Steven Moffat - PR Nightmare

[JRoss]

No it doesn't. The show premiered to massive ratings in the US at Season 5 because of an extraordinary campaign, where everyone in the country was bombarded with ads. While the current crew worked hard, they would not have gotten that start if it weren't for RTD's groundwork. If the show wasn't doing such a fantastic job in the fourth/specials seasons the Beeb would not have invested in it as they had.

 

[Starkers]

Hang on, is this the same BBC that gave serious consideration to canning the show when RTD and Tennant left?

 

[Scotchy]

He's probably still mad they couldn't get Hugh Laurie on the show. I'm convinced that's what they wanted - House as The Doctor. Capaldi standing there with his googley blue eyes, wayfarer's and electric guitar.... it seems rather House-ish. They also resemble each other quite a bit. Just my 2 cents.
Maybe Moffat needs a long, long vacation if he's too stressed.

 

[StCoop]

No it doesn't. The show premiered to massive ratings in the US at Season 5 because of an extraordinary campaign, where everyone in the country was bombarded with ads. While the current crew worked hard, they would not have gotten that start if it weren't for RTD's groundwork. If the show wasn't doing such a fantastic job in the fourth/specials seasons the Beeb would not have invested in it as they had.

Exactly. It's not contradictory to say that Moffat and Smith had a boost to their launch which helped at the start but that the continued success was then down to them.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Hang on, is this the same BBC that gave serious consideration to canning the show when RTD and Tennant left?

No, it wasn't. It was a different arm at a remove from the decision-makers on the show's future that decided to invest in marketing the series. It was BBC America that decided to spend a lot of marketing money on Doctor Who in 2010, and their efforts, I would argue, have been beneficial to the program's visibility overall.

 

[JRoss]

^This.

 

[Flibble]

I saw Steven Moffat's talk at the Radio Times festival back in September. I was not impressed with his attitude and he swore in his talk then and there were plenty of kids present then. I went to the Doctor Festival on Friday and saw him talk and my opinion of him has still not changed!

 

[davejames]

RTD was largely terrible IMO. You want a lot of the Doctor mooning over his companion and running around frantically, waving his sonic screwdriver at everything? RTD is your man. I watched the last Tennant episode and said "Well, screw it. This is terrible. I guess I'm done with 'Dr. Who.'" Luckily I decided to try on "The 11th Hour" and was back because Smith and Moffatt were, to me, everything "Dr. Who" should be.

Moffat started out well, but these last two years have shown that a change probably wouldn't be bad for the show at this point.

Yeah unfortunately I have to agree. I'm a big Moffat fan and thought his time-twisty, fairytale style was an absolutely perfect match with Smith's Doctor (and even when the episodes weren't great it was still fun to watch Moffat's imagination run wild, or to watch Smith do his thing).

But for some reason things just haven't clicked as well with Capaldi's Doctor. There have been some fun and fantastic episodes here and there, but the rhythm just seems to be off somehow and I just don't find myself as excited about the show as I was before. Which is strange, because Capaldi is clearly freakin fantastic in the role.

 

[Relayer1]

I'm a fan of Moffat's in as much as he wrote my favourite RTD era scripts and that I think his tenure as showrunner is actually better than RTD's. I like Capaldi too.

However, I'm just losing interest in Who. Too much of it over too long. It's run its course.

The BBC should rest it for a bit.

Again...

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

I'd be curious what the BBC would be looking for in Moffat's replacement.

I truly think the show would benefit from an American producer, especially one with experience running a Writer's Room. Ira Steven Behr, formerly of Deep Space Nine, now with Outlander, might be a really good choice.

As someone who absolutely loved DS9, I would be super-stoked for Behr to take the post.

I've always wondered why they haven't gotten Chibnall to take on greater responsibility, if not on Doctor Who then on running a Paternoster Gang spin-off or something. After all, wasn't he responsible for a lot of the day-to-day operations of the writers' room on Torchwood.

Bring back RTD!

Steady on, let's not forget how bad a lot of the episodes he oversaw were. Jeez, he wrote many of the worst...

