Who Goes to War

Steven Moffat has dropped some interesting hints on the mid-Series 6 finale in the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine.

Teasing the seventh episode, which is entitled A Good Man Goes to War, he says, “If you take someone like the Doctor and really piss him off, if you set yourself up to go to war with the Doctor, what would happen? Obviously you’d lose, it would be a massive, crushing defeat, but what side of the Doctor does it bring out? He’s actually quite capable of being really unpleasant to people. Of course he is. He’s a man like anyone else. If you treated Amy with extraordinary cruelty, how long would you live after that?”

Moffat also says that he thinks it’s time for the Doctor to lose his fame in the stories: “There’s an ongoing thing that the Doctor has become far more famous than he ever intended to be. Well, you would, if you’d done all those things in one lifetime. My God, people would start to notice you. You would be some incredible legend. We’ve started to play with this idea – which I remember Russell [T Davies] was so keen to avoid in the first series – with Chris Eccleston – of the Doctor being this great and famous hero, even though that’s not what he intended to be. He never wanted to be that. But you can’t avoid it.

“If the Doctor is dealing with life forms that he’s defeated on multiple occasions, it’s not like they haven’t noticed. It’s not like they haven’t written it down. You are going to be able to stand up at Stonehenge and say ‘Who’s first? Look at the score sheet, and take your best shot.’ It’s going to happen. At the same time, he can’t keep doing that. It could be quite damaging for the show. So it’s something that I’m bring to a head, and kind of ending.”