The writers confirmed for Series 10 so far include:
Steven Moffat
Sarah Dollard
Frank Cottrell Boyce
Mark Gatiss
Mike Barlett

But which other writers do you want to return either for Series 10 or Series 11?

Please choose from the following new era (2005+) writers:

Chris Chibnall
Paul Cornell
Neil Cross
Richard Curtis
Russell T. Davies
Phil Ford
Neil Gaiman
Matthew Graham
Stephen Greenhorn
Peter Harness
Matt Jones
Tom MacRae
Jamie Mathieson
James Moran
Simon Nye
Helen Raynor
Gareth Roberts
Robert Shearman
Keith Temple
Stephen Thompson
Catherine Tregenna
Toby Whithouse

Paul Cornell
Neil Gaiman
Richard Curtis
Phil Ford
Jamie Mathieson
Robert Shearman
Toby Whithouse

Unfortuntely, Phil Ford, Jamie Mathieson and Toby Whithouse are the only ones I can see returning out of that list.

I'm still waiting for JK Rowling to write a story, ideally a two-parter.... Mind you Rowling might be a good choice for doing a Xmas episode, if they were to have someone else write one rather than the showrunner that is...

You'd have to say 'Amy's choice' was work of genius so Tom MacRae

Also, for me The Impossible Planet / Satan Pit, was awesome.. so Matt Jones

Jamie Mathieson deserves another shot at it too...

Well I hope Chris Chibnall turns up for series 11, or were going to have a bit of a problem .

Other than that, I hope every year that RTD would reconsider and write an episode or two (or as many as he liked for that matter). I really miss his writing.

Also I think Chibnall should be allowed a two parter (if there are any) in series 10 to give him a more recent chance to metophorically 'stretch his legs' in terms of writing for the show to get him more prepared to take on the big job for series 11.

Out of the other names, I don't know which episodes most of them are responsible for, but of who I do know, I'd definitely say Gaiman, Matheison, and Whitehouse.

The only person I'd say I absolutely never want to be allowed to write for the show again, based on past evidence, is Frank Cotrell Boyce, but unfortunately, for some unknown reason, that is already confirmed as happening.

You left out Gareth Roberts I like how fun his episodes are

Series 10
- Steven Moffat
- Frank Cottrell-Boyce
- Sarah Dollard
- Mike Bartlett
- Jane Goldman
- Jane Goldman
- Toby Whithouse
- Mark Gatiss
- Russell T Davies
- Steven Moffat
- Steven Moffat
- Steven Moffat

I know RTD is an unrealistic dream. In his place I'd take Peter Harness. I feel it's more likely to be Jamie Mathieson however.

Series 11 is likely to be a bit different anyway as they're changing to a writers room approach. All the same, I'd love to see Whithouse on board still. I really do like Peter Harness too. Catherine Tregenna should get the chance to work on something better than what she had in Series 9. I wouldn't mind seeing Tom MacRae or Helen Raynor back either.
And I seldom do this but I want Gatiss to move on. He's been a staple for years when his efforts don't warrant so many returns. It's annoying to accommodate him knowing someone else could have had that spot.

YES! Helen Raynor is Brilliant love her two parters!

I always want to see new writers. They badly need to find someone in Moffat's league before he departs.

I also personally find it strange that Chibnall will be taking over without having any recent involvement with the show. I think it would be a better transition if he at least wrote something for this series.

Gareth Roberts is someone who can reliably turn in a decent episode so he would be a choice for me I guess.

Does anyone else truthfully stand out? They're all hit and miss.

It's a shame Shearman never worked out on the show. He had the potential to be one of the top Doctor Who writers, even showrunner.



It was written by Simon Nye (credited at least. By my estimation it was largely ghost written by Moffat... nonetheless, it wasn't Tom McRae)



I really don't think that approach is going to work for Doctor Who. It sounds like a good way to make every episode as generic as possible, which is already one of the shows biggest weaknesses. Too many missable episodes of little consequence and average quality. Doctor Who has had 2 really strong guiding hands to date, and now it's going t be written by committee? Potentially disastrous in my estimation.

The thing is that it's typically seen as the 'American approach' and as such it supposedly paves the way to generic writing. It lends itself easily to serialised drama which could have up to and including 25 episodes a year.

But some shows are starting to blend the 'American approach' with the British formula and I think it really works. Game of Thrones is one such show, albeit it remains rather serial-esque thanks to its ensemble cast.

But I think it could actually be a good thing for Doctor Who. It'd reign in the writing of a companion to make them more consistent, sparing us a Series-7-Clara who the writers admit they couldn't pinpoint and until very late in the game was going to be the Victorian version of the character.

