Why is it that writers are being used more than once per series recently? In series 7, Chibnall, Cross and the Gatt-meister contributed two episodes each. And now it's been revealed the Gattiss will be contributing two for series 8.


What's going on? It used to be a handful from the show-runner, and one episode per guest writer (unless it was a two party story.)


Maybe they splashed out a bit too much for the anniversary and are having to cut back?

Maybe Moffat just likes his close circle of writers.

<insert standard Gatiss comment that Moffat is just about the only one that does>

I would assume it's a combination of the development cycles being so much longer now, the budget being tighter and the risks involved in trying someone new.

What do you mean?

Sort of an 'old boy's club' circle in my opinion. Moffat has this tight circle of writers who are tried and tested many of whom who have been submitting stories throughout the entirety of new who, so there is a dependability element in knowing they can and have previously written for the show. There are some different writers sometimes though, and I think most notably with Neil Gaiman, It does good to approach someone new who is a good writer to have a go.

Remember hearing that Stephen Fry was once supposed to write an episode but it fell through, which is a shame because such a brain could surely have delivered a quality episode.

That there is a wide diversity of opinion as to the merits of those episodes that Gatiss has written to date.

To try to reflect a wider range of opinions than merely my own...

Prior to Doctor Who Magazine's 2009 poll on best stories ever, which celebrated the count having reached 200, Gatiss had contributed three episodes. Of those, the highest rated is The Unquiet Dead at position 54, a very respectable standing. However the average of his three placements was position 114. So an episode written by anybody other than Gatiss is likely to be preferred to an episode written by Gatiss.

But! Lots of people like his work. In a programme like Who you expect a wide range of writing styles and he obviously has an audience.

If you asked my personal opinion? I'd say that compared to the likes of Pip & Jane Baker* he's Shakespeare, then shrug and leave it at that.

* average story placement: 162 and two thirds but possibly only that high because you have to credit them with all of Trial of a Timelord since it isn't divided into its four parts.

I think budget is irrelevant. Most writers would kill for a chance to write an episode of Doctor Who. It has real kudos so most would jump at the chance. Its more likely that Moffat has a group of trusted writers he wants to use and this will give coherence and a good sense of continuity.

I don't think its a case of trying to keep it as an exclusive club. Moffat has always been keen to get the best talent available as shown by the choice of Ben Wheatley as director. They are keen to take chances. Maybe the right writers just aren't there right now so they stick with what they know.

My thought was that hiring new writers incurs risk; risk is expected to incur costs. If a writer doesn't deliver or delivers something unusable then they've spent money developing the one script only to have to pay someone else, probably above the going rate, to provide a speedy replacement. If a writer delivers something usable but that needs additional work, that additional work costs.

Conversely, if Moffat has people he knows are going to deliver pieces that need little or no additional work then he can eliminate those risks and therefore lower his expected costs.

Sorry. I totally see your point now. I took it the wrong way and that it was meant it would cost money to attract big name established writers to the show.

What you say is obviously the reverse of this and very true.

His output is very erratic, but personally speaking for myself, I think that he's much better at period pieces, as it seems the more modern stuff he does is worse.

The victorian period obviously seems to be his comfort zone, given that in my opinion unquiet dead and the crimson horror are his two best, but I also think idiots lantern is pretty good, which also is a sort of period piece.Victory of the daleks is a bit middling, not great not terrible, but given the evidence of the others seems more the exception to the rule considering period piece episode quality, and only because it is a story concerned more with introducing new daleks and their plans than really immersing in the period.

Then though, we get to him dealing with stories set in the last 30ish years or so and the lazarus experiment is nothing to write home about, whereas cold war and night terrors stand as the two episodes so terrible that they are the only two in new who I've never re watched.

basically, in my opinion, he should stick to the past and play to his strength's.

I personally hated The Crimson Horror....I prefered Cold War to that. I can't say I'm a fan of any of his Who episodes (but I like most of the non-Who stuff he has done).

Still... it's wrong to put all the blame on the writers...the Director, actors, budget, effects team and a host of others are often just as much to blame. The greatest screenplay in the world can be turned to utter shit if everyone else isn't up to par.

As much focus should be on the Directors as it is the writers.

I just wondered what you meant by "standard Gatiss comment".

Just for the record, as a couple of different people have said the same wrong thing --

Mark Gatiss starred in, but did not write, the Lazarus Experiment. The Lazarus Experiment was written by Stephen Greenhorn.

At the time of the Mighty 200 poll, Mark Gatiss had only written two broadcast episodes (The Unquiet Dead and The Idiot's Lantern), and his other four are Victory of the Daleks, Night Terrors, Cold War and The Crimson Horror. There we go, that's his lot. Night Terrors is the only episode that isn't a period piece. Cold War was set in 1983, so that's 31 years ago, now - 30 at the time of broadcast.

He also wrote An Adventure in Space and Time, which does improve his batting average if you count it!

I was at a Q&A with Moffat for the series 7 launch and he more or less said that, in response to an audience member wanting Grant Morrison to write for the show. New writers will make mistakes apparently.

I agree with the comments about risk being the reason. It's nothing to do with being cliquish or elitist. With such a relatively low number of episodes each year it must be hard to give a completely new voice a shot. Maybe it also reflects the relatively small size of the UK TV industry/market compared to the US. They can only pick from a relatively small pool of existing writers.

