When asked how long Matt Smith would be around as the Doctor, Steven Moffat said "Forever." It's hard to find fault with that answer.
Steven Moffat, executive producer and all around god of "Doctor Who," in a
video posted earlier this week, talks about juggling the 50th anniversary, eight spring episodes, a Mark Gatiss 90-minute biopic "An Adventure in Space and Time" and the Christmas special. He needs to take a journey to the center of the Tardis to get all that work done. But if you don't want to commit 13+ minutes of your time to the one-shot, talking-head YouTube video interview, I'll hit the highlights and wax rhapsodic in response.
Spoiler alerts, yada yadaSo my first impression of Moffat is that for a showrunner, a notoriously high-burnout job, he just sounds so excited about "Doctor Who." Like he's got plenty of seasons left in him. Lord, I hope so. The man is brilliant.
Speaking of geniuses: Russell T. Davies,
the mastermind behind the 2005 reboot that brought the Doctor back to TV... Moffat said he would desperately love to get to work with RTD again, though he remarks:
"Oh god, did that man do his duty for Doctor Who. He might be ready for a long rest."
Technically, RTD has been resting as executive producing the show for three years. I'd say that's long enough that the man could come back for one stinkin episode. Lord knows he should distract himself from
"Torchwood," in case he was under some delusion that another Starz season of that "Doctor Who" spinoff is a good idea. Moffat doesn't give us hope an RTD collaboration is in the future:
"(he's) the best writer breathing in terms of television. The offer is continually made, and I'm getting nowhere."
Probably the best quote from the interview was the answer to the question, how long will
Matt Smith be around: "Forever." It's a cute answer to a question that probably shouldn't ever be asked. But the fact is the Doctor was only supposed to have a baker's dozen lifetimes /regenerations (actors), and Smith is No. 11. But what could potentially screw that up a bit is Smith's Doctor died and was resurrected by River Song, who gave him all her future regenerations (in "Let's Kill Hitler).
And that's brilliant for two reasons: River can't have any regenerations left because we've seen her death. We only sort of understood at the time (during the Tennant era) how tragic and monumental that was. I like to pretend it's possible that the Doctor could have some extra regenerations from when River resurrected him - but I have to concede he may really have no regenerations left because of some Gallifreyan science we're not aware of.
Moffat on his fav/least fav episodes: Moffat gets critical:
"I think 'The Beast Below' is a bit of a mess."
But for the favorite episodes he wrote: "Blink" is his first answer:
"because everyone told me that was the best one - that or Empty Child ... I wouldn't have known Blink was good. But I thought we'd held the line without David (Tennant). I thought it was a minor key - I didn't think it was gonna be the all-conquering phenomenon it did become."
But he said his "today" answer is "The Big Bang" (thus proving even genius men have a 12-year-old boy inside them).
"I just thought it was funny - a filthy joke in the title that only I knew about at the time. If you work out how River Song was conceived ... so that's why I called it that. I was proud of that."
Random notesAs for the
Ice Warriors coming back this season as villains: Moffat said it took a lot of persuading. But in the end he says a brilliant script changed his mind.
We may not see the Master for a while: Moffat said RTD "ended it rather brilliantly."
On a season with a strong story arc: Moffat said he's done that,
"pushed out of its comfort zone, (so) then you have to swing it the other way ... partly just to keep everybody motivated and happy and say this is the right way to do Doctor Who."
But if we think next season won't have a strong arc because of that, I can't believe it - what with what we know about
Clara Oswin (played by Jenna Louise Coleman, whom you see lounging above right). I think audiences are already expecting some good Oswin story arc, and there've been spoilers (if you don't mind a bit of detail about the coming season, read about them
here (where JLC also says she was a better candidate for a companion by virtue of her total inexperience with the Doctor).
"Doctor Who" returns March 30, airing on BBCAmericathanks to @edstradling for talking to Moffat for the Gallifrey 2013 convention in LA last week.