Doctor Who has always managed to engage with a different idea almost weekly, but usually manages to not feel monster-of-the-week at the same time remarkably enough (it has the odd lull, and Series 7 felt very monster-of-the-week). A writers room will take us a step away from the monster-of-the-week feel but the show itself won't be removed from the idea of landing somewhere different, with different characters every week - as I still imagine the show will continue to credit specific writers for their plots and ideas.

Personally I think it's the most encouraging piece of news about the Chibnall-era so far. It reduces the dependency on one man to deliver (and frankly on four out of five occasions so far, for me Chibnall has not delivered in Doctor Who) it might allow for more inticately written, well-sussed characters and so long as it doesn't serialise itself it will benefit from something like this to help it stay fresh and ever-changing

Of course this is all subjective, and dependent on the writing team in question. But there's some fantastic writers in there, who might just be able to deliver something astoundingly good if they can combine forces rather than all chucking stuff under the same generic heading and then getting a showrunner to see what sticks.

Episode 1- Steven Moffat
Episode 2- Frank Cottrell-Boyce
Episode 3-Mark Gatiss
Episode 4- Helen Raynor
Episode 5-Helen Raynor
Episode 6- Nicholas Briggs
Episode 7- Chris Chibnall
Episode 8-Chris Chibnall
Episode 9- Mark Bartlett
Episode 10-Sarah Dollard
Episode 11- Stevven Moffat
Episode 12-Steven Moffat
Episode 13- Steven Moffat

Chris Chibnall needs to have the chance to write for Doctor Who again.
Helen Raynor can write some brilliant episodes.
Nicholas Briggs writes for Big Finish so he needs the chance to perform on the big stage.
I think Gatiss should leave as Sleep No More was one of the worst episodes in years.

All fair points but ultimately it comes down to this part I suppose. It depends on the team. You paint a positive picture of how it could work whereas my suspicion tends towards the negative.

With RTD and Moffat, they had in both instances, whichever one personally prefers, a highly accomplished, successful writer, by any objective standard, to steer the show and give it its character. The reason it's possible for people to have such strong views for and against the show as handled by Davies or by Moffat as opposed to the other one is that the show took on their identity as a writer. They made it distinctive. It was their show and they personalized it. As has been seen, that can polarize the hardcore fanbase who individually have very sure ideas how they think the show should be (ie it should have their character) but with the wide audience has been extremely successful. It's one of the factors that stops Doctor Who being just another Sci-Fi / fantasy programme.

Where is this identity coming from if the 'showrunner' is not much more than a glorified head writer on a team of writers? I do fear the show becoming even more generic if it loses the domineering voice of a showrunner in the current style.

Would they be converting to this system if Moffat was staying. Or indeed if, by an improbable series of events RTD was returning? Hell no they wouldn't. I'm cynical maybe but I think there's one reason they are doing this: they don't have a lot of confidence in Chris Chibnall. He's not a standout writer as they were blessed with in the two previous incumbents.

You talk up the variety inherent already within the format of Doctor Who but I don't really agree. I think the show at its worst becomes highly generic. Ultimately it doesn't matter what planet they're on or what time period they're in because the formula is mostly identical anyway. Viking England is not really any different to Victorian England, which isn't any different to the far future, which isn't any different to gallifrey. It's just a week to week change in window dressing. The potential for an episode to really feel fresh and interesting comes from a writer (and / or director etc) with a strong vision and a unique way of handling the story. You don't get that strong vision with a story that has been passed around a table.

You say yourself that the format comes from the American system where they need to churn out a lot of episodes... that's not the case with Doctor Who. They have 13 episodes a year, if we're lucky... it needs a vision, not homogenization.

Other potential benefits you talk about: consistency of characterization etc are really dependant on the quality of writers. I don't think either system inherently helps this. Let's be clear: a character portrayed exclusively by one writer will be the most consistent (River Song is an example). Once you have other writers the consistency depends on the skill of those writers, in how well they can understand and interpret the character, or how well they can mimic the creator. I agree that could lead to some lifeless portrayals. But I don't think that's any better than a character they all had a hand in creating. In fact, in the latter instance there is no 'true' version of the character, as different writers will all have their own ideas how best to portray them. You no longer have a platonically 'correct' version of the character. Sure, ideally you have everyone agreeing on the character but in practice... writers all have their own ideas and possibly prefer their ideas to those of others and their portrayal will tend more towards their own preference.... that is how writers and writing tends to work in practice. Either way it really depends on the writers. Again, I personally favour one man's vision. I'd rather a character who is consistent most of the time (when handled by the showrunner and the best of the writing team who are able to mimic their characterization) than inconsistent most of the time (the character was created around a table and is written each week to the taste of the individual writer).