That said, you'd think they'd be able to let other established TV writers pitch their story ideas and pick one at least to go forward each season. Of course, being too risk averse leads to its own problems, such as staleness and a narrowing of range and variety. New voices also lead to freshness and diversity.

There's still loads of cool writers about. Off the top of my head, Armando Iannucci wants a go, and Charlie Brooker knows his Who-lore. Tony Jordan would be brilliant - the puzzle box type stuff in Hustle is tailor made for Moffat's Who, and he's an experienced showrunner so he wouldn't need much attention.

Who else? Catherine Tregenna wrote loads of excellent episodes for Torchwood, I bet she'd love a go on Doctor Who. Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton are doing brilliant story-of-the-week things on Inside No. 9, and there's the Mark Gatiss link already forged. I dunno! Just feels like the horizon could widen, a little.

Christ, I'd love to see an episode written by Jed Mercurio, or Paul Abbott, or Abi Morgan, or Hugo Blick, or...

There's DOZENS of great writers who would give us AMAZING eps of Who. Bring 'em on.

I've no doubt that, in discussions about writing one episode, a writer will pitch ideas for later episodes - many which are likely to be picked up for later series. I don't think it's ever the case that they pick an author they want and then say, "Right, we need two episodes, get on with it."

How does it work for Doctor Who? Is it only "by invitation" to pitch story ideas, which would be pretty "closed shop", or are they, in fact, open to pitches from any established writer? I think in the US they tend to have writing teams and they also allow recognised writers to pitch story ideas or even scripts as well.

STTNG at one time had an open door policy with the writing team filtering out the complete dross and the best being invited to pitch their ideas. It was a lot of work apparently, but they ended up having a few of those people join the writing team.

I agree with the OP -- they're being too conservative and clique-ish with their choice of writers. It seems like the very best writers usually do one or two episodes and never return, while the more medicore scribes come back over and over again and get more episodes per season. Gatiss is a prime example -- I have only liked two of the episodes he has written (Unquiet Dead and Cold War) and while both were pretty good, neither of them are amongst my favourites. On the other hand, he has written some of my least favourite episodes ever (Idiot's Lantern, Night Terrors, Victory of the Daleks). The persistent rumours that Gatiss might take over as showrunner worry me. To be fair though, I do think some of his episodes have been let down by things like the directing and guest stars -- his writing isn't entirely to blame.

Closed shop. And rightly so. They would be inundated, they'd never get anything done, it'd just be white noise. And with the number of scripts they'd be sent, at least one would bear a superficial resemblance to a plot point in the following series, and some ****er would be on a message board groaning on about how "Steven Moffat stole my brilliant idea," and it'd just be all round dreadful.

GDK does say open to pitches from any established writer? so he's not suggesting just anyone could send in a pitch.


Moffat has said that he's dubious about hiring writers with no TV experience (even if they are expert in other fields of writing) but I doubt he would bin it straight away if an experienced TV writer sent him an un asked for idea for a story.

I don't know. As an aspiring writer I do find it frustrating that the majority of shows seem to be 'closed shop' or 'established writers only'. It makes it extremely difficult to get a break. I understand that a show like Doctor Who would be innudated with scripts, but couldn't they hire someone to deal with that, sift out the rubbish and only present Moffat with the very best? The show needs some fresh blood. Limiting the script-writing to an inner circle and occasional guests just stagnates creativity.

I know it's frustrating, but submitting a script for Doctor Who with no prior experience would be a bit like applying for a job on a board of directors. If you can't burst through the gates to the soaps, trying to batter down the gates to Doctor Who is basically a fools' errand - but you can get onto the soaps, the doors do open, and then all things in time.

Basically, there's no hand-holding on Doctor Who. The soaps are built with this support network, they've got this infrastructure, they prove you can write to a deadline, they prove you can take rewrites, and it's this huge factory where there are all these people making sure an episode doesn't fail. There's less spend per episode, the actors, sets and props are all already in place, there's less risk. If Doctor Who's an episode down because Danny Newbie lets them down in pre-production, they are incredibly screwed, and Steven Moffat himself would have to glide down from on high to deal with the matter personally. It'd unleash the hellmouth - and while everyone likes to think they wouldn't be that writer, it's too much of a risk to go about employing unknown quantities.

Yeah, I do understand that, and I know I might be coming off as a bit naive and entitled. Everyone has to start at the bottom, no matter what industry you are in. I do think that is perhaps an outmoded approach to recruitment and career advancement, but that is a whole other conversation that will probably only be interesting to you if you like sociology

The problem for me personally is that I can't stand the soaps, or anything similar, and have absolutely no desire to write for them. In fact, there are very few ongoing British dramas that I would enjoy writing for, and it seems futile to struggle for years and years writing for a plethora of shows I can't stand, just to be in with a slim chance of maybe one day writing for Doctor Who. This has basically put me off even trying to get into script writing, and I've focussed on prose fiction instead. But if things were different, I would very much like to submit something for Doctor Who one day.

Fair play, that is a fair point about there being less support and guidance on Doctor Who, but maybe they could get around that by only buying scripts that are already fully complete and of usable quality. Maybe not -- I'm not in TV, I don't know. It sounds like you might have a bit of inside experience, so I will take your word for it. But I do feel that Who needs an influx of fresh ideas and approaches, somehow.