Steven Moffat's replacement selected?

[Christopher]

And it's the one thing which annoys me the most about the Moffat era. Time travel hijinks are fine every now and then, but when it becomes a regular thing every season, even part of the running arc going through the season. Hell, everyone always wants to point out the Daleks are overused and the classic era went long spurts without them, well, what about this? The classic era rarely ever did a story which was actually about time travel, hell even the RTD era never really did one outside of the Moffat scripts. And now it's a staple of the show to the point that the term "timey-wimey" is itself a catchphrase to describe the whole thing.

I dunno... It's hard for me to complain about a show whose main character is a time traveller actually using time travel as a story device. Moffat does tend to fall back on the same particular paradoxes and tricks over and over, but that doesn't mean using the potential of time travel itself is intrinsically a problem, just that he could stand to vary his approach to it some.

Perhaps we will see the return of the Trickster, the Shopkeeper and his Captain.

I don't know about the Trickster. Gareth Roberts actually owns that character (presumably, he's written every episode to feature him) so Phil Ford being in charge doesn't mean we'll see him again. Hell, Roberts could probably have used him anytime in DW that he wanted.

I feel the Trickster was overused enough as it was. But the Captain and the Shopkeeper were kind of a dropped thread -- we never found out what the deal was with them. I wouldn't mind seeing them brought back just for the sake of tying off that loose end.

Of course, this is all based on an unconfirmed rumor, isn't it? They haven't actually verified that Moffat's even leaving, let alone who his replacement is, have they?

 

[RoJoHen]

One weird thing that I've noticed about Moffat's episodes is that I almost always have to watch them twice to fully appreciate them. He jams so much information into a single episode that they sometimes feel like a convoluted mess.

"The Wedding of River Song" and "The Time of the Doctor" are two prime examples. The first time I saw them, there was so much crap happening that I could barely follow the story, and I really didn't enjoy them. However, upon watching them a second time (and usually in conjunction with a re-watch of the entire season) they turned into some of my favorite episodes.

 

[Mr Light]

While using time travel was too underused in the classic series, and even in the RTD era... I think Moffat has always gone way too far in the opposite direction. I'd like to find a middle ground.

 

[RoJoHen]

I dunno. He toned it down quite a bit with this last season. There were obviously some goofy time travel quirks with the River/Silence story, and there were some to a lesser extent with The Impossible Girl, but the last season with Capaldi was mostly just a lot of standalone adventures.

 

[Christopher]

...but the last season with Capaldi was mostly just a lot of standalone adventures.

Even to a fault. At first it seemed like there was an arc or theme being set up, with the Doctor saying "I've made a lot of mistakes and it's time to do something about it," but then he proceeded to... not do a damn thing about it and just wander around making even more mistakes. He was doing all those calculations on chalkboards in the first few episodes, which built to... absolutely no payoff of any kind. It's like there was a plan that got abandoned less than halfway through, as the emphasis shifted to Clara and Danny's relationship arc.

 

[DWF]

...but the last season with Capaldi was mostly just a lot of standalone adventures.

Even to a fault. At first it seemed like there was an arc or theme being set up, with the Doctor saying "I've made a lot of mistakes and it's time to do something about it," but then he proceeded to... not do a damn thing about it and just wander around making even more mistakes. He was doing all those calculations on chalkboards in the first few episodes, which built to... absolutely no payoff of any kind. It's like there was a plan that got abandoned less than halfway through, as the emphasis shifted to Clara and Danny's relationship arc.

Or the chalk calulations, Missy and the search for Gallirey as well as righting the wrongs of his life is a part of larger stroy arc. It took years for Moffat to explain River Song's story arc and really we gota lackluster conclusion to that as wel.

 

[RoJoHen]

...but the last season with Capaldi was mostly just a lot of standalone adventures.

Even to a fault. At first it seemed like there was an arc or theme being set up, with the Doctor saying "I've made a lot of mistakes and it's time to do something about it," but then he proceeded to... not do a damn thing about it and just wander around making even more mistakes. He was doing all those calculations on chalkboards in the first few episodes, which built to... absolutely no payoff of any kind. It's like there was a plan that got abandoned less than halfway through, as the emphasis shifted to Clara and Danny's relationship arc.

I agree. I rather enjoyed the first few episodes of the season, but then I had a hard time caring about anything else going on. I don't mind when stories focus on the companions more than the Doctor; I love the Amy/Rory/River episodes.

I just had the impression that the storytellers didn't quite know what this season was supposed to accomplish. They dropped the whole Gallifrey storyline until the finale, and that ended up being a bust. Even the mystery surrounding Missy was ignored for half the episodes, and that payoff was lame and confusing.

I know some people prefer standalone adventures, but I've gotten so used to arc storytelling that I expect a little more cohesion between episodes.

