Moffat: Series 7 “A bit later”
Speaking to The Daily Beast, Moffat cleared up a few of the rumours and denied that the show has been reduced because of budget cuts.
“Absolute nonsense. First of all, we are airing in 2012. The only thing that’s happening is that we’re moving a bit later,” he explained. “There’s lots of reasons for that that will become clear quite soon…It is certainly not a reduced episode count. Do you think the BBC would really let that happen? With an average audience of 10 million?…Doctor Who’s international profile is huge. It’s never been more successful. You’re not going to reduce a show like this. The opposite is going to happen, in fact.”
Moffat was asked if he had an exit planned for Matt Smith yet: “In the vaguest terms, I’ve already thought, what would be the last stand? What would be the most heroic way to go? Which I might use when that terrible day comes. But not an exit strategy. I don’t want to think that the stories are finite; I want to feel that they can go on forever.”
And as for Moffat’s own future on the show: “I’ll run out of stamina before I run out of ideas is the absolute truth, because I am living a life without a single day off…So, at a certain point, that may prove to be too much. I’m not feeling that right now. I love doing it. I slightly dread the idea of leaving, to be honest. It would be really hard to feel that the Doctor isn’t mine anymore…That day did come for Russell, and he did say to me, because I was asking how he felt, ‘I love it as much as I ever have, but I just don’t want to do it anymore.’ Neither of us would know ourselves if we didn’t love Doctor Who. That would be so terrible to lose that…The same was true for David [Tennant]. I had to deal with him during that time, he’s a friend.”
Moffat also said that Series 7 will see a return to less arc-heavy story: “[Series 6] is the most arc-intensive we’ve ever been and I’m throwing the lever the other way next year.”