{"id":7423,"date":"2017-03-14T10:14:18","date_gmt":"2017-03-14T14:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/steven-moffat-talks-doctor-who-sherlock\/"},"modified":"2017-03-23T13:25:30","modified_gmt":"2017-03-23T17:25:30","slug":"steven-moffat-talks-doctor-who-sherlock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/steven-moffat-talks-doctor-who-sherlock\/","title":{"rendered":"Steven Moffat"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"StevenMoffat-MIPTV-417\"<\/a>Being in charge of a show that is obsessed over by legions of ultra-opinionated fans isn\u2019t easy. Just ask Steven Moffat, who has two such series on his slate, both of which are iconic, beloved British institutions that have sold almost everywhere. Moffat and Mark Gatiss have helmed four twisty, cerebral, award-winning seasons of Sherlock<\/em>, working around the hectic schedules of stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. And since 2010, Moffat has served as head writer of Doctor Who<\/em>, ushering in two new Doctors (Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi) and three new companions, and overseeing the 50th anniversary special of the franchise. As he prepares to give up his Doctor Who<\/em> hat\u2014which will be picked up by Broadchurch<\/em>\u2019s Chris Chibnall\u2014Moffat tells TV Drama<\/em> about stewarding two of Britain\u2019s biggest exports.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> What can you tell us about what will be your last season of Doctor Who<\/em>?
\nMOFFAT:<\/strong> Well, nothing! Missy will be back, and Pearl Mackie will be in playing Bill [the Doctor\u2019s new companion]. Aside from that, you\u2019re going to have to wait and see. It\u2019s on its way. It will be good. Lots of monsters!<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> You\u2019ve been working on Doctor Who<\/em> since its reboot in 2005. Why did you want to leave this year?
\nMOFFAT:<\/strong> I think the more apposite question is why have I been here so long! It\u2019s the longest I\u2019ve ever done anything. The first four to five years I was one of the writers while getting on with other shows, and then I took it over and it was a full-time job, plus doing Sherlock<\/em> on top of that. I\u2019m astonished at how long I\u2019ve been doing it! I sort of miss my own job of making up television shows and doing the new things, which is the real job of a writer. I\u2019ve been curating and looking after and worrying about Doctor Who<\/em> and Sherlock<\/em> for several years\u2014these two huge franchises that threw up brand-new problems every single day\u2014in addition to writing. You\u2019re never more a writer than when you write something new, you try something different. I miss all that. I miss being, as it were, a proper writer.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> What sorts of qualities did you look for when casting the new companion for the Doctor?
\nMOFFAT:<\/strong> The new companion is very interesting. Very much more so than with a new Doctor, it\u2019s a chance to start the show again. With a new Doctor you change the flavor of the show and the style of the show, but essentially it\u2019s the same old Time Lord, with a new face. Nothing begins again. When a new person comes on board the TARDIS, a new person has to learn the rules of time travel and the TARDIS, has to worry about who the Doctor is and slowly decode what he\u2019s up to and whether he\u2019s a hero or a villain. It does feel like a brand-new beginning. The first episode of the new season is specifically designed so that if it were the very first episode of Doctor Who<\/em>, it would completely introduce you to the show as Pearl is introduced to the show. That\u2019s quite exciting. The place you start from is: Through whose eyes do we want to see the Doctor? What point of view would refresh us about the Doctor? What kind of person would be a good one to get to know him through? That\u2019s where you begin. And you begin a new story. I\u2019m always getting into trouble for saying this: in a way, the Doctor, despite his changing face, doesn\u2019t change that much. He\u2019s not learning and growing. He\u2019s the Doctor and has been for centuries. The person who learns and grows and changes is his best friend, so it becomes their story. As I always put it, the Doctor is the star and the companion is the lead. It\u2019s two different functions. Just as in the Sherlock Holmes stories, Dr. Watson is the main character and Sherlock Holmes is the star.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> How did you and Mark Gatiss map out the fourth season of Sherlock<\/em>?
