps he hasn’t always been given the scripts he deserved throughout his era, but Capaldi has indeed made a significant impact on the part. His dour, grumpy and often cantankerous Scottishness made him a stark contrast from his predecessor Matt Smith.
However, in hindsight, it does appear that Capaldi’s age has been against him, which dismays classic fans like myself who are fond of older Doctors. Many younger fans have drifted away from our middle-aged hero in favour of other modern shows with fresh faces. But heck, if House of Cards and Breaking Bad can get away with a 50-something star, why not Doctor Who? The answer is that Capaldi was the actor that Doctor Who needed, but the overall writing may not have served him as well as it could have done.
The evolution of the 12th Doctor
Moffat tried to make the 12th Doctor’s darker persona quite prevalent in Series 8. However, fearing that they were alienating young female viewers, the writers immediately began to soften the 12th Doctor’s character; giving him sonic sunglasses and electric guitars. It seems that sadly at some point in the creative process between Series 8 and 9, the 12th Doctor was lost in favour of a patchwork quilt of Doctors played perhaps more reluctantly by Capaldi.
Stellar stories such as The Zygon Inversion and Heaven Sent certainly gave Capaldi some excellent material. But I can’t shake off the feeling that the 12th Doctor’s era has lacked direction, particularly in the wake of the 50th Anniversary. Moffat may not have been the ideal person to guide the ship while Capaldi was the Doctor, but his casting of this fine actor has proved to be an undeniable asset for Doctor Who.
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Amy Pond and Rory Williams
It seemed like the beginning of a fairy tale. A blue box crash-landed on her garden shed and out jumped a madman with strange hair. The Doctor came crashing into Amelia Pond’s life at a young age, changing her forever. When he next met her, Amelia was all grown up and ready for adventures. Except for one small detail: Amy was now engaged to her childhood friend Rory. So, he came along for the ride too!
The pair encountered vampires; Silents, pirates and gangers. They met Vincent Van Gogh, Hitler and even the TARDIS in human form! They rebooted the universe and met their daughter from the future. The only thing that remained constant was their love for each other (barring that -ahem- brief period of separation in Asylum of the Daleks (2012). Rory even waited 2,000 years guarding his beloved Amy in the Pandorica. Beat that Disney!
The Ponds’ personal life
But travelling with the Doctor has a difficult impact on your personal life. Amy and Rory realised this once they had been sent back in time to New York in 1938 by a Weeping Angel. The story of the Ponds was over. The Doctor was heartbroken, and so was the audience. The Ponds’ humour, life and energy were all significantly responsible for the rebirth of Doctor Who under Steven Moffat. Together, Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill physically resembled a band that resonated with geek hearts in America and around the world.
Many people would expect to see the Ponds’ daughter River Song feature on this list. However, I consider River Song to be one of Steven Moffat’s greatest failings (which we won’t dwell on here) for several reasons. Primary of these is the fact that her character sums up the oft-criticised misogynistic side of Moffat’s writing. Throughout the series, the sexualised River Song’s sole motivation appears to simply be the Doctor. All of her conversations with her daughter Amy or any other female characters are either about the Doctor, Rory or another male character. Not only does this fail many of Moffat’s companions on the Bechdel Test, but it has also undeniably lost Doctor Who many of its fans.
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Classic Monsters
One could argue that Russell T Davies possessed a historical advantage over Moffat from having been showrunner first. This enabled Davies to bring back the most famous monsters from Doctor Who’s long history first, including the Daleks; the Cybermen, the Master, the Sontarans, Davros and, erm, the Macra. It seemed that Moffat was left with the second round of classic monsters with which to bring back. However, Moffat successfully managed to reinvent these original villains, often with a new twist that brought them to a wider audience during his era.
The Silurians; the Cybermats, the Great Intelligence, the Ice Warriors and the Zygons all joined the ranks of fan favourites under Moffat’s watch. Each of these creatures also individually appeared in fantastic stories helmed by capable writers. Several of these returning foes even provided a useful narrative tool for political allegory.