The only coherent theme of the season was "the Doctor apparently forgets how to tell the difference between old people and young people" and "Clara becomes a bitch." I enjoy Clara, but her story arc this season was atrocious.

 

[The Wormhole]

And it's the one thing which annoys me the most about the Moffat era. Time travel hijinks are fine every now and then, but when it becomes a regular thing every season, even part of the running arc going through the season. Hell, everyone always wants to point out the Daleks are overused and the classic era went long spurts without them, well, what about this? The classic era rarely ever did a story which was actually about time travel, hell even the RTD era never really did one outside of the Moffat scripts. And now it's a staple of the show to the point that the term "timey-wimey" is itself a catchphrase to describe the whole thing.

I dunno... It's hard for me to complain about a show whose main character is a time traveller actually using time travel as a story device. Moffat does tend to fall back on the same particular paradoxes and tricks over and over, but that doesn't mean using the potential of time travel itself is intrinsically a problem, just that he could stand to vary his approach to it some.

It's a combination of things. Maybe time travel as a plot device was under-utilized before Moffat took over, indeed several novels written in the "wilderness years" of the show's hiatus have done time travel stories exactly because the show rarely touched the matter. But, like Mr Light says above, Moffat took went from one extreme to another. A better middle ground would be to do one episode per season where you pour all the timey-wimey and the paradoxes and whatever into. We can have fun figuring out how it all fits together, than next week we're onto something else. Doing a complex multi-year arc of temporal paradoxes really is too much.

Even the mystery surrounding Missy was ignored for half the episodes, and that payoff was lame and confusing.

What exactly is confusing about it? Missy is the Master regenerated into female form. Pretty straight forward to me and not the least bit confusing. The only thing left in the air on the matter is how she escaped time-locked Gallifrey, but that's par for the course for the Master, the classic era never satisfactorily explained how he survived almost certain death. Hell, in all Who, it's RTD that has gone into the most detail regarding the Master's surviving apparent death.

 

[RoJoHen]

Even the mystery surrounding Missy was ignored for half the episodes, and that payoff was lame and confusing.

What exactly is confusing about it? Missy is the Master regenerated into female form. Pretty straight forward to me and not the least bit confusing. The only thing left in the air on the matter is how she escaped time-locked Gallifrey, but that's par for the course for the Master, the classic era never satisfactorily explained how he survived almost certain death. Hell, in all Who, it's RTD that has gone into the most detail regarding the Master's surviving apparent death.

Maybe "confusing" wasn't the right word. I wasn't really talking about the reveal that Missy was the Master. I was more referring to her "master plan" (no pun intended) during the season. And again, like the season itself, it started out okay. Mystery woman collects dead people in "The Promised Land," and somehow she knows the Doctor. But then it turns out that those dead people are souls stored in a data cloud that Missy is planning to turn into rain in order to transform the world in Cybermen. It was a weird plan.

But you mentioned Gallifrey. That should have been one of the first things The Doctor brought up when he found out she was The Master. "Hey, Missy, how the hell did you manage to escape Gallifrey?!"

 

[Ithekro]

Most of the Master's plans have been overly complex and long in details...and doomed to failure because he always overlooked something due himself thinking he was in total control and generally getting defeated by a backfire from one of his alllies/slaves. The Doctor use to just point out the problem directly once the Master relieved his plans.

As for Moffat's long arc plot tha involve time travel, usually by the time we get to the payoff the audiance has figured it out, but doesn't want that to be the answer because the answer tended to be the obvious one. The one the fan bases seems to reject when it comes up early on as being too simple. Or sometimes seeming out of place until one goes back and reviews the episodes a second time with the knowledge of the ending, than it generally makes perfect sense, but the mind doesn't want it to make sense out of order like that.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

I dunno... It's hard for me to complain about a show whose main character is a time traveller actually using time travel as a story device. Moffat does tend to fall back on the same particular paradoxes and tricks over and over, but that doesn't mean using the potential of time travel itself is intrinsically a problem, just that he could stand to vary his approach to it some.

Agreed. The best thing of his tenure is the frequent timey-whimey-ness of the story arcs, especially in regards to the fifth series' Crack-in-the-universe arc.

...but the last season with Capaldi was mostly just a lot of standalone adventures.

Even to a fault. At first it seemed like there was an arc or theme being set up, with the Doctor saying "I've made a lot of mistakes and it's time to do something about it," but then he proceeded to... not do a damn thing about it and just wander around making even more mistakes. He was doing all those calculations on chalkboards in the first few episodes, which built to... absolutely no payoff of any kind. It's like there was a plan that got abandoned less than halfway through, as the emphasis shifted to Clara and Danny's relationship arc.

This. I didn't hate the series, but it was largely too unfocused, at least to me as well.