Your example of Game of Thrones is an interesting one because it's a good example of what i'm saying: that show is based, however loosely, on a series of books and so there is already in place for the writers a series of platonically correct characters that were conceived by one man: George Martin. How well they realize them in the episodes depends on how skilfully the individual writer can conjure that character. Those characters are not aggregates; they have a true, impartial form that every writer knows and recognizes. Returning to Doctor Who, a writer given River Song knows how she behaves and how she speaks. That isn't the case with a character 6 men had a hand in creating that has never appeared before. Said character barely exists beyond being a handful of short-hand characteristics that each writer will be trying to insert into their scripts for 'consistency'. Again, that CAN, of course, happen in the current format if the writers are not very good, but I think it's as likely, or more likely to happen with a group vision. To be sure, it wouldn't have made any difference at all if Moffat had opened the table up on the character of Clara before those series 7 writers went away to write their episodes: she would still have been a series of buzz words and basic characteristics to each of them. That is just a symptomatic problem of the format of the show: writers writing characters they didn't create and often, because of the high turnover of new characters, haven't ever seen before. You just change the situation from it being a character created by one of the writers to a character created by NONE of the writers. I don't see how it will do anything for consistency.

I didn't leave Gareth Roberts out, he is on the list as well.

I do agree with what you're saying. The show has always benefited from a strong input and vision from its showrunner. I think especially if you look back at the middle of RTD's era, there were slight concerns with writing credits for stories like The Satan Pit and The Family of Blood - because whilst Matt Jones and Paul Cornell delivered some superb stuff there, RTD went uncredited for his fine-tuning of it all so that it was coherently part of his vision.
Saying this though, we have seen a gradual change more recently with Moffat taking co-credits for episodes in Series 8 and Series 9. Admittedly most people forget that that's the case - few people cite The Girl Who Died as being written by Moffat and Jamie Mathieson as opposed to just Mathieson. But the will is there to get the co-credit going, which is something we may see a lot more of in the years to come.

The identity of the show has been funadamentally that of its showrunner who takes the biggest credit of all, rightly so. But only rightly so in my opinion because they are indeed more than a glorified head writer. 2009 proved that when Moffat was setting up his own production team on Series 5 whilst RTD was getting on with production on the specials. Maybe it's time we gave more attention to contributors beyond showrunners and writers. There's been an increase in mainstream interest in Doctor Who's directors in recent years - the recognition of Ben Wheatley in Series 8, Rachel Talalay getting more reputable with her efforts in Series 8 and 9, not to mention the constant calls from both fans and non-fans for Peter Jackson to finally get his go.

This may very well be me still taking my optimistic look, and I guess thats inevitable given my fondness for most of Series 9. But I think the showrunner has to encompass more than just the writing, and frankly the current issues with the show do seem to revolve around opinions in the writing. So maintaining a showrunner (Chris Chibnall is never someone I would have chose, but he may yet surprise and impress me) who can establish their own team, but allowing the writing structure to attempt something new might be the proverbial kick up the backside the show needs. Moffat gave us Capaldi, he gave us some great directors, and he gave us some great writers, but there have been stories where the writing isn't up to scratch and where the showrunner has admitted he didn't like his own Series 5 and Series 9 scripts (The Beast Below and The Magician's Apprentice, for reference) and ultimately where no amount of greatness has been able to amount to something that satisfies as many as it could.


I agree entirely. I don't rank Chibnall myself as anywhere near as good as either RTD or Moffat. Barring some great work on the home stretch of Torchwood's second series, he's never overly impressed me. Apart from 42 I have never liked one of his Doctor Who episodes - and I'm relatively easy to please. Initially it seemed astounding to me that after several years of fan and mainstream complaints heavily focused on the quality of the writing, that they would settle with Chibnall. But then the announcement of a writers room is what gave me hope again a little bit. RTD was stressed beyond belief by the end of his run, Moffat was so downtrodden by his third series that he contemplated leaving at that point. In addition to that I think it's proving perilous to the BBC right now to be pinning the hopes and expectations of their most lucrative brands on just one person. Top Gear is the prime example - by not securing their assets, and not allowing the show to be more than the sum of its presenters (regardless of whether you like Jeremy Clarkson or not) it's now suffered and the BBC is at a massive loss. They risked Doctor Who as well I think with Moffat stepping down and getting a replacement who couldn't deliver a series until at least late 2017, pushed back to 2018 because of the horrendous outcome of sticking Series 9 in an end of year slot. They stand to lose a lot by piling the pressure onto just one person, and I think scaling back some of the responsibility of the showrunner or at least accommodating that pressure better is a step for good. A writers room will enable that I think, so long as they keep writers with a genuine passion for the show (which has largely never been a problem so far) rather than a bunch of executive types who sit there plotting how to keep things marketable.


