Script Doctors | Series 1 | Steven Moffat
The writer of The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances , interviewed in mid-2004 while midway through writing those scripts, as the first season of Doctor Who was progressing in production.
Steven Moffat has an evil glint in his eye as he meets me for our interview. As we meander down a suburban street looking for somewhere convenient to chat, I find out precisely why. "I got an email from Russell T. Davies this morning," he smiles, "and he says I'm not allowed to tell you anything at all..." But I only want to ask you how you became a writer in the first place, I protest disingenuously. "Ah," he muses. "Now this is a story I've told so often that I now have no memory of it happening." Okay - so, you're lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck...
My dad was a primary headmaster, and I had been trying to get into theatre writing. And you remember that show Highway, where Harry Secombe wobbled round hillsides singing hymns? They visited my dad's school, and my dad was talking to Bill Ward, who produced that show, about a junior newspaper, and my dad said, opportunistic as ever, 'Wouldn't that make a good TV show for kids?'. Bill Ward mentioned it that night to his girlfriend Sandra Hastie, who was an American TV producer looking for a gig, and she went to my dad and said 'I can't pay you any money, but can I have that idea and try to develop it?' And he said, knowing I was trying to get into writing, 'You can have the idea for no money, if you allow my son to write a sample script, and you promise that you'll read it'. She agreed, though she said there was no chance of her using it - but she did read it, and she loved it so much she gave me the job...
So you wrote the entire run of Press Gang - a series I find difficult to put into perspective, because so many of my peers rave about it as one of the best TV shows of all time...
In ratings terms it wasn't huge - pretty good, but not massive. The reason that it now seems to have been enormous is that it had some ridiculously high percentage of a certain age group, something like 85% of teenagers watched it. And that's not very many people, nor is it the target audience of children's television - but there is a band of people growing up who are now old enough for me to talk to and be in bars with - or to be employed by, as often happens - people who get me to write for them, because I wrote Press Gang. In the context of the time, and for a certain number of people, it was just an incredible thing. I acquired godlike status in the eyes of some people when I say I wrote Press Gang. I'm not saying that's justified, I'll watch it now and think it's not that good. But if children fall in love with something - as we Doctor Who fans know - then you're part of them, you're part of the adult. Whereas adults who love something like Coupling love it sensibly. They come home and watch it and turn it off again and forget about it.
Since then you've become pigeonholed as a sitcom writer, despite the fact that Press Gang was actually a drama, albeit one with comedic aspects...
It gets more comedic as it goes on, there was quite a lot of humour in it. It wasn't comedy because it wasn't trying to be funny all the time, it was funny when it was convenient. We did do full-on comedy episodes, but the main thing was the story. It was like Doctor Who in that respect - as much humour as you like, but the story is the thing. Whereas Coupling is about the gags...
But it's been more or less comedy right down the line since then...
This will sound conceited, but there are not all that many people who can reliably write decent comedy scripts. So if you're one of them, you get commissioned like that. If I send someone a drama script I've written, as I do periodically, it will get read eventually, but if I send a comedy script in, it will be read the moment it arrives, and they'll probably tell me to go ahead and do it. So you can end up on a treadmill even without being a conspicuous success. I suppose Coupling would be my most successful comedy - Chalk was a well-known disaster and Joking Apart no-one ever saw, but I was known in the industry as someone who could write comedy.
So how did you make that sideways step into comedy from kids' drama?
Within the industry, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say Press Gang was quite a hot show and I was, for about four and a half minutes, a new hot writer. So I was getting lots of work around that time. I was working with director Bob Spiers, and he was telling me to try a sitcom, and I was actually quite fascinated by the idea - I'd never even seen how one was made. So I got into comedy because I could, and it's difficult to leave, and also quite addictive. Most people who do a sitcom want to do another one even if they've had a disaster because of that thing of 'the night' when it's shot, the laughter that you hear.
So it's almost a performer buzz, then?
Oh yes. That's what brings the cast back. Everyone says it, but filming is so boring - at least with an audience in, you get that response. And also, sitcom is the closest thing you'll get to office hours in television, which is great if you have kids - it's more or less Monday to Friday office hours, except the Wednesday of recording which is a wipeout and maybe a bit of pre-filming on the Tuesday.
The first I was aware of your work was actually on the Dawn French BBC2 vehicle Murder Most Horrid, which is not quite sitcom territory...
Again, that was through Bob Spiers. By this stage - and I look back on this with some bemusement - I was a reasonably in-demand writer, even though I'd done so little. And they'd had a bunch of scripts in with problems, and I think they were having trouble and didn't have six ones they wanted to actually make, and so as a very very last minute job, just as I was finishing work on Press Gang, they asked me to write an episode. Mine was the last script written and the last one into production. There's not quite enough time in Murder Most Horrid, it really needs to be 45 minutes long. You need to introduce every character and write each character out in the same half-hour without seeming glib. Or sometimes by seeming glib! The first episode of a sitcom is not as funny as the others, and Murder Most Horrid is a very tricky show for that reason.
