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....... And Steven Moffat
mccollough
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Noticed this series that a whole lot of episodes, in fact all apart from ROS, seem to be even BY Moffat, or by someone's AND Moffat. Now don't get me wrong I love his work! But it seems either he's being a lot more involved this year, or he's suddenly decided that as head writer he deserves a credit on every episode.
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My guess is that he's written all of the "cutaways" - scenes with Missy or Clara and Danny, for example. The stories themselves won't have been written with any specific running order in mind so it would be difficult for the writer of any given story to know that Clara was having her third date with Danny - or her tenth - so scenes that must be run in a specific order would almost certainly be written later. That will also apply to any scenes that are purely intended to move a story arc towards a finale. It may also necessary to tweak a few bits just to make the whole flow of the series feel coherent.
Just like then, the general consensus seems to be that the main writer in a co-credit is the one that isn't the show runner...so not Moffat. He may have dealt heavily with rewrites, or inclusion of arc scenes, but it is the other writer who actually wrote the crux of the episode we see. Take Time Heist for example, everyone has compared it to the previous Stephen Thompson episodes rather than any previous Moffat efforts. To be honest, I doubt much has changed behind-the-scenes and that Moffat (and RTD) could have gotten co-creditation for previous efforts if they'd wanted - I distinctly remember RTD heavily redrafted elements of The Satan Pit for Series 2, The Family of Blood for Series 3 and The Fires of Pompeii for Series 4...as examples.
A good guess, I think.
The BBC were told to stop paying vast salaries to their in-house "talent" and just a couple of days ago were again patting themselves on the back for hitting those targets.
Is it possible that they're using sneaky tactics to give people oodles of money without it showing up as "salary" - perhaps by paying royalties from their overseas, commercial division - the one that collects all the money from Doctor Who being shown outside of UK?
If so, getting a co-writing credit becomes a major source of income with £X being earned for every broadcast and repeat - the same as it does on a music recording.