Doctor Who: Peter Capaldi is still a huge defender of Steven Moffat
By James Aggas
Peter Capaldi had some strong words of support for Doctor Who’s former showrunner Steven Moffat during Fan Expo Boston 2019.
I think it’s fair to say that Steven Moffat’s run on Doctor Who was often divisive. While many of us fans loved his era, others didn’t. Naturally, many were vocal about what they hated about his era at least as much as what they loved.
But one man who you won’t find criticizing Moffat is Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi. Over a year and a half since both left the show, and Capaldi still has a lot of positive things to say about the former showrunner, as revealed during his panel at Fan Expo Boston 2019. In fact, Capaldi has stated that Moffat wrote a lot more than he was credited for.
"The writers’ name that appears at the start [of an episode] isn’t always the writer that did the best work."
Capaldi then went on to elaborate just how much effort Moffat put into making a script work.
"Sometimes the writer whose name you see [on-screen] didn’t deliver a script that was so great. The person that has to sit up all night and make that script work is Steven."
His run on Doctor Who might have been divisive, but Steven Moffat will always have support from former Doctor Peter Capaldi.
(Photo by Tabatha Fireman/Getty Images)
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Strong show of support
In some ways, this isn’t surprising. In interviews with both Steven Moffat and his predecessor Russell T Davies, it’s clear that the showrunning job for Doctor Who has always involved extremely hard and intense work. Not just with writing your own scripts, but also handling others to make it fit with the narrative and the vision that you want for the series.
Still, it’s fantastic that Peter Capaldi still has such praise for Moffat, even now.
"Steven will not take credit for the incredible jobs he did on some other writers’ things, and some of the incredible invention that he brought some scripts that were in trouble."
And for those that didn’t have nice things to say about Moffat’s era, Capaldi even has words for them.
"A lot of people who have negative things to say about Steven do not have a clue… about the stories and the scripts that he did, many of which those same people love. He’s an incredible writer."
While I don’t think his run was perfect, I do agree with Capaldi. Steven Moffat is and has often been a brilliant writer, and has given us so many great Doctor Who stories. More than that, he’s also written some brilliant series outside of Doctor Who, including Sherlock, Jekyll, and one of the greatest British farces ever made, Coupling. Showrunning is clearly a tricky job, so it’s lovely to see that, to this day, Capaldi still has so much respect for Moffat.
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What are your views on Steven Moffat? Do you hold him in as much high esteem as Capaldi clearly does? Or do you think Moffat’s run in Doctor Who could’ve been handled better? Let us know in the comments below.