Much as you try to pretend otherwise at times, you are as much a Doctor Who fan as any of us...
Oh, I don't think I've tried to deny being a fan. I won't deny that I've gone through the 'It was all crap' thing, which everyone does, but I've come through the other end now - because I've had to write an episode! My earliest encounter with the show was seeing the trailer for The Tomb of the Cybermen, which actually stopped me watching the show that evening, it was too scary. A few weeks later I saw the famous scene of the tombs defrosting, and that was terrifying - and in those days Doctor Who was something where eight year olds would say 'I watched all of Doctor Who on Saturday and it was really scary...'. It doesn't stand up now, of course it doesn't - but Doctor Who was going out at five o'clock on Saturdays with one thought in its tiny head which was to scare the living crap out of eight year olds. How marvellously irresponsible is that?
And by the time the show finished in 1989, you were working as a professional writer. Did it ever occur to you, while it was still running, to get involved in working on the show?
es! I did, in fact I was pretty well applying for the job. As I said, 1989 was the first of my nanoseconds as a popular writer, and that was doing childrens' telly. I thought, in my deluded younger mind, Doctor Who would welcome me with open arms. And suddenly, more or less that day, it went off the air. It ran for twenty-six years and I missed it by an afternoon!
So having spent more than a decade almost exclusively comedy series, why do you think you've been approached to write for Doctor Who this time round?
It's probably a question you should ask Russell. I have mentioned the series several times in public, and said that if it was brought back I'd like to write for it, so there was that. And also I know Russell slightly, and when he got the job I sent him an email just to remind him of my existence. So I think there was firstly the assurance that they knew I would say 'yes', and also the idea that I'm reasonably competent television writer.
But of all the writers on the new series, you're the one with least connection to Doctor Who - you haven't really written Doctor Who as such before, which everyone else has to some extent.
I think that's a tremendous advantage! People will hate me for saying this, and I haven't spoken to the other writers about it, but I think when you sit down to write the television version, you know it's the one that's real. I've done a short story [Continuity Errors in Decalog 3: Consequences] and a sketch [The Curse of Fatal Death], but what you're doing there is a response to Doctor Who - a sequel or a reaction to it, not 'the thing' itself. I don't mean that it's not good - many of these things were better than the TV show, there have been some terrific novels and audio plays, but when you sit down to write it for TV, you realise - 'This is it!'. I spent my first two weeks on this script writing three pages and generally freaking out, thinking 'No, it's not a pastiche of Doctor Who, it's not a comment on Doctor Who - it is Doctor Who'.
Does it feel like a responsibility, then?
Responsibility is one thing, yes, but it's mainly Russell who has to think about that. It's more that you think you know the show, you've watched it for forty years, but you discover that you know nothing about it at all, because you haven't written it. I've been watching a bit of Pyramids of Mars with a totally different mindset now - you get into a scene this way, and the characters do that... it becomes obvious to you, and the fan part of it goes out of your head.
You have written Coupling, though, which is structurally very complicated. Do you find yourself bringing any of the same skills to bear in Doctor Who?
I suppose I plot well in that respect, but Doctor Who is Doctor Who and Coupling is Coupling. Like Sherlock Holmes, like James Bond, Doctor Who is a certain thing and you have to do it a certain way. You can't bend it out of shape, people have tried and it's never ever worked. You find yourself thinking 'Yes, I've got this right, this is a Doctor Who story, that scene belongs in Doctor Who'. You start to notice the rhythms to it. I wouldn't mind, if this all works out, saying at some point 'Let's try a time travel farce', and I'd be the guy for that, that would be fun. And then it would be 'Coupling meets Doctor Who', but if anything I'm studying Russell's scripts very carefully and trying to fit around what he's doing, which I think is terrific. He's banging the drum here and we're all being mini-Russells.
I haven't yet mentioned The Curse of Fatal Death - what you were doing there was very much a pastiche-cum-parody of Doctor Who. Was that a much easier proposition in that respect? Just put jokes into it?
Yes, it was. It was quite complicated, but like all these Comic Relief things, it's thrown together at great speed, and I think it was a decent throwaway. You're thinking more 'this is part of a raucous evening with Lenny Henry' than you are about continuing the myth of Doctor Who. The problem is that 'sketching up' Doctor Who doesn't really work, does it? Mark's sketches for Doctor Who night were great - the two without the Doctor in were sensational - but Doctor Who is a comedy anyway. It's like, nobody has ever successfully parodied James Bond, and there's a very good reason for that, it's that it comes 'pre-piss-taken' if you like. There's no joke you can make that they haven't made.
