Moffat on 50th Game Changing

In an interview in the new issue of SFX Magazine (#241, out today) Steven Moffat has said that the 50th Anniversary will herald a new era of the show.

We’ve got to set the Doctor off in a brand new direction. It’s chapter two of his life. Now something happens to him that changes the way he thinks and the way he will adventure from now on. You can celebrate an anniversary in many ways – I think the most productive one within the narrative is to say “This is where the story really starts. This is where he finds his mission, he finds his destiny.”

We’re not fibbing – this one is going to change the course of the series. And it’s very rare in Doctor Who that the story happens to the Doctor. It happens to people around him, and he helps out – he’s the hero figure who rides in and saves everybody from the story of the week. He is not the story of the week. In this, he is the story of the week. This is the day of the Doctor. This is his most important day. His most important moment. This is the one he’ll remember, whereas I often think the Doctor wanders back to his TARDIS and forgets all about it.

I wrote it as the friction version. When you’re talking to yourself there are no limitations, there’s no holding back. You wouldn’t be kind or courteous. At the same time, because they are two loveable, madcap, caffeinated Doctors, they’re also quite fanboyish about each other. They think it’s quite cool. They’re not broody, upset Doctors – it’s more “There’s two of us! Brilliant!” But that’s mostly in the playing, because they were having such a good time together that they brought that out. They get giggly with each other. It is, by lovely accident, a tremendous double-act. They’re naturally funny together. Enough alike and enough dissimilar. Matt said it was like Laurel and Laurel, as if Hardy didn’t show up – except he does in the form of John Hurt!

The weird thing is there’s never that much contrast between Doctors. The truth is it’s not wildly different how they’re written. I’ve written quite a lot for both of them, and you just have the voice in your head, very clearly. Where they are similar is funny, because they’re practically in unison, and where they are different is David is a cheeky, sexy, genuinely cool Doctor, up against a Doctor who thinks he’s sexy and cool but is woefully wrong on that subject! And that’s just naturally funny.