Basically what plot points has Moffat yet to finish in his time here, because they all will come to a conclusion in season 10, so we might be able to think about what stories we may get.

I am having a mental blank right now and can only think of Missy and The Daleks as an unfinished potential story.

Any others?

No. Contrary to popular belief Moffat hasnt left lots of things unresolved or abandoned. Not to say he has always resolved things successfully- far from it. But he has tried to. Anything else is mostly fans inventing arcs or mysteries that were never there in the first place or they weren't paying attention when they were resolved.

The Daleks and Missy thing doesnt even count. That's just a typical way of leaving things open ended. Its a throwaway line that can be ignored totally or picked up again depending. We all know that the Daleks and the Master will return sooner rather than later. Moffat may well take this as his starting point. He clearly loves Missy so I am sure we can expect her to feature prominently in S10.

So aside from that in many ways Moffat is starting S10 with something of a clean slate. Question is will Chibnall want something akin to what happened with the RTD to Moffat handover or will they go for more of a direct continuation story wise with Moffat setting up things for Chibnall to then take forward? I would prefer it if we see another proper changing of the guard when Chibnall steps in. He needs to really put his own stamp on the show and quickly. So its best if the Moffat era is for the most part tidied up and finished by the end of S10. Be interesting to see what Moffat will do with a finite number of episodes to begin and end something. The question of how the new companion fits into this is an important one.

How about this? No regular companion for S10! Perhaps best to avoid getting bogged down in a whole new companion arc and instead use some old faces. River/Captain Jack/Paternoster/Rigsy/The guys from Time Heist. Could go even further back. i would definitely favor this. There are plenty of characters to be used and it could be Moffats version of the farewell tour. Rather than shoehorning in a lengthy goodbye at the end of the finale actually use it to craft some actual stories where we can celebrate the characters properly. Much as I would welcome this I doubt it will happen. Moffat doesnt seem overly fond of revisiting too much of the recent past.

One thing is for sure though. There is one thing he must do. GET BARROWMAN BACK ON THE SHOW!

I think that is why a companion has yet to be announced, because Moffat was waiting to see who the new showrunner would be to discuss what/who he wants.

if PC goes(i hope not) I wonder if his new companion will go or stay after only one series.

Companions aren't the front and centre face of the show the way the doctor is, so them staying across era's isn't neccesarily as important either way (unless they are really bad) and can sometimes add some helpful continuity when a new doctor is bumbling around.

That's probably one of the ongoing discussions Chibnall and Moffat will be having at the minute. I always like a good bridging companion, but if they're going for a clean slate in 2018, then that automatically limits who they can pair Capaldi with in the meantime, a bit like Donna Noble for S4 - they all knew it was a one year deal.

I how PC gets a say in this.

I think there is more to do with Gallifrey. I don't think Hell Bent was the conclusion of that story arc by any means. I think that will be the focus of next season.

Despite not being a big Gallifrey fan I would now like some more about it in Series 10 given how it's been left dangling right now. I don't want it to be the big centrepiece of Series 10 though - even a one-part story with ties to it would do. Missy was the big bad of Series 8, I loved that we got to see her again in Series 9 in a different capacity and far away from the finale itself. I guess I'd happily see Gallifrey treated in the same way. It might be a decent way of involving both Missy and Gallifrey simultaneously. Possibly Skaro as well, given where we've currently left Missy. There's a fair few open-ended story aspects here that could neatly fold into a single story. I guess you could also fold into this Karn as well - which has had an increasing relevance.

I guess there's a chance Ashildr could come back as well. I don't think she was as well received as they'd have liked though, so maybe not... I personally didn't mind her, and apart from the direction the character took in the finale I'd be fine with seeing something from her again...as long as it isn't the centrepiece.

Mostly it would perhaps be nice for Moffat to have a very creative series with a lot of new ideas... ones that maybe fell by the wayside as he dealt with ongoing storylines before. He could have a one-series wonder for a companion if he so wanted (Eccleston and Tate are both very popular despite both only being involved for a single series each).

Personally I think I'm happy to have the show focus mostly on new things, and not dwell too heavily on picking up open-ended story threads that theoretically could be picked up at any point again. I feel even with a few open-ended story threads, there's little to nothing that actually feels unresolved at all...

This is more or less my supposition. She didn't really seem to catch on like they expected. They had all of the 'Maisie cam' stuff on the BBC website. They clearly thought she'd get a lot of interest: popular actress (perceived to be at any rate), 'important' storyline. But really she didn't get a strong response either way.

It just goes to show you can't always predict how the audience will react. Compare it with the unexpected popularity of Osgood.

I'd be surprised to see much more of her.