So the process would be like putting a highlighter pen over the jokes? Or hitting them into the ground with a mallet...
Yes, that, and joining them up and make it all joke. Richard Curtis's thoughts on these Comic Relief parodies are always that they should be fond, there should be nothing unpleasant about them, so you're not looking for 'edgy' or anything like that. I thought basically we should do something like the Carry On movies, because I think Doctor Who is close in spirit to them, it's that kind of cheap and cheerful fun...
It's got more in common with that than with Star Trek certainly.
Yes!
Your little interview in Gallifrey Guardian a few months back said you heard about the new series gig on your way to the comedy awards where Coupling won in one of the categories. That must have been a nice day...
And I met Peter Davison as well! Yes, it was a fantastic day. And I had been so hacked off, just previous to that 10th of December - I'd had such an awful few days, for whatever reason, culminating in me banging my knee on the staircase, and I was just sort of grumping around glowering at people, absolutely certain that Coupling was going to lose to Alan Partridge. And I'd heard that Paul [Cornell] had got the Doctor Who gig - which I thought was absolutely right and proper, but I was thinking 'That would be great'... But I assumed I wasn't ready. I thought I might have been in the frame, but I thought if Paul had heard and I hadn't then I probably wasn't, and I got a call from my agent just as I was about to leave, as I was putting on my dicky bow.
It must have been a bit of an up-and-down time, what with the success of British Coupling and then the high-profile failure of the American version...
The American Coupling experience wasn't a huge one for me, really. I went over and did the one pilot which they didn't like, and they made another pilot and didn't want Sue or I involved. And that was actually fine, because we hated us so much we didn't want to go back, although it was hurtful I suppose in an abstract sort of way. I felt for them making it and having such a rough time. And they did get hammered - Chalk had nothing on this in terms of it being slaughtered. Just as Chalk is a by-word for bad sitcom over here, Coupling is a by-word for bad sitcom over there. So, I mean, I didn't get as much money out of it as I liked, but it wasn't emotionally upsetting at all. It was a good cast they had, who have sort of taken the blame for the failure. It wasn't as bad as it was made out to be but it clearly didn't work, and it clearly wasn't as good as the original, and you're not going to succeed in the number one slot in America with that. It's fun to have been there once, I suppose - but for me it was only ever about money. Who the hell wants their show remade? I certainly don't - it's like someone coming in to redecorate your house...
I think five years is the absolute maximum for a television series. Apart from Doctor Who, obviously, but then it becomes a new series every five years, and that's why it's lasted. The change makes it interesting, although it does make it odd for a while - with Coupling we've had stilted moments. It's not so much losing Jeff or Jeff not being there as the fact that he didn't leave. We didn't see him leave, and what Richard Coyle did to us was very bad in that respect. If he'd come back and given us a day, we could have written him out properly, and not even to have that - it's like refusing to do your regeneration scene. It's very bad form.
So how soon after being asked to contribute to Doctor Who did you know precisely what you were being asked to write, in terms of the two-parter?
Very soon, in an email from Russell. I got a phone call from my agent which is about the only work I've ever got my agent - Russell has not phoned me because he thought he should do it properly through my agent, whereas I usually get jobs at the bar, or even in the house these days... so I got back that night to the treatment and the information about what they would like me to do. And I thought 'cliffhanger - fantastic!'.
Perhaps it's a bit surprising to get that much information so instantly.
I think it wasn't supposed to go out quite so quickly but Russell was desperate to get started, had been desperate to talk to us all about what he was planning - but it was the beginning of all the secrecy and I know it was driving him a bit bonkers. And then of course, I couldn't do anything - at that stage I had only written one of the new Coupling scripts.
And then we did have a big get together around the start of the series of Coupling, I went out with all the writers and Julie and Mal and everybody, and we got really plastered. It was a raving drunken evening and I, as ever, got drunker than everybody else. And I noticed I was not really remembering things even as they were happening to me - real time amnesia, 'I don't remember the fact that I'm thinking this' sort of thing. It was just sliding out of my head, having a raucous wonderful time. And I staggered out, Rob Shearman and I staggered along and he said something like 'well, I'm sure it'll sound better next time you explain it...'. And I thought 'What'll sound better!?' 'Your story.' 'What story?' 'You just pitched one...' - they didn't like it! And I didn't even remember it.
And the next day I'm at the studio for Coupling trying to pretend I'm not hungover, 'Hi Jack!!! How are you!!! God, it's good to be alive, isn't it!!!!' - and everyone can tell. And I got this email from Russell saying ' it was good to see you last night - er, can we talk about that story? Cos I really didn't like it'. And to this day I don't know what it was I pitched. Apparently it has no resemblance to what I've just handed in.
Just handed in? You mean you've finished it?
I've just submitted my first draft of the first episode, which has gone down extremely well and has already been distributed. Hurrah! I've had some extremely flattering emails in response, so I'm feeling very chuffed...