 

[Mr Light]

The problem with the Missy "arc" is... we spent an entire season watching her collect the defeated villains and sacrificed victims of the Doctor. And yet we never see these people again and we never get a mention of her specifically going after people connected to him in the finale.

One would reasonably assume that we would have actually seen those characters again. Or perhaps had a lesson about the Doctor facing the consequences of the people he's killed and let die.

Nope. Random Cybermen.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

In reading the leaked shooting scripts, the Missy scenes felt superfluous and tacked on, which leads me to wonder if Moffat decided late in the day to seed Missy throughout the season, but by that point he was already locked into his finale plans which meant the seeding would have no real payoff except to answer who Missy was.

I've been rewatching Merlin recently, and I keep having the thought that the Merlin team is doing season arcs better than Moffat. Yes, there's silly fluff episodes, but there's progression and payoff.

 

[Samurai8472]

Here are the tweets as posted on Digital Spy, for reference:

Phil Ford ‏@philfordesq Jan 7
Tonight I delivered the big pitch I worked on all through Xmas. Good thing I didn't cut my fingernails - I'll have plenty to chew on.

Cory ‏@trackboy13 Jan 7
@philfordesq well if my information is correct. You will be the next showrunner of Dr Who and it's coming a series later than you expected.

Phil Ford ‏@philfordesq 24h24 hours ago
@trackboy13 Ha! Well I'd love to hear your source of information! I could do with a laugh

Cory
‏@trackboy13
@philfordesq well I don't think I'll say that out in public view but if it manages to come true, I'll be very happy.

 

[Mr Awe]

...but the last season with Capaldi was mostly just a lot of standalone adventures.

Even to a fault. At first it seemed like there was an arc or theme being set up, with the Doctor saying "I've made a lot of mistakes and it's time to do something about it," but then he proceeded to... not do a damn thing about it and just wander around making even more mistakes. He was doing all those calculations on chalkboards in the first few episodes, which built to... absolutely no payoff of any kind. It's like there was a plan that got abandoned less than halfway through, as the emphasis shifted to Clara and Danny's relationship arc.

Totally agree, Christopher. Also with the people who appeared in heaven, it seemed like they might show up again. Or, the two sets of robots heading towards a promised land. Some sort of connection and arc? I'd forgotten about that quote, but you're right, he didn't do a thing about those mistakes! It was just a line that sounded good, apparently.

And, of course, the search for Gallifrey that was excellently setup in Day of the Doctor was totally dropped this season. Even if it ends up that Moffat intends the chalkboards to be a place holder for that search, it still doesn't count dramatically.

On the other hand, I've argued elsewhere that things that should've been 2 parters were stretched to season long arcs. Specifically Danny and Missy's reveal.

Mr Awe

 

[JoeZhang]

Totally agree, Christopher. Also with the people who appeared in heaven, it seemed like they might show up again. Or, the two sets of robots heading towards a promised land.

There is a Q&A in DWM where he seems to suggest that the Cyborg we saw in the first episode doesn't show up again because... he's a crap character.

 

[Kelthaz]

I'm glad to hear this and hope that it's true. I am not a fan of Moffat as showrunner. I quit watching during season 7, came back for Capaldi, and quit again at the Robin Hood episode. I love Capaldi as the Doctor, but Moffat's style makes the show unwatchable to me. A new showrunner with Capaldi staying on would be absolutely fantastic.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Here's the thing: I don't want them to find Gallifrey. At least for a long, long time.

Lets face it: The Time Lords are a crap species. I mean, besides Romana, is there any other reason to bring back the Time Lords?

 

[Ithekro]

Sometimes I think Moffat sets up for Doctor incarnation long arcs, rather than series arcs. Were something that happened years ago comes back and says, "oh so that's what that was about". Perhaps after having done this eventually with Math Smith over three years, Moffat descided to lay the ground work for Peter Capaldi's last series in the first series. Remember, the show is about time travel and Moffet has shown to enjoy messing with people by having the story flow completely out of order across an entire series arc. Or even more when it came to River Song. There you have a four or five year arc that wobbles all over her and the Doctor's timelines (and she could still show up again, entirely out of order).

 

[DWF]

Sometimes I think Moffat sets up for Doctor incarnation long arcs, rather than series arcs. Were something that happened years ago comes back and says, "oh so that's what that was about". Perhaps after having done this eventually with Math Smith over three years, Moffat descided to lay the ground work for Peter Capaldi's last series in the first series. Remember, the show is about time travel and Moffet has shown to enjoy messing with people by having the story flow completely out of order across an entire series arc. Or even more when it came to River Song. There you have a four or five year arc that wobbles all over her and the Doctor's timelines (and she could still show up again, entirely out of order).

There was no evidence before The Time Of The Doctor that the Doctor was on his last regeneration, plus of course there's no way of knowing ahead of time how long an actor will be in the role.