It all comes down to the writing, that is all it will ever come down too. And Moffat and Co tried so hard to fit Maisie into everything, and it wasn't successful.

I agree that the major factor is the writing but the actress does play a part too. I don't believe that Captain Jack, Jackie Tyler, River Song, Missy etc were popular entirely because of the writing. They would all have been good characters nonetheless but a charismatic portrayal helps get them that extra little bit of fan love and appreciation.

Masie Williams was fine but she was too bland and ordinary and I don't believe that character was supposed to be ordinary. I do think if she was portrayed by a different actress she could have garnered more interest.

Ultimately, the character as written wasn't strong enough, I agree. But actors get a lot of credit when they're successful and its only fair to consider the actor's part in a character's failure too.

That is true, Maisie wasn't that interesting in her portrayal at all. She probably is still too one dimensional of an actor.

Personally I had no problem with Maisie Williams' portrayal. I felt she actually did a decent job at playing an ordinary character made extraordinary because of extraordinary circumstances.

I think pacing played a big problem. The Girl Who Died and The Woman Who Lived would have benefited from not being right next to eachother and letting the story space itself out a bit more (rather than letting the Viking Ashlildr and Highwayman Me literally sit right next to each other in an episodic sense). I liked her much more in Face the Raven as a result of the gap since her last appearance.

I wasn't sold on her role in Hell Bent, but again I can't put that down to Maisie Williams. She was there for exposition, and given nothing much else to do. Her character didn't actually have a character at this point, she had literally nothing to work with. I felt that was a shame, as I don't think it's a popular opinion but I felt she otherwise did very well.

Now i am in two minds a tad, she was definitely let down by quite frankly having nothing to work with, but at the same time i don't think her acting was as good as it could have been. She had no personality or quirks at all, maybe she was told to be like this but she was still too bland.

That said i still blame the writing far more, than her acting.

Yeah, I still put that down to the writing myself. Of course nobody is a flawless actor, but it seems to be a running trend with Series 9, as much as I loved it, that one of its flaws was that it didn't sufficiently pin down characters.

When Capaldi wheeled out on a tank it was a huge visual statement that he was the cool rebel Doctor, because the script itself hadn't sufficiently made this obvious. Clara was still around throughout Series 9 but lacked anywhere near the character development she'd been afforded during Series 8 (admittedly fans were asking for 'more Doctor' at this point in the eighth series) and the scripts often left her with little to do (which makes me all the more thankful we didn't have to go through introducing a new companion for Series 9 - as the episodes themselves were very good, but left no room for character).

With Series 9 struggling to find room to allow its main characters personalities to shine confidently, I guess lesser recurring characters like Ashildr - passed between no less than four different writers as well - stood much less of a chance of having a coherent sense of character in the end.

Definitely at times not just S9, they were trying to write Capaldi as if he were still Matt Smith. Clara i felt was pretty good this season apart from the first 2 episodes where the 1st her character changed more times than a Tardis with a functioning chameleon circuit, and the 2nd episode she was purely exposition. Also i think they took her being reckless a bit too far.

But this has been my biggest complaint in the Moffat era since S5, his development of characters, not just the companions i mean people who are just in 1 story as well. He made River essentially 3 times in differenct characters, i liked Amy and Rory for the most part, but them breaking up came from no where, Amy in season 5 was all over the place, Clara took a season to actually know what her character is. The doctor hating soldiers out of the blue.

Anyway that veered off course, rant over.

When was this? 12 was nothing like 11(which was the whole point). He does not have his movements, talk like him or dress like him

The guitar/tank stuff came out of him thinking he was going to die.

What It goes to show you how NUTS some of the DW audience is. She said she got death threats because they accused her of killing Clara.

The guitar/tank thing is something Capaldi wouldn't do.

And please he is on the threat of dying basically on a daily basis. Or take it back further to the spoon fight, they make him too silly at times.

That is really irrelevant.

But what is bad writing and what is bad circumstances? We can never be sure because we're not privy to so much information.

Moffat has always maintained he took the show one season at time. That he didn't know when his tenure would end. That's generally assumed to be 'Moffat lying' because we think that's what Moffat does. But what if it isn't?

Following on from my Chibnall season 7 speculations in that that thread what if Moffat originally intended to write Season 7 and then the anniversary as his swansong and then leave? I'm not saying that is the case, this is a hypothetical, but it is a plausible one. He has basically admitted he was intending to leave after the season just gone. What if he planned that the previous season too? There's evidence for it, albeit mostly circumstantial.

Okay, so what? Well, let's reassess Season 7 in that hypothetical light:

One of the big criticisms of Clara was that she wasn't a rounded character in that first season, the she was created purely as an enigmatic mystery with no real substance.

