Nightmare fuel is on its way with Moffat’s return.
“Doctor Who is fine without me!” former showrunner Steven Moffat declared at the Radio Times Covers Party, a mere two months before his return was confirmed.
His comeback to write an episode in Ncuti Gatwa’s new season wasn’t exactly unexpected – rumours have been circulating for more than a year, with recent reports adding fuel to the fire, no matter how many times Moffat diligently denied there was any truth to them.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not a godsend.
It’s not hard to see what he means by Doctor Who being fine without him. After Russell T Davies confirmed his surprise return to helm the 60th anniversary specials and season beyond, the show has gone from strength to strength, with a higher budget, a return from fan favourites David Tennant and Catherine Tate, a fresh and exciting new Doctor in Ncuti Gatwa and a whole host of adventures to come in season 14.
But, as a fan who cursed Moffat’s name throughout my teenage years when his reign was in full force, I’ve come full circle to finally admit that, actually, he’s wrong – Doctor Who needs him.
Every showrunner has brought something incredible to Doctor Who, from Russell T Davies’s famously skillful writing to Chris Chibnall’s bold new directions, but there’s something that Moffat brings to the show that no other writer does.
He remains unmatched as Doctor Who’s monster maker. By his own admission, his creations are simple and actually a little formulaic, usually riffing on a childhood fear to create a chilling physical embodiment of our nightmares. But it doesn’t get old – because he does it so well.
Moffat’s first episodes, a season 1 two-parter, introduced the Empty Child. Arming his creation with a haunting catchphrase (“Are you my mummy?”) and a gruesome physicality (I’ve never forgotten that transformation scene), he immediately ensured his first Doctor Who monster would be one for the ages. But it was far from his most iconic.
In season 3, Moffat penned what is widely described as one of Doctor Who’s best ever episodes, Blink, creating an all-time classic monster, the Weeping Angels.
Again playing on a childhood fear, the Angels have secured their place among Doctor Who’s iconic monsters, never quite losing their terrifying edge.
And what about the Silence? I’ll never forget the instant horror we all felt watching this creature that, as far as we know, we could actually have encountered ourselves. How could we know? We would have forgotten about it.
While perhaps not quite as iconic as the Angels, the Silence still made their mark, with conventions being filled with Doctor Who cosplayers with tally charts penned on their arms.
Moffat doesn’t just excel at creating original monsters, either. He knows how to write truly beautiful and tragic scenes – just look at The Girl in the Fireplace, a genuinely heartbreaking love story in season 2, Silence in the Library, which introduced the world to the glorious River Song (played by Alex Kingston), or the one I’ve genuinely never forgiven him for, The Angels Take Manhattan, which saw Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory’s (Arthur Darvill) tear-jerking departure.
If you weren’t crying during the Moffat era, what were you doing?!
I can’t pretend I loved every moment of Moffat’s run as showrunner (I’ll point you back to the aforementioned cursing his name).
To my mind, the quality of his writing wasn’t at his best when he was helming the show. There were convoluted plots that didn’t always lead anywhere, characters that weren’t written to their full potential, and episodes that outright didn’t work.
But I have a feeling season 14 will see Moffat return to his best. Freed from the burden of being Doctor Who’s head writer (surely one of the most demanding jobs in telly), it seems he’ll pop in to give us one singular story in season 14, which is, of course, still helmed by the steadfast Davies.
And if there’s something Moffat has always done well, it’s popping in to drop an absolute classic on us before popping right back out again.
He’s peppered through Doctor Who’s modern history like River Song through the Doctor’s life – you never quite know when or how he’s going to crop up, but you know for sure it’s going to be a spectacular ride.
We don’t know much about the episode at the moment, although director Julie Anne Robinson has described the tone as “Hitchcock” – a sure sign that Moffat is about to offer us one more nightmare.
The timing is perfect, too – it’s been seven years since Moffat last lent his talents to Doctor Who in his final episode as showrunner, Twice Upon A Time. That’s seven years of him cooking up what I can only assume will be an unhinged, nightmare-fuelled beast of an episode. I can’t wait.