Editorial: Moffat and the Doctor, a Love Letter to Humanity

This editorial, written prior to the release of Doctor Who Series 9, was originally published in UGeek Magazine, Issue #6. 

Maybe the only universal to Whovians is that there are no universals. Take any two fans of the show and ask them about Ten–Rose, Amy Pond, Clara Oswald, and Steven Moffat. At least one of those will become an impassioned, potentially friendship-destroying argument. Yet, whenever I let my big trap start flapping to other Whovians, I’m almost invariably on the defense.

You see, I adore Steven Moffat.

There. I said it.

I love Moffat, who succeeded Russell T. Davies as showrunner at the start of Series 5. And a very vocal, passionate segment of the fanbase will argue, with the conviction of Saint Ignatius punching the lions in the face, that Steven Moffat is the television equivalent of Satan. I’ll briefly summarize the three primary complaints against him I have heard:

1.      He is sexist.

2.      He can’t write female characters.

3.      His female characters are defined by their relationship to the Doctor.

4.      His plots are incredibly convoluted, and betray his smugness and arrogance. Worse, he recycles his own plot points.

5.      He’s ruining the show. Ever since he took over from Russell T. Davies, ratings have steadily dropped.

I’ll just briefly mention that points 1 and 2 can be leveled just as easily (and unfairly) against Russell T. Davies. And to allay fears about the supposed ratings drop: the BBC is quite confident in the popularity of the show—television ratings do not reveal the whole story. Combined with online streaming statistics and with its current 91% on Rotten Tomatoes, the show is going stronger than ever. But deeper than popularity, I insist that Moffat is not ruining the show.

He is saving it.

Don’t get me wrong; the Russell T. Davies era was fun. It was energetic and exciting. Eccleston and Tennant were dashing leading men. The electric charisma of the weird show about a rebel alien and his friends flying through time and space in a phone box recaptured the hearts of people around the world. It had farting aliens, space rhinos, and a cackling bleach-blond John Simms.

It was quirky, challenging, scary, funny, and put some of the first LGBT characters and storylines in mainstream television. But Davies’ philosophy went beyond tackling issues of gender and sexuality. The emotional core of his Doctor Who was something that, on investigation, felt surprisingly dark and bleak: humans are bad. Evil humans. Stupid apes. We find something beautiful and we destroy it. We tear each other apart for being different. Every one of his visions of humanity’s future shows it in a pretty bleak light—plague creatures, pettiness and idiocy stretched on a canvas of flesh, enslaved to its television in its demand to be entertained, an errant and arrogant species in constant need of discipline. Truthfully, in my opinion, the best parts of the Russell T. Davies era were the Steven Moffat episodes: “The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances,” “The Girl in the Fireplace,” “Blink,” and “Silence in the Library / The Forests of the Dead.”

Moffat’s Doctor Who is just the opposite. In Series 7, episode 4, the Doctor faces a Shakri, who considers itself a pest killer, freeing the universe of these dirty, stupid apes. The Doctor defends humanity in a speech that, though not written by Moffat himself, well represents his Doctor’s philosophy: “[Humans are] not pests or plague; creatures of hope. Forever building and reaching. Making mistakes, of course; every life form does. But they learn. And they strive for greater, and they achieve it. You want a tally? Put their achievements against their failings through the whole of time. I will back humanity against the Shakri every time.”

The Doctor still scolds humanity and saves the planet, but this time, he shows us what he sees in humanity that’s worth saving. Humanity is not a species of stupid apes who ruin everything; it’s a people of hope and vast potential. Future humanity, we see on the fields of Trenzalore, is strong and brave. With the Doctor’s help, it holds off every other force in the universe to protect something it holds sacred. It does questionable things—the curious theology of Papal Mainframe, the use of the Headless Monks, and the sect of the Silence. But ultimately, as the Doctor says, stacking the good against the bad, humanity’s goodness ultimately shines through, superior to its badness.

Throughout the era, we see the glory and the agony of the human experience play out in an intergalactic space opera that ultimately boils down to the story of a group of people who love each other, trying to work through life together. In short, a family. The core of the human experience.

Which turns out to be a nuclear family, as we learn that the Doctor is married to River, who is actually a time lady because she was conceived by Amy and Rory while the TARDIS was in the time vortex.

Yeah, okay, so maybe Moffat is a little convoluted. At least he doesn’t have farting aliens.

Far from destroying the series, I argue Steven Moffat is saving it from its former message of human depravity by replacing it with one of human potential. This isn’t to say that Moffat doesn’t face some major hurdles.

Davies did away with all the other time lords gallivanting around the universe, and avoided going too deeply into the Doctor’s own life, focusing instead on the lives of those around him, and keeping his stories grounded on Earth so as to avoid the convoluted mess that led to the demise of the original Doctor Who in 1989. Moffat, since becoming showrunner, has begun to pull things in the opposite direction, focusing on the Doctor’s own life, his past, and his future. Gallifrey may be back, and all the time lords with it. For all my complaints about Davies’ philosophy, his formula was sure successful, and Moffat is taking risks by messing with it. But then, isn’t that what the show has to do—reinvent itself, like the Doctor himself?

Its great strength is that it has regular opportunity to essentially become a new show. Moffat has reinvented the show twice, first with Matt Smith’s space opera and again with Peter Capaldi’s as-yet mysterious arc. I eagerly await Series 9, with its shocking changeup to everything the show has led us to expect thus far (spoilers, sweetie), to see what direction Capaldi’s “darker Doctor” will go. This autumn alone can tell what lies in store.