But if she was created to be a companion with a half-season tenure then how much depth could Moffat really give her. The Impossible Girl storyline concluded in Season 7 with Name of the Doctor. That could quite easily have been Clara's final appearance. The character had no need to stay beyond that point (and once she did, Moffat fleshed her out). And we know that the episode originally had a different ending... we don't know that Clara would necessarily have survived.

IF we go with this hypothetical then it was actually quite an ingenious storyline for a companion that there was truly little time to do much of a storyline with. The perceived criticism has to be reassessed and judged in a different context.

Now, that's a speculative hypothetical but that's kind of the point I'm making: ALL of our discussion is. All of us are essentially ignorant of the circumstances behind the creation of the show and the circumstances it is created in. We don't know the true reasons decisions are made, characters stay, leave, when, why and how storylines are conceived, the practical imperatives that drove them. We have no clue, honestly.

This is why I'm prickly when I see people saying things like 'Moffat is a bad writer (this is a general point; I'm not targeting anyone in particular) because of this, this and this' when he so clearly is a fantastic writer, working in circumstances and reacting to situations we have no idea about. Discussion of his long-term writing, his arcs and so on have to always be prefaced by the honest fact that we don't have a clue what circumstances he wrote them under. Too many of us think we do.

So much of what the showrunner does is essentially reactionary. Listen to Moffat talk about the nightmare year of the anniversary and the difficulty in getting that to work and that becomes very clear. If Day of the Doctor didn't work for me (and it didn't) then ultimately so what? Am I going to say he's a bad writer because of it? No, because if he could have written exactly what he wanted with the power of God to enforce it then who's to say how good it could have been? The evidence of his body of work suggests he can do incredible work and that's how I judge him. But he played with the hand he was dealt in those circumstances. We can say they didn't do enough for the anniversary. They did what they could. Am I going to blame Moffat for it? No, because I have no idea what the circumstances were. It was what it was. Easy for us to say what they / he should have done when we have no idea about the day to day realities of making it happen.

Most of the criticism of the showrunner, whoever it might be, will essentially be ignorant BS, and I mean 'ignorant' in the true sense: lacking knowledge of the professed subject. We all do.

We cannot make any assumption regarding the long-range planning of the show. Maybe Moffat himself would have done some things very differently with hindsight. Perhaps he could have written them much better, with hindsight. But he didn't have it. If he'd have known Clara would stay 3 years would he have started her storyline in the way he did? Maybe not. But he didn't know that. In all likelihood he never even knew how long he was staying for, let alone the shelf life of the character. He conceived a storyline that would have worked and ended satisfyingly if Name of the Doctor had been the conclusion of the Clara character.

I agree with the moral of your post Tom. But back to the Clara issue about SM only potentially writing her for half a season, that may well be true but the problem was you can still have a definable character trait/ personality in one episode let alone half a season and follow to that.

I remember reading this some time back, how the writers didn't know how to write Clara in season 7 as no one knew anything about her and how to write her, and that is why we saw essentially a different character every episode.

But i do agree with your post on the whole.

To expand upon the Clara issue, I must admit that I put down the lack of character of Clara in Series 7 down to what seems to be poor writing. That's not to question the ability of some very talented writers who contributed to that series, but it could well speak volumes for the poor level of communication between the writers, or indeed the concept behind the character being something that just didn't work - which falls to the responsibility of Moffat.

Clara appeared in eight episodes - Coleman in twelve with Matt Smith, so a whole series with him. Keeping in mind that a character like Donna is a fan favourite with just 13 episodes as a companion, Clara not having any semblance of a personality by the end of Series 7 - especially when she did turn out to be an ordinary, innocent human - doesn't seem excusable by any amount of 'enigmatic mystery'. Again considering other companions after eight episodes (generously discounting the two splinter appearances), I don't think there was as uniform a consensus that Rose lacked character by the end of Father's Day, or Martha by the end of The Family of Blood, or Donna by the end of Silence in the Library, or Moffat's own Amy by the end of The Hungry Earth. A lack of character for Clara was a genuine writing fault I feel.

Furthermore, the supposed genius of the 'Impossible Girl' storyline can only be valued retrospectively. That doesn't help viewers grow to like the character as they're watching - mildly compelled by her sense of mystery but not at all rooting for the character herself because she so severely lacked any sense of being one.

So moving one series at a time, signing on for Series 8, Moffat (still hypothetically here) decides to keep Clara on board. But he now has to give her more of a personality, and we definitely got that in Series 8. But then there were complaints that Capaldi's Doctor wasn't given enough time to shine, that Clara had overshadowed him and ultimately the episodes as a whole suffered because there was a need to try and give both of the characters ample development.

