Steven Moffat is dipping his toes back into the world of time travel with his upcoming adaptation of The Time Traveller’s Wife – but it looks like there won’t be many similarities between the new show and his previous adventures through time and space.
Moffat has claimed that the new series “bears no resemblance” to Doctor Who, on which he served as showrunner from 2009 to 2017, despite the fact his Who episode The Girl in the Fireplace was directly inspired by the source novel.
“It bears no resemblance to anything I’ve done in terms of time travel before,” he recently told Entertainment Weekly, before explaining exactly how the approaches to time travel differed.
“Doctor Who loves time travelling, and mainly it’s just the bus seat they get on to arrive at their next adventure,” he said. “Here, Audrey [Niffenegger, the book’s author] is saying to her reader, ‘Keep up. This is the story of a man living his life in the wrong order, and I’m not necessarily going to tell it in the right order.’”
He added: “What I admired as I read it is the fact you have to lean forward into the book and keep up. Make an audience pay attention and they will be rewarded. So, I went with the Audrey principles of it, really. We’re not going to make it easy for you. You are going to pay attention.”
He also explained that although the aforementioned The Girl in the Fireplace was inspired by Niffenegger’s novel, it doesn’t really count as a true adaptation.
“I read the book and loved it. It wasn’t long after it came out. I remember saying to Russell [T Davies] who was running Doctor Who at the time, ‘We should do a Doctor Who story like that,’ he said.
“And so, I did, which was The Girl in the Fireplace. But all I’d done in Doctor Who was use the wonderful, fantastical element of an out-of-sequence relationship. That’s not really doing The Time Traveler’s Wife, that’s running with one of the ideas from it.”
The Time Traveller’s Wife will air at some point in 2022. Looking for something to watch tonight? Check out our TV Guide, or visit our Sci-Fi hub for all the latest news.
This year’s Radio Times Christmas double issue is on sale now, featuring two weeks of TV, film and radio listings, reviews, features and interviews with the stars.