Missy
However, perhaps the most successfully recreated classic-era villain revived for Moffat’s era was Missy, a newly regenerated female incarnation of the Doctor’s childhood nemesis, the Master. Not only did Doctor Who take a progressive step towards a female Doctor through Missy, but she also enabled a deeper and more complex side to the ancient friendship between the Doctor and the Master to be shown to the audience. The Master wasn’t merely the Doctor’s psychotic Gallifreyan rival, he/she was his best friend – the companion that never was. Foolishly, the Doctor believed he could rehabilitate Missy to become a better person, a scheme that backfired spectacularly in World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls.
As if all this wasn’t enough, Moffat decided to pair Missy up with her preceding incarnation played by the masterful John Simm. The two Masters team up to create the original Mondasian Cybermen and ultimately destroy each other in a truly remarkable finale to Series 10. Behind the scenes, Moffat pulled out all the stops for what were to be his final episodes for the programme and it certainly showed in this tense, body-horror drama.
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The Eleventh Doctor
2010 heralded a new age for Doctor Who. Fan favourites David Tennant and Russell T Davies had departed to be replaced by the unknown Matt Smith and the relatively untested Steven Moffat. At 26, Smith was the youngest actor ever to be cast in the role of the Doctor, which left critics concerned. But, by the end of his first season, Smith made the country fall in love with the character all over again. The one constant in Doctor Who is change and Moffat’s writing had enabled Matt Smith to remind us all of that fact.
The raggedy Doctor quickly jumped into his brand new, “sexy” TARDIS and whisked off his companions Amy and Rory for exciting adventures in time and space. Matt Smith delivered all of this with a twinkle and performance that put one in mind of a young man assembled from the memories of a much older man. He may have only been 26, but in many of his first scenes, you could easily believe Smith to be older than William Hartnell.
Moffat’s labyrinth scripts throughout Smith’s celebrated 3-years in the role still hold up well to this day. Breaking with the tradition of one-season arcs, Moffat decided instead to implement season-spanning narrative arcs. This may have added plot pressure on The Time of the Doctor to tie up the loose ends concerning the Silence, the exploding TARDIS, River Song and Clara Oswald. But Moffat just about managed it, while also giving us a beautiful send-off for the noblest Time Lord of them all.
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An All-Female U.N.I.T Family
In the 1960s, 70s and 80s, Doctor Who presented its U.N.I.T family as a stereotypically male military environment, with the Doctor’s companion of the day usually reduced to the role of scientific ‘assistant’ to the Doctor. With the growth of feminism and the development of the female companion in modern Doctor Who, calls began for more inclusive representation of women in the military. Battlefield (1989) had attempted this through Brigadier Winifred Bambera with mixed results after she fell in love with Ancelyn, a knight from another dimension.
However, it was not until The Power of Three (2012) that Kate Stewart, Head of Scientific Research at U.N.I.T, was reintroduced by Moffat as a loving tribute to her character’s father Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart (played by the late Nicholas Courtney). Decisive, brave and a born-leader, Kate quickly became a fan favourite until the emergence of Osgood in The Day of the Doctor (2013).
Widely viewed as an allegory of Doctor Who fans, Osgood was soon amongst the most cosplayed characters at Doctor Who conventions. Despite her insecurities and asthma, Osgood was resilient in the face of a Zygon revolution, helping the Doctor to renegotiate a ceasefire between both humans and Zygons. Her twin Zygon ‘sister’ may have been vaporised by the despicable Missy. But, thankfully our bright, beloved Osgood lived to fight another day by bringing U.N.I.T into the modern age.
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The 50th Anniversary
Huge events marked the sheer scale of the year leading up to the 23rd November 2013. Most of all, the remarkable recovery of The Enemy of the World (1967-68) and The Web of Fear (1968) in October 2013, which achieved higher sales on iTunes than popular TV shows. 2013 was a fantastic year both for Doctor Who and for me personally.
The pressure resting on Steven Moffat’s shoulders as the scribe of Doctor Who’s 50th Anniversary Special was monumental. However, The Day of the Doctor (2013) somehow managed to live up to the near-biblical hype surrounding its simultaneous transmission to 94 countries and global cinema screenings in 3-D. The special had everything: a multi-doctor story with every Doctor featured; U.N.I.T, Zygons, Daleks, Rose, Clara and even the sublime John Hurt as the Doctor’s hitherto unknown incarnation, the War Doctor. But, let’s be honest, the real crowning part about the 50th Anniversary was Tom Baker’s tear-jerking cameo as the Curator of the National Gallery. Just to see those iconic big blue eyes and teeth staring down in wild eccentricity from the 3-D cinema screen was a joy to behold. It was certainly the highlight of The Day of the Doctor and a triumphant success for Moffat.
