Moffat talks Alternate Endings, Movie & More
Here’s the highlights:
Moffat on the Oswin/Clara twist:
I didn’t exactly know how they’d connect in the first draft [of Asylum of the Daleks] but I did quite early on. I pitched the idea of how we were going to do all this far in advance and I’m saying no more than that.
On whether the show is too complicated:
Doctor Who can be complicated at times, it absolutely can be — but it’s supposed to be. You’re supposed to pay attention. I’m also addressing children, hugely the case in the U.K., and children are demanding of complexity. So no, I don’t think it’s true. I think we do some complicated stories, we also do incredibly simple stories. I always think this: I don’t care if it’s complicated or too scary or too grown-up or too childish or whatever they are saying this week, so long as they never say it’s too boring. If anyone says “Oh, it was a bit dull this week” is when the show will start to die.
On whether he still speaks to Russell Davies about the show since he left:
We e-mail quite a lot. He always sends me something after each episode. He just reverted to being a fan. As did David [Tennant]. I had dinner with David a few weeks ago and I was showing him photographs on my iPhone of the monsters this season and he was getting all excited about it because we’re all fanboys…
[Russell] sent a glowing e-mail [on The Angels Take Manhattan]. He said he was crying and all that so he was pleased with it I think.
On why The Angels Take Manhattan online epilogue with Brian was never shot:
It wouldn’t have been on television. It would have been an online extra. That would have been a very odd ending, wouldn’t it? But it was meant to be filmed. It was the actor availability that stopped it, unfortunately. Mark [Williams] wasn’t around.
On what changed in The Angels Take Manhattan ending:
The ending was the same. It was the mechanism by which they defeated the angels. I added the big falling-off-the-building scene. It was always going to end with Amy getting sent back in time. I think I had the Doctor more central in defeating the Angels and there was a certain point I realized that if he becomes utterly ineffectual for the second half of the episode, which he does, then the story is more interesting. It’s an odd thing to do in Doctor Who; I haven’t done it for a while. He doesn’t win the day. He more or less gets in the way and is defeated because he knows it’s going to end badly and he is so paralyzed by that.
On the long-rumoured movie:
First of all, when? We spend all year making the series. The thing that I would find intolerable is that you get a film instead of the TV series because the TV series is more important. And I don’t think any showrunner or future showrunner of Doctor Who would tolerate the idea that David Yates was talking about, of rebooting it and having a second continuity. That’s just nonsense. Absolutely insane and a straightforward insult to the audience. We’d never, ever do that. The question would be how could we do it without delaying or harming the TV show?
I think it could be incredibly exciting to see that Tardis fly on the big screen. It would just be how do we arrange it? And how do we make sure we have … no offense, but you suddenly take American money and they expect to tell you what to do and all that. I wouldn’t be happy with that. But it will happen someday, I’m reasonably confident.