And so we reach one-at-a-time Series 9...Clara has proved divisive because she was under-developed when she should have ideally been developed, and then she was then developed when there was a new Doctor to usher in. Series 9 is the very first time we have no changes to the main cast from the series before, and so there's an expectation that the stories can pick up a bit...after various criticisms that Series 8's episodes weren't engaging enough. Only there's now the issue of Capaldi's Doctor needing to show a different side to him, not being afforded the chance in Series 8 so much because Clara had to be developed. And so we get divisive moments like Doctor-on-tank and shoehorned in guitar sequences that are a visual attempt to give Capaldi's Doctor a character because the writing just hasn't been able to do so.

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I'm not saying that any of this is how I personally perceive this. I love Capaldi's Doctor, and I love Coleman's Clara. I really enjoyed Series 8, and I loved Series 9. But I'll admit her character was sorely lacking in Series 7, and that his character lacked even one real stand out moment in Series 8. That does trace itself back to the writer, and even if it's because he plans things one year at a time it is still his responsibility to deliver and make an educated decision as to what does and doesn't work. I don't hold failures against a writer, especially when they deliver high quality across the board usually. But that doesn't mean they're free from that criticism. If the genius behind Clara was that she was a one-series concept then like her or not, the writer must have restraint and stick to that (the same concept with movie writers rehashing old movies with tired sequels). If he wants more ongoing ideas for a character, then he must be willing to commit that time to the character from the off. He doesn't need a planned A-Z list of all the things that character must happen, nor does he even need to know quite how their story will end... but a personality is something that runs through a character regardless of how long they're around for and you should be able to pick up on the basics of a personality quite quickly. Unfortunately with Clara I didn't get any sense of one until the 50th anniversary episode - coincidentally as soon as the 'impossible girl' arc was out of the way. That places the issue squarely on that arc, and whilst I can't fault a writer for trying something new, it didn't work in so many ways and the writer takes the responsibility for that.

And to link this back into the vague point of the thread in general, Moffat has one last series with a new companion. Of course he may not resolve that companions story in a single series, but it'll be interesting to see if with just one series he has what it takes to deliver a likeable, well-rounded character. that isn't quite as divisive as many of his others.

I agree with Abomination and Sam_Gee1 about Clara. I think it all goes back to the entire idea of The Impossible Girl (or was it Souffle Lady? Or Magical Leaf Woman?). A misjudged concept for introducing a Doctor Who companion. Even if she was only supposed to be an eight episode wonder. By the time we meet actual Clara she's actually the third Clara. The Doctor is suspicious of her, the Tardis is suspicious of her yet we're shown no reason to be suspicious of her because she's not actually got much going on other than being a general purpose companion. The fact that the whole point turns out to be that there's nothing suspicious about her can only be understood in hindsight, by which time it's too late.

I think we were all supposed to be so impressed by yet another bit of timey wimey convoluted arc plot wizardry that the lack of interesting character to follow would be forgotten and forgiven.

Moffat said he told the S7 writers very little about Clara and just let them get on with it. I think one of the writers said something about that problem also. I don't know why he did that, but possibly it's because he hadn't fixed in his own mind what he wanted. Clara was a Victorian nanny until late in the development process. Then he went off that idea but instead of simply recasting the Xmas episode with a different actor for the nanny, he kept Jenna and invented splinters. So a hastily constructed modern Clara (also a nanny) was written and a completely different character was repurposed as a Clara splinter for Asylum. (which is why the whole idea of what the splinters were and how they operated turned out unclear.)

Ultimately I think the problem with S7 Clara (which then influenced S8 adversely) is Moffat was concentrating more on the arc plot than the modern day audience desire for engaging and fun characters. Moffat didn't construct a believable home and family life for Clara yet we're told it's really important to her (and why we had to tolerate those kids in the Cyberman story).

So, of course, lots of people like that. They like the Moffat approach to arc plots. I'm super weary of them. I'm hoping that S10 sees a really engaging new companion who has had lots of time spent on fleshing out their character and less time on fleshing out their magical arc plot significance. I am also hoping for no arc plot whatsoever. None. S5 one was pretty good. S6 was bold but a failure. S7 I've just discussed. S8 - good! Hardly any arc plot! (just the mishandled stuff about the Doctor not liking Clara's boyfriend), S9 - fine, I guess. But the Hybrid turned out to be something of a vague damp squib we were told about not shown and barely existed in the first place.

The arc plots should just go back to S1 style. If he wants Moffat can put some "Naughty Fox" graffiti around here and there through S10. And then in the finale we meet the Naughty Fox and we're given a clear, unambiguous, simple and believable explanation as to why they painted graffiti around, none of which involves timey sodding wimey.