Did the return of Gallifrey help or hurt?
The primary reason that the 50th Anniversary doesn’t quite reach the top spot on this list is that it felt a bit too much like the finale to end all finales. Moffat made The Day of the Doctor feel like the ideal ending to the new series, and resultantly fans have viewed 2013 as Moffat’s peak in his time as showrunner. Since Peter Capaldi became the Doctor, his tenure has been dealing with the consequences of the 50th, showing that it was indeed a turning point for the programme. Perhaps, but hopefully not, the highest heights the show will ever scale.
My main issue with the 50th was that the Doctor finally absolves himself of his part in the ending of the Time War. How? Through changing his own history by teaming up with all of his previous incarnations to save Gallifrey. What seemed to be a masterstroke on Moffat’s part during my initial viewing of The Day of the Doctor was perhaps, in hindsight, a mistake. In doing so, Moffat removed one of the most interesting character traits that we had seen in the Doctor since the revival: his guilt. Several years on, Moffat still expresses regret regarding his decision to reverse the outcome of the Time War. He worries that it seemingly undermined the complex narrative work by his predecessor Russell T Davies. He’s not far wrong. The return of Gallifrey was underwhelming when it came just two years later in the abominable Hell Bent (2015).
And wasn’t the Time War just so much better when it was a big, unknowable conflict only spoken about in whispers? Instead, we started receiving action scenes and copious amounts of exposition in Big Finish audios.
The 50th should have explained or justified the Doctor’s actions in destroying his people for the sake of ending the Time War. The Tenth and Eleventh Doctors activate the Moment with the War Doctor, thereby redeeming their hitherto forgotten incarnation. Then the three Doctors could use their harrowing experience to teach the humans and Zygons a moral lesson about the cost/benefit analysis of wiping out an entire species.
Who knows? Perhaps more exciting adventures on Gallifrey in the future will help to justify Moffat’s actions in the 50th. I have yet to be persuaded.
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Increased International Popularity
Only just pipped to the post, Doctor Who‘s increased international popularity swoops into second place on this list. Steven Moffat’s writing has elevated the programme to a worldwide audience, on a scale that few other British shows have enjoyed. Doctor Who does owe some of this success to the global popularity of Moffat’s other primetime show, Sherlock. The complex, multi-layered plots of both programmes, combined with their dashing leading stars and quintessential Britishness, has captured the television pulse of America and by extension the world.
Doctor Who even embarked on a World Tour to promote the launch of Series 8 in August 2014. New Doctor Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman and Steven Moffat travelled to seven different cities to meet thousands of fans in all corners of the globe. It was extraordinary to witness Mexican fans in Sombreros waving sonic screwdrivers and Korean fans wearing Dalek helmets in the crowds. It seems that Doctor Who is now an unstoppable force thanks to the promotion of the BBC and, above all, the direction of Steven Moffat as showrunner.
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The Weeping Angels
What else could it be? Incredibly, ten years have passed since Steven’s lamenting statues from hell first menaced the children of my generation. Blink not only became an instant classic, it also became a hit with non-fans of Doctor Who. It also proved that a Doctor-lite episode could be both accessible and frightening, thanks in most part to the Weeping Angels themselves.
Sadly, every subsequent appearance of the Angels has fallen under the rule of diminishing returns. Narratively, Moffat often raises the stakes far too high, leaving the only viable conclusion a cop-out such as the odd Teselecta or Puddle Girl. Such cop-outs have been evident in more recent stories featuring the Weeping Angels, particularly The Angels Take Manhattan (2012). I also strongly doubt that we will ever get to see the mouth-watering prospect of an Angel Civil War, as teased at the end of the first series of the recently cancelled Class.
Moffat often takes an everyday item or icon and turns it into something scary, a technique that Doctor Who has used for decades. Gas mask zombies, clockwork robots, shadows and the Silence have all proved to be popular Moffat creations, but none as lucrative as the Weeping Angels. No one ever imagined that a monster from the new era would rank alongside Classic fan favourites such as the Daleks and the Cybermen. However, the brilliant Steven Moffat managed it, and for that, we should be eternally grateful.