And to what extent is what you've handed in what will be filmed?
Well, they're extremely happy and saying I've cracked it on the first draft. No doubt that will all change - and it is just the first half, I've got an enormous cfliffhanger I now have to get myself out of.
I refuse to believe the writer of Coupling doesn't have his plot worked out in painstaking detail...
No, I do know where I'm going. I think I've got a lot of depth charges going, a bunch of revelations in the final scene that will crack it on, let's hope. I kind of think you should crack a script in your first draft - there's only a draft and a polish on every episode of Coupling, apart from maybe The Cupboard of Patrick's Love. I try to hand in something you could make. So I'm always late, but you could take the submitted script down to the studio and make it. Other writers prefer to hand in something more approximate and get feedback, but I like to get it cracked on the first draft and polish. Sometimes, of course, people disagree with me that I have cracked it on the first draft...
And is Doctor Who something you'd be happy to continue working on, say maybe next year?
Sure. There's always going to be the problem of availability, but I suppose they'll be in production for so much of the year, but if I'm doing Coupling or something else that would be the only thing that would stop me. And of course, it's more exciting the first time, I suppose. Again this sounds appalling but it's true - I don't do this type of gig, I don't do episodes of other peoples' series, it's quite rare for me. But you know, it's Doctor bloody Who! And the scales go back on your eyes once you're forced to contemplate it from the side of writing it, you are reawakened to the fact that it's actually fantastic, it's wonderful, it's just this brilliant brilliant thing. 26 years says not a lot wrong with it, 40 years being famous and loved says there's not a lot wrong with it. We all know what could go wrong with it, but...
...there's nothing wrong with the core of it?
Absolutely nothing wrong with the core of it, and the core of it is identical, there have been no changes to that. And people said it was badly made, but it was actually superbly made, within ridiculous limitations. They made Doctor Who the way we make Coupling, and Coupling is about people sitting round tables - Doctor Who was about fight scenes and special effects. The fact that it ever didn't look like shit is more remarkable than it ever looking like shit. And there's a string of great performances in the lead and, you know, spasms of imagination in it that they occasionally pulled off, given that it's workaday television and shouldn't be any better than Captain Zep or Blakes 7 or The Tomorrow People and yet it is... And so you start thinking 'shit - I've got to try to be as good as that? Those guys knew what they were doing...'
Talking about not working on other writer's shows - not even on Murder Most Horrid - is this the first time you've done this?
No, it's the second. Famously - well, not famously at all, completely obscurely - I wrote an episode of a show called Stay Lucky many years ago. This was a slightly iffy series with Dennis Waterman and Jan Francis, and I always remember the format used to make me laugh - 'Jan Francis and Dennis Waterman hire out canal boats in Leeds and have adventures!' How?! What happens?! You stand in your office, someone comes in who looks a little bit dodgy, and says 'I'd like a canal boat'. And then a canal boat chase! 'He's gaining on us! He's walked to the front of his boat!'
I then tried to write a second episode and got sacked. It was at the end of, I think, the second run of Press Gang, and I thought Press Gang was over, and thought 'I wonder what I should do for a living now...?' And somebody rang me at home asking me to write an episode of Stay Lucky, and I thought 'oh, that's how it works is it?' So I said fine, where and when? And I think they were quite surprised I just said 'yeah, sure, fine'. It was a very happy experience, I even enjoyed being sacked. They were really nice people, and the guy who sacked me said 'Look, this really isn't what you do'. He'd been a big fan of my other stuff, but he told me 'Just go off and do your own thing, don't write our series - get out, get out!'. He's still a friend, it wasn't acrimonious at all, but I wasn't cutting it. I think I've got better, I've got less egotistical - honestly, this is less egotistical. I had real trouble adapting to other people's characters. I was just doing it my way, writing Spike and Lynda from Press Gang and paying no attention to the fact that it wasn't Julia and Dexter. I've calmed down a lot from that stupidity. But also the other difference is, Russell is such a phenomenally good writer, and you read the scripts thinking 'Shit - I'm going to have to try and raise my game, because that is bloody good.' That shuts you up a bit. Russell is who he is for a reason. You read the scripts and think 'Ah - this will be one of Britain's leading dramatists, won't it...?'
So to what extent does it feel as though you're working on the same show as went off the air in 1989?
You know it's the same show, there's absolutely no question about that. The more I've read Russell's first script, which is wonderful, the more I know it's the same show. Without giving any details, but as Russell's always said in DWM it's the same guy and there are sly little continuity references all over the shop - I'm not sure if the non-fans on the production team realise how naughty Russell gets at times... It's lovely, I think continuity's great if you do it just right, if the Doctor makes a throwaway reference, and a certain section of the audience goes 'I know what that was - I was there!', that's lovely.