Yeah. At the very least, "Love & Monsters" is almost unforgivable. Even at Moffat's worst ("A Good Man Goes to War," "The Magician's Apprentice"), he was never that bad.

And I'll always take Moffat's timey-wimey excesses over RTD's goddam Rose-worshiping soap opera.

Although, I will admit that Moffat's more recent work hasn't been as strong as Seasons 5 & 6.

No it doesn't. The show premiered to massive ratings in the US at Season 5 because of an extraordinary campaign, where everyone in the country was bombarded with ads. While the current crew worked hard, they would not have gotten that start if it weren't for RTD's groundwork. If the show wasn't doing such a fantastic job in the fourth/specials seasons the Beeb would not have invested in it as they had.

IIRC, the show's best ratings in the U.K. were during Season 1. So who gets the credit for that? JNT? Or maybe the guys that made the 1996 movie?

 

[StCoop]

IIRC, the show's best ratings in the U.K. were during Season 1.

You don't recall correctly.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I've always wondered why they haven't gotten Chibnall to take on greater responsibility, if not on Doctor Who then on running a Paternoster Gang spin-off or something. After all, wasn't he responsible for a lot of the day-to-day operations of the writers' room on Torchwood.

I don't think Chibnall is the right choice for a Paternoster Gang series. (Yes, in spite of my antipathy toward the idea of a Paternoster Gang spin-off, I've given thoughts about who could do it and how it could be done.) The ideal producer, imho, would be Gatiss. He can do a Victorian pastiche in his sleep.

 

[JRoss]

What about Love and Monsters do Moffat fans hate so much? Is it the people meeting the Doctor out of sync, the inappropriate sex joke, the surreal comedy, the jabs at the audience and the meta references? Because Moff does all of those.

 

[StCoop]

What about Love and Monsters do Moffat fans hate so much? Is it the people meeting the Doctor out of sync, the inappropriate sex joke, the surreal comedy, the jabs at the audience and the meta references? Because Moff does all of those.

It even beat "Sleep No More" to the 'unrelaible narative that probably didn't happen the way we see it' by nearly 10 years.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

He's uninspired. He keeps using the same twists over and over again.

 

[Mr Light]

It never ceases to astound me how fans hold polar opposite views of one another. So many people here despise my favorite parts and applaud my least favorite bits. Different strokes...

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

IIRC, the show's best ratings in the U.K. were during Season 1.

You don't recall correctly.

Really? Which season did get the best ratings?

What about Love and Monsters do Moffat fans hate so much? Is it the people meeting the Doctor out of sync, the inappropriate sex joke, the surreal comedy, the jabs at the audience and the meta references? Because Moff does all of those.

The jabs at the audience are part of it. Making fun of geeks on a geeky show is a very fine line to walk. "Love & Monsters" ended up on the wrong side of that line. On the other hand, Torchwood did a similar episode far more successfully with "Random Shoes." (For another example, Dr. Felger on Stargate SG-1 was something of a spoof of an SG-1 fanboy. And while I really enjoyed his first episode, "The Other Guys," I hated his second episode, "Avenger 2.0." IMO, "Avenger 2.0" occupies the same category as "Love & Monsters" as a godawful episode that I refuse to watch a 2nd time.)

And the way Ursula was partially resurrected as a paving slab was just kinda horrific & grotesque. I would have been less traumatized had the Doctor just let her stay dead.

 

[StCoop]

Really? Which season did get the best ratings?

Series 4, which finished with the only regular episode to hit top of the Ratings for the week. (And I think it was in the Top 5 for all TV shows in the UK that year too.)

Except for 'Rose', Series 1's ratings were good but relatively modest. (Better than this year but nowhere near the top.)

 

[Mr Light]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doctor_Who_serials

The highest rated episode is Voyage of the Damned 13.31m, The Next Doctor 13.10m, Day of the Doctor 12.80m, End of Time Part Two 12.27m, Christmas Carol 12.11m, End of Time Part One 12.04m, Time of Doctor 11.14m.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Well, those don't count because they're all specials. What about regular episodes?