Moffat on his Doctor Who future, 50th Anniversary
“I genuinely haven’t got a plan,” Moffat claims, “except I’ll probably have to stop at some point or I’ll die. And dying would be bad. But my main concern is not so much how long I do it, but that I absolutely, definitely am going to be handing it on to somebody else. I want it to be in great shape, and some day I want somebody else to come in and knock my socks off with what they do with it. You don’t want to be the last person in the relay race, do you?”
Moffat chats about a number of other topics –
On the criticism from ‘adult critics’ that the show was too complicated:
“When you say ‘adult critics’, there’s about three,” he jokes. “The truth is we don’t have any audience feedback about it being desperately hard to follow. All the kids got who River Song was, all the kids knew that the little girl regenerating would turn out to be River. It really isn’t that hard to follow.”
On the scheduling of Series 7:
“I can clarify that we start shooting in mid-February, but I can’t tell you what the schedule is. What headlines are you planning for that time of year? I’ve only just found out what the transmission schedule is for Sherlock, and I’ve finished making that. I’ve barely started writing Doctor Who. Loads of things are in flux, all for good reasons actually.”
On moving the show to Autumn:
“It’s done very well in the summer, it’s not like we’ve ever suffered from it, but it’s almost like an aesthetic thing. If you’re having to close the curtains so you can see the screen, that’s not a good time to be watching a show that’s largely about tunnels and torches. I think it’s a show you watch in the dark.”
On the 50th anniversary special:
“Why talk in the singular? Again, genuinely, the plans are at an early stage, but we have some very clear ideas about some of the things we’re doing, and I think Doctor Who fans and kids will think it’s the best thing ever. We’ve got a load of very big plans – the mere fact that we’re talking about this two years before the event should tell you how seriously we’re taking it.”
On the Doctor Who movie by David Yates:
“It’s completely inaccurate!” says Moffat. “There’s nothing there. I mean it would be lovely, yes. If anything, the only good bit about this is that it might actually focus our minds on thinking that we actually should do a film. But to state the bleeding obvious, it’s not going to be a different version of Doctor Who with two different Doctors at the same time. Of course not, we’re not that silly. That would be no way to run a franchise, would it? I’d love it to happen, but that version you heard was just a guy getting cornered on the red carpet and not really being on-message.”
Rest of the interview here.
