Ooh, don't think Neil Gaiman will be back any time soon...
- Thread starter StCoop
- Start date
I feel like the headline and article oversells what little Gaiman actually said about Moffat's "No Girls Allowed" writers club. I see sarcasm, not "strong words" or "a rather pointed critique." Even mild sarcasm from a Hugo Award-winner isn't likely to prod Moffat to hire a female freelancer for series 9; it doesn't seem that Moffat has women writers on his radar.
I hope that if they need a female writer they know it doesn't necessarily have to be Helen Raynor.
Just because Mr. Gaiman made a slightly sarcastic remark (and a fairly clever one, at that), I doubt that means he won't write another Who episode in the near future. That's ridiculous.
Doctorwhovian
Fleet Captain
Good. His handling of the Christopher Handley thing was disgusting. He needs serious help.
Would you please elaborate?
Everything I know about this comes from a quick Wiki article, which basically says ...
How was Gaiman's handling of the case disgusting?
Yeah, this explanation ought to be good.
^I foresee another thread closure coming.
The prospect of a Rowling episode doesn't excite me, for reasons that have nothing to do with Harry Potter. My issue with Rowling is that she has virtually no experience writing screenplays. (The "virtually no" caveat is important; isn't she writing the "Fabulous Beasts" script?) She would be a huge "get" for Who, but she'd be learning on the job to write the script. Novelists don't always make good screenwriters. F. Scott Fitzgerald famously went to Hollywood and produced nothing that could be filmed. Lawrence Miles' attempt at a Doctor Who script is a shitty, unfilmable script. Writing a script requires a different set of skills than writing a novel, in a far more restrictive format.
If she wants to write a Who episode, that's great, but it would be a "for love, not money" project for her, and she would find it would be more work than she bargained for. She would discover the hassle of the rewrites, the edits, and timing. Plus, she would earn a pittance compared to what she would make on a book contract. I think there's a very high probability she would say, "Thanks, but no thanks," and walk away once she discovered what she'd gotten herself into.
And Gaiman has commented further, taking things even further away from the headline....
http://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/99674633596/interestingly-i-just-saw-the-ask-about-who-writers-as
Try not to giggle at the "Moffat always reaching out for female writers" line.
*giggles*
http://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/99674633596/interestingly-i-just-saw-the-ask-about-who-writers-as
Try not to giggle at the "Moffat always reaching out for female writers" line.
*giggles*
I wonder if Jane Goldman is someone who wss approached but turned down the offer.
Could someone who's knowledgeable about that kind of things name a couple of female British writers with experience in writing television scripts, interest in genre fiction and who would potentially be interested in writing for Doctor Who?
So the show needs a quota system now? I suppose in that case we should start keeping count of how many black, asian, catholic, muslim, or gay (okay they're covered there) writers have worked on the show.
Unless somewhere theres a quote from Moffat saying "I don't think a woman can write Doctor Who". I chalk this up as yet more fannish bitching.
Unless somewhere theres a quote from Moffat saying "I don't think a woman can write Doctor Who". I chalk this up as yet more fannish bitching.
*(emphasis mine)*
Indeed. I don't give a rat's ass who writes the show; I just want it to be well-written.
Do they have to be British? Is that a BBC requirement or is it just something that is traditional.
I hope he won't be back, I don't think his style is right for the show.
As a massive fan of Neil Gaiman, I'm slightly inclined to agree. Gaiman is someone who specializes in dark fantasy. Adult fairy tales, if you will. It's why The Doctor's Wife was fantastic and Nightmare in Silver was a bit less than fantastic. The whole fairy tale angle worked really well for the Eleventh Doctor, but I don't think it would work to the same level with Twelve.
It's a simple problem: good writer does not mean good script writer.
I know one female novelist who would love to write for Doctor Who... but she's never written a script (four or more novels so far, but no produced scripts).
Suspect that if you really hunted for them, then there are a lot of female writers who could write very good Doctor Who.
Whereas Helen Rayner was, bluntly, slotted in to write the 2007 Dalek story when Moffat couldn't do it (he wrote Blink instead), and Russell T has said that he regrets that he didn't do more editing work on it (as he normally did, but he was too busy at the time).
But Helen Rayner writing a story (and doing it well, I thought, the next season) was basically an extension of the Casualty model of script editor-becomes-writer-and eventually becomes producer and finally executive producer (which is why Casualty and Holby City are now cursed with Oliver Kent as their ultimate boss). If the New York Dalek story was poor, that was more to do with the concept not working and needing a touch of genius to make it take off than any flaws in her script.
I know one female novelist who would love to write for Doctor Who... but she's never written a script (four or more novels so far, but no produced scripts).
Suspect that if you really hunted for them, then there are a lot of female writers who could write very good Doctor Who.
Whereas Helen Rayner was, bluntly, slotted in to write the 2007 Dalek story when Moffat couldn't do it (he wrote Blink instead), and Russell T has said that he regrets that he didn't do more editing work on it (as he normally did, but he was too busy at the time).
But Helen Rayner writing a story (and doing it well, I thought, the next season) was basically an extension of the Casualty model of script editor-becomes-writer-and eventually becomes producer and finally executive producer (which is why Casualty and Holby City are now cursed with Oliver Kent as their ultimate boss). If the New York Dalek story was poor, that was more to do with the concept not working and needing a touch of genius to make it take off than any flaws in her script.
