The Curse of Fatal Death: Parody or Moffat Blueprint?

Guest contributor Gareth Evans explores how elements of the parody have found their way into the show.

Every once in a while I will watch “The Curse of Fatal Death“, the 1999 Comic Relief sketch written by Steven Moffat. It is a fun parody that paid tribute to Doctor Who. One thing that I have noticed on more recent viewings is how certain elements of the parody would go on to become major elements of the show under Moffat’s time writing for the show proper. Let’s take a look at some of them.

“I’ll explain later”

Throughout his time on Doctor Who Steven Moffat has let his stories unfold over time. In Series Four we were introduced to River Song. Rather than let us know everything straight away Steven Moffat gave the audience enough reveals for the purpose of the episode and gave us the rest over the course of the next few years. It wouldn’t be until the end of Series 6 that we would quite understand who River Song was and what she meant to the Doctor. Besides that one obvious bit of information that many figured out weeks before the airing of “Let’s Kill Hitler”

Posing interesting questions for the audience is something that is core to Moffat’s style as a writer, even outside of Doctor Who on projects like Jekyll and Sherlock. It is no surprise to see it feature it so prominently in his work for the show.

Bribing the architect

Perhaps my favourite scene of “The Curse of Fatal Death” is the initial encounter between the Doctor and the Master. Most of the scene depicts the two Time Lords explaining how they used time travel to ensure that the meeting would go in their favour. Under Moffat we have seen more episodes that view the notion of time travel as something other than a vehicle to get the Doctor to where he needs to be in that episode.

Both “Blink” and “Day of the Doctor” showed characters employing the Back to the Future 2 method of communicating across time. Series 6 opened with the Doctor inviting his companions to witness his death so that they would be ideally placed to start the events that would lead to the very event they were witnessing. My favourite example comes in “The Big Bang” where we see the same exchange between Rory and the Doctor twice, with the latter occurrence explaining the context of the episode’s opening scene.

As a show Doctor Who has become very fond of its wibbly wobbly timey wimey. Seeing how a dilemma resolves before we even know what the dilemma is defines the story arc that took centre stage for the entirety of Matt Smith’s run as the Doctor.

The Doctor is weary of his travels

In “The Curse of Fatal Death” the Doctor expresses being tired of his travels. In “The Snowmen” we see a Doctor who has finally become so embittered by his many losses that he has given up travelling all together.

We also see an echo of this attitude in the reasons for why Steven Moffat brought back Galifrey. Believing that the show might become stale without some sort of direction Steven Moffat wrote Galifrey’s potential return so that the Doctor would have a goal to aim for in his travels. I believe that this quote from “The Day of the Doctor” best sums it up:

“She always laughs at that. “But you’re not going anywhere, you’re just wandering about.” That’s not true. Not anymore. I have a new destination.”

The Daleks show respect for the Doctor

Granted the Daleks haven’t yet declared that they would turn over a new leaf to honour the Doctor, but we have seen some interesting nuances to how they view him. In “The Asylum of The Daleks” the Dalek Prime Minister declares that they have always found a beauty in hatred, even the hatred that the Doctor holds for them. In “Into the Dalek” the Doctor is informed that he would make a good Dalek. It is very clear that the Daleks save a special combination of hatred/fear for the Doctor but there is clearly a measure of respect for him that never fails to unsettle the character.

This approach has greatly aided the show’s tendency to examine the Doctor, and whether or not he can truly be called a good man. Series 6 and 8 had this question at their heart and it only makes sense for the Doctor’s greatest enemy to weigh in on the matter.

The universe doesn’t want the Doctor to die

I’m not sure how I feel about this latest development, but its undeniable that the Doctor has grown from a mad man in a box, travelling around the universe to being seen as one of the most important people in it. In “The Wedding of River Song “the Doctor’s companions held off his death so that they could show him how much the universe loved him. In “The Name of The Doctor” the universe was shown to star blinking out of existence due to the Doctor not being around at pivotal moments in history. Personal feelings about this development aside the importance of the Doctor to maintaining the universe is a point that has been made again and again in recent years.

The Doctor as a woman

Unlike in “The Curse of Fatal Death” the Doctor has remained male in all his lives to date. However the possibility of this changing has been explored. “The Doctor’s Wife” and “The Night of The Doctor” both have character’s stating that a male Time Lord regenerating into a female is both possible and something with precedent. We even saw such a change occur to the Master (now Missy) in Series 8.

The idea of a female Doctor is something that still receives a lot of backlash (though how Indiana Jones, Bond etc. can be compared to a shape shifting alien I’ll never know) but the ground work for it to happen has now been laid by the writers and the idea has gained some support among fans. Before Matt Smith was announced I would have decried a female Doctor as an act of “political correctness” (this is an attitude that I now regret and apologise for) but today I would be excited to see what possibilities such a move could bring to the show.

Concluding Thoughts

Watching “The Curse of Fatal Death” I only expected to see an enjoyable love letter to a sci fi show that was long gone when the comedy special aired. Watching it in the context of Doctor Who’s triumphant return to television I instead see the seeds of what we couldn’t have known was to come.

In my opinion this reflection of Doctor Who is what makes “The Curse of Fatal Death” hold up, even to this day. We have seen many a parody merely try to copy the source material in a “funny way” but “The Curse of Fatal Death” truly understood Doctor Who, and I think that understanding is how ideas from the comedy special can so easily be implanted in the show.