Steven Moffat - new Doctor Who Lead Writer and Executive Producer

May 21st, 2008

Steven Moffat will succeed Russell T Davies as Lead Writer and Executive Producer of the fifth season of Doctor Who, which will broadcast in 2010.

While not unexpected, it’s still pretty exciting news! I think Steven Moffat is an excellent choice to be the showrunner for Doctor Who. He’s going to be brilliant! He can do really creepy (”The Empty Child” & “Blink“), he can pull on the heartstrings (”Girl in the Fireplace“) and he can do funny (”Time Crash” & “Curse of the Fatal Death” with Rowan Atkinson).

I liken this to the 1970’s transition from Doctor Who producer Barry Letts to Philip Hinchcliffe. Barry Letts gave us tons of great stories (”Silurians“, “Inferno“, “Terror of the Autons“, “Day of the Daleks“, “Daemons“, “Three Doctors“, “Sea Devils“, “Robot“, etc). But then Hinchcliffe took it in a new scarier direction (”Ark in Space“, “Genesis of the Daleks“, “Terror of the Zygons“, “Pyramids of Mars“, “Brain of Morbius“, “Hand of Fear“, ”Deadly Assassin“, ”Robots of Death“, ”Talons of Weng-Chiang“, etc). I can imagine we’ll see parallels where Moffat will take us to scarier places. I can’t wait.