\nMOFFAT:<\/strong> We started talking about it by accident one day. We were shooting \u201cHis Last Vow,\u201d the third episode of the third series. It was raining so we took shelter in one of the production vehicles. As we sat there we came up with the idea of [Sherlock\u2019s] sister, which we\u2019d been kicking around for a while. What if she was the smartest one of the lot, but the one who had no moral compass at all? We knew that Mary [Dr. Watson\u2019s wife] was going to die because Mary doesn\u2019t stay around\u2014that\u2019s just a fact of the Sherlock Holmes story. Dr. Watson, for most of the run of the stories, is a widower. He has to be that. We had to get him there. We knew we were going to do that. We knew we had to tie up whatever apocalypse Moriarty had planned for Sherlock Holmes after his own death. And that wove quite neatly into the introduction of the sister. It was such a fun thing to do that. Everyone thinks he has another brother. How long can we trick [the viewers] into making that fairly simplistic assumption, that because there are two brothers, there must be three? There\u2019s a fairly obvious alternative! So we just went for it. We were careful with our pronouns until the final moment when not only is it revealed he has a sister and she\u2019s evil, but you\u2019ve been watching her for two weeks. That was a brave plan. We didn\u2019t know if we could find anyone to pull that off and make it work. It\u2019s quite a phenomenal performance from Sian Brooke in the several roles she played. As a piece of acting craftsmanship, it\u2019s right up there. It\u2019s extraordinary.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> I was quite gutted by Mary\u2019s death\u2014and that surprised me. I didn\u2019t realize how much I had grown to like her.
\nMOFFAT:<\/strong> We didn\u2019t want to introduce her and then just shoot her. It\u2019s awful when you do that. We wanted to introduce her and against everybody\u2019s expectations successfully make her part of the team. Not make you resent her, not make you think she\u2019s an interruption or the nagging wife\u2014actually make you think, She\u2019s really cool, I like her, it\u2019s almost better with the three of them. And then having got her there, [we had to] take her away again. Also, this is not an element that\u2019s in the original story, but it is in our version: it is her legacy that they then live, it\u2019s her saying, This is who you have to be, you have to go and consciously be Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Sherlock Holmes will now wear the silly hat because Mary liked it. It just felt right. You\u2019re always aware that people worry, and I can absolutely see why, about what they call \u201cfridging,\u201d which is where a female character serves no other function than to motivate the male characters. But Mary served many, many more functions than that within our show. She changed and illuminated the path of the show. So I felt we were safe from that. Although we never will be safe from that accusation since they call it fridging even when it doesn\u2019t abide by those rules! You can\u2019t have a rule that says you can\u2019t kill female characters. You just can\u2019t, that\u2019s madness. But you should have a rule that says the death of a female character cannot simply be a device. It has to be an event in its own right. It has to be something important and personal.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> Any words of advice you\u2019ll be sharing with Chris Chibnall as you prepare to exit Doctor Who<\/em>?
\nMOFFAT:<\/strong> Advice, oh Lord! [Laughs<\/em>] First of all, he\u2019s a very, very experienced showrunner himself, so he doesn\u2019t need advice. The advice I gave him, which I won\u2019t share, was not about how to run Doctor Who<\/em> but how to have a life while you\u2019re running Doctor Who<\/em>. The things you must make sure of. He\u2019s a family man, like myself. You\u2019ve got to make sure that you survive it! [Laughs<\/em>] And the support you\u2019re going to need and what it\u2019s going to be like at 4 in the morning when you\u2019re rewriting some other bastard\u2019s script and not even putting your name on it. What that\u2019s going to feel like. That is what I talked to him about. He has his own ideas about how to do Doctor Who<\/em>. The advice I\u2019ve given him is all prosaic and all quite, Make sure this happens, make sure you get that and don\u2019t let them do this. I won\u2019t tell you what those things were! [Laughs<\/em>] But it\u2019s really about, you\u2019ve got to see your kids now and then. You\u2019ve got to go home now and then. You\u2019ve got to keep living. It is a monstrous workload, Doctor Who<\/em>, monstrous.<\/p>\n

TV DRAMA:<\/strong> What you want to do next, post Doctor Who<\/em>?
\nMOFFAT:<\/strong> I\u2019ve got one thing I\u2019m quite excited about. I can\u2019t talk about it yet. I haven\u2019t given these things a great deal of thought because I\u2019m still absolutely in the storm of Doctor Who<\/em>. I\u2019m writing my last finale just ahead of my last Christmas special; they\u2019re both staring me in the face right now. But it\u2019s still full on. It will be full on until the second it\u2019s not. There is no process of leaving. One day you\u2019re doing the job fully and completely, the next day you\u2019re not. It will be as simple as that. And then I\u2019m in a good position to get stuff going if I want to. I\u2019ve got some things I fancy doing. I\u2019d probably like to do some things that are quite different because it does feel like, by accident rather than by design, I\u2019ve been involved in curating two enormous behemoths, two enormous, showbizzy things that everyone in the world wants to have the most interesting opinion about. [Laughs<\/em>] I\u2019d quite like to do something completely different from that. It was very refreshing the first time I wrote Doctor Who<\/em> because I\u2019d been writing comedy for years. The first time I wrote for Doctor Who<\/em> there was a glorious shock of the new, which I enjoyed and which I think ended up stimulating me as a writer. I\u2019d quite like that feeling again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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