Steven Moffat Urges Patience on Doctor Who’s Future, Warns Writers Must Entertain, Not Lecture
Steven Moffat has urged Doctor Who fans to give the show time after the BBC confirmed it will be put out to competitive tender, saying he is confident the long-running sci-fi series “will be back, and it will be good”.
The former Doctor Who showrunner addressed the future of the programme during an appearance on Half the Picture, where he was asked about the series being “back in the headlines” amid renewed discussion about what comes next.
“So long as everybody is talking about the future of the show, do you know what the show has? A future,” Moffat said.
He added that, if Doctor Who is entering a new era with a new creative team, those involved should be given space to work out what the next version of the series should be.
“If it’s an entirely new team, which I think it will be, they need a moment,” he said. “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?”
Moffat continued: “Don’t go rushing into that, and meanwhile you’ve got all of Doctor Who, all of it, on your iPhone. You can sit and watch anything that we haven’t accidentally lost, and you’ll be fine. Just watch it all end to end and give them time to get them going. But it will be back and it will be good.”
Asked if he was “absolutely confident”, Moffat replied: “That’s not insider knowledge. I just know how stuff works. And a show that’s talked about as endlessly as that isn’t going anywhere. Promise you.”
Earlier in the interview, Moffat also shared his view on what makes good writing, arguing that the first job of any television show, film or play is to entertain.
“They never mention the word entertainment, which is the minimum condition of anything you write,” Moffat said. “Not theme, which some poor sods ask me about, and not subtext. Oh, do me a favour. It’s entertainment. That’s all you’re doing.”
He continued: “When people come home at night to watch a TV show or go to the cinema to watch a movie or the theatre, that’s all they’re going for. They’re not going there for your thoughts on things. They’re not wanting to decode the inner mystery of it. They want you to provide approximately 90 minutes of entertainment so they can go to a restaurant and have a nice time. That’s it.”
Moffat added that deeper ideas still have a place in storytelling, provided they do not get in the way of keeping an audience engaged.
“If you’re anything beyond that, if you have deep philosophical insights, that’s fine, so long as it doesn’t get in the way of being entertaining,” he said.
The writer also argued that good storytelling depends on constantly pulling the audience forward.
“You should always be thinking what’s the next interesting thing that could happen? What would be exciting now?” he said. “The simple rule is every sentence has to make you want to read the next sentence. All the words should lean forward. That’s what you’re doing. You’re trying not to bore people.”
While Moffat was speaking broadly, his comments are likely to resonate with Doctor Who fans as discussion continues over the show’s future and what the next version of the series should look like.
