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Things to go when Moffat leaves

FreddyE

Captain
Captain
If I understand correctly how it works in the UK, then everything Moffat created (Characters, etc.) can only be used with his permission after he left, right? So what exactly does that include? And what will we actually miss?

Vastra and Co comes to mind and River of course.
 
The Weeping Angels would be the biggie. Assuming that's how it works, I'm not certain it does these days but someone more in the know will probably clarify this.

River's story must surely be done now, and given that Moffat's shown no desire to return to the Paternoster Gang post Deep Breath I suspect we've seen the last of them as well (outside of BF obviously!) though I'd quote like to see them one more time.
 
Weren't the Angels introduced before Moffat?? I mean, he might have been a writer, but he wasn't showrunner then, right?
 
He created them. As I say I don't know if it works the same as it did when Terry Nation created the Daleks.
 
I'm not sure how things work now, but I believe once upon a time, if you were BBC staff, your ideas belonged to the BBC. However, if you were a freelance writer, you retained the rights. I have wondered how that works now because it may well have changed.

Mr Awe
 
Weren't the Angels introduced before Moffat?? I mean, he might have been a writer, but he wasn't showrunner then, right?
Moffat owns the Weeping Angels, he was credited as their creator on the copyright page of the novel they were featured in.

I think you're confusing things with Captain Jack. Jack was RTD's creation who just happened to be introduced in an episode written by Moffat.
 
Well, I was confused since I asumed that the legal rights would be with the showrunner of the time or the studios. But if it is stated clearly that Moffat owns the rights to them, it's as simple as that.
 
I remember hearing that In the old days there was some clause about if a writer's invention/character got used a certain amount of times in a certain time frame it was considered native to the show and they didn't retain the rights, but for one-off things they did.
I'm not an expert on it, but there's something like that.
 
If I understand correctly how it works in the UK, then everything Moffat created (Characters, etc.) can only be used with his permission after he left, right? So what exactly does that include? And what will we actually miss?

As Mr. Awe said, I think that anything created by a member of the show's staff belongs to the show, as distinct from something created by a freelancer. That's why, for instance, the credits of "Hell Bent" include "Daleks created by Terry Nation" and "Cybermen created by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis," but don't include "Time Lords created by Terrance Dicks and Derrick Sherwin," because Dicks and Sherwin were on the show's staff when they created the Time Lords. This is also why Robert Holmes gets a creator credit for the Sontarans but not for Rassilon -- because he was a freelancer when he wrote "The Time Warrior" but had become script editor when he wrote "The Deadly Assassin."

And even for things Moffat created as a freelancer, like the Weeping Angels, why assume they couldn't be used again? Sure, his permission would be needed, but why wouldn't he grant that permission? There have only been a few times in the past when such permission has been denied, like the couple of times when Terry Nation or his estate withdrew permission to use the Daleks. The new series has used lots of monsters and characters created by earlier writers or producers -- Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Ice Warriors, Silurians, etc. -- and Moffat was able to use RTD characters like the Tenth Doctor and Rose.

Now, whether a new showrunner wants to keep using the previous showrunner's characters and ideas is another matter. Moffat generally avoided reusing RTD characters and focused on his own, and Chris Chibnall might want to do the same. But that doesn't mean he couldn't use Moffat-era characters if he wanted to.
 
IIRC, the BBC caught up after the Daleks, and included an option to reuse all creations in the freelance writers' contracts. So the BBC has to pay royalties, but the original writer has no veto over reuse. It's just polite and simpler (as a legal challenge would be problematical, even if it failed) to get their approval.
Things have obviously evolved between 1989 and 2005 though, as Pedler, Hulke etc didn't get on-screen credits in the old days, but do now.
 
It's odd to realize that Doctor Who as a whole has, as far as I know, never had a "Created by" credit like most shows do. Even the show's wiki basically says it was created by the BBC. I guess there are so many people who had a hand in the creative process that it's hard to narrow it down. If any one person deserves credit for the initial idea and character, it's Sydney Newman. Wikipedia credits it to him, Donald Wilson, and C.E Webber, since they wrote the initial series format document. By traditional US practice, the writer of the pilot, Anthony Coburn, could be entitled to creator credit as well.
 
Newman has said that he could, with hindsight, have given himself a Created by credit on Who and Avengers, but it wasn't the done thing, and it would have complicated his day job as head of drama as he'd have had to do the same on all the other series developed by his staff writers and producers.
 
Newman has said that he could, with hindsight, have given himself a Created by credit on Who and Avengers, but it wasn't the done thing, and it would have complicated his day job as head of drama as he'd have had to do the same on all the other series developed by his staff writers and producers.

I see. It's interesting how different the show-creation process is/was than in the US, much more in-house. I suppose there's some merit to saying that it was "created by the BBC."
 
My wording was slightly ambiguous, I meant he'd have had to give them credit for stuff where he had no real input into the initial concept (beyond saying "That series isn't working. End it at part 13 and propose something on the same budget to fill the slot for the remaining 13 weeks").
 
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Public funded television owned by the British people. And in 1963 there was only the BBC. There wasn't even a BBC 2 yet. Just the BBC and ITV.
 
But it doesn't give British people any rights to the material produced. They stay at the BBC or other creator.
 
I suppose it's unlikely that we'll see River Song or the Paternoster Gang again after Moffat leaves. But then, I doubt we'll see them again during Moffat's final season either. "The Husbands of River Song" seemed to pretty thoroughly cap off her adventures, and no one besides Moffat was ever allowed to write for her for TV anyway. As for the Paternoster Gang, I think Moffat has pretty much said that there are only so many man-eating lesbian lizard-woman jokes you can make before it gets old.

As for the Weeping Angels, I think it's a bit more likely that we'll see them again. Even if they had to ask for permission, I think they'd get it. After all, Russell T. Davies creations such as the Ood, the Judoon, & the Shadow Proclamation have reappeared multiple times during the Moffat era. I suppose the one tricky thing would be finding ways to fit them in. Because of their specific nature, you can't just throw them into the background as random aliens like you can with the Ood & Judoon.
 
I think the Weeping Angels are one of those concepts that get less impressive each time they're reused. "Blink" was amazing, "The Time of Angels"/"Flesh and Stone" was good but stretched the concept a bit too much in some ways, "The Angels Take Manhattan" was idiotic, and everything since has just been a cameo. I'd just as soon not see them again.
 
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