Moffat talks Xmas, River and Silence

SFX managed to get a copy of Doctor Who: The Brilliant Book early and have pulled some interesting quotes from a new interview with Steven Moffat.

In the book Moffat talks about the Christmas Special, “This one’s incredibly Christmassy. That’s true of the previous ones but I wanted to go for broke. It’s easily the most Christmassy thing you’ll ever see. It’s a huge, sentimental, lovely, jeopardy-driven story. It’s the Christmas special I’d like to see. It’s like a compilation of every Christmas movie. A big Christmas treat. But that doesn’t mean it’s without scares, and that doesn’t mean it’s without heartbreak. It has genuine tragedy in it.”

What about the ‘Silence will fall’ story arc?

“Nothing will be left hanging forever. Some things will be addressed relatively quickly. We’re going into the silence and what they are… There’s been a sort of tradition, which I semi-followed through with the crack, of there just being a sort of meme through the series, and I think, actually, a bigger mystery and a bigger story is possible now. I’m going to handle it slightly differently next year.”

And just who on earth is River Song?

“That’s absolutely coming. You’re going to find out very soon, and that means we have to do it next series, really… The critical thing here is I want to explain who she is, not explain away who she is. If you don’t deliver on most people’s expectations, and you just say, ‘Ooh, she’s a specially programmed android who believes she’s the Doctor’s wife,’ people will go, ‘That‘s a cheat.’ You can’t do that… It’s a really good story, and it’s sort of the story of next year.”

Doctor Who: The Brilliant Book 2011 is out on 30th September.

[SFX]