I've always thought that Doctor Who had one of the most tough and challenging demands of writers of any show on mainstream TV. It asks its writer to introduce, establish and explore a whole new bunch of supporting characters every week, introduce, explore and usually resolve a plot every week, intertwine both the characters and the plot in a satisfying way that the viewer will care about, and then intergrate the Doctor and his companion into it somehow too without making it feel like he's just dropping in to save the day. All of that, with additional consideration to a limited budget, limited filming locations and a filming schedule. It achieves this to varying degrees of success - some real low moments, but also some astounding ones. It becomes easy to run out of time to explore character, or to preoccupy ourselves with as you describe it 'window dressing'. I feel the show works best when it manages to find the time to explore moral dilemma, or unfamiliar ideas of culture, or is historically insightful. The loss of historical figures in Moffat's era has made the historical episodes far less interesting (granted it's a bit much to assume the Doctor would meet a famous person every single time he lands in the past), as one example.

I don't think a writers room will have to cost the show the chance to explore deeper ideas. But it will mean there's a shared consensus as to where characters are headed. We won't be threatened with another Series 7 Clara, who was rewritten as contemporary at the last minute and who writers like Neil Gaiman admitted they had no idea of how to write her because she was an 'enigma'. These things can be discussed, the sense of character and identity in the show stands the chance at least of being much more coherent and fine-tuned. There's nothing to say that the plots and episode developments themselves won't still fall to the individual writers. They will still have full sway over the supporting characters of their own individual stories. And that's personally why I think it could work. Doctor Who isn't a serial drama and it never will be, it will still maintain something of the monster-of-the-week feel. Each writer will leave their stamp with the story they decide to tell. But maybe some more sufficient communication between them all will lead to stronger lead characters and more succint recurring elements. I don't suspect a table of writers will try and interfere with elements in standalone stories, it will be for the benefit of those aspects that recur. Story and character arcs could be much more effective, rather than being an 'insert keyword in episode somewhere' to sum it all up.


Without trying to sound too deep about all this, people are generally shaped by the people and the experiences around them. You gain your emotional responses, your opinions, your strengths and your weaknesses from different people in your life. You feel conflict and contradiction because you can see two different points of view, and feel more than one thing at the same time. It's messy and it's human. Some shows that have a writers room approach have characters with these multiple layers and this complexity to them and I consider some of those shows to be the best ones out there. That's not to say one man's vision cannot work, but then it does also run the risk of being very linear, and characters can easily become a vessel for the one writers outlook. Moffat has been rightly or wrongly criticised by many people for his writing of women, often for their Mary Sue personas. I personally feel he's gotten better at it over time, but that many of his female characters are lacking in complexity and are too 'tidy'. There's no proof Doctor Who could manage to deliver more complex characters when it is still stuck with that tough 45-minute format and has to do all the things I listed above. But I'd love to see it give it a go.


But then consider that the recent sixth season was based on content that went beyond the reaches of the books, and that a good number of the main characters and the popular characters in the show are ones that were barely fleshed out at all in the books. The recent finale to the sixth season had a strong sense of character about it - characters killed that people cared about, the show had its first suicide which nobody saw coming until it made perfect sense given the circumstances, and the horrific actions of one character have been foreshadowed with subtlety over the past three or four seasons - a character that easily ranks as one of the viewers favourites.
We're not getting a writers room to replace the showrunner, that's an outcome I wouldn't like to see. We're getting both. I think Chris Chibnall's vision will be at the heart of it all and he'll have the support of a well-established set of writers to make it work. He's the George RR Martin of this picture. Six or seven people may get a hand in how a certain character is crafted, but it remains part of one persons fundamental vision. And they're all going to work together to share that vision. It'll also mean we hopefully get some less predictable writing, and won't always assume it to be the showrunner-penned episodes where big developments could happen. Part of the excitement of Game of Thrones is that you never know when they'll pull the rug from beneath your feet with a big revelation or twist. Doctor Who does that to some extent - were it not for the foreshadowing Clara's exit in newcomer Sarah Dollard's script would have been a massive twist. The show can do more things like that and hopefully more effectively if all the writers have a hand in how its done. But this again does indeed fall down to whether you have confidence in the writing team in question. I may end up siding with you entirely once they announce the Series 11 writers.

I wish Gatiss had never been allowed near Who in the first place and never want him involved in the show. I quite enoyed Robots of Sherwood (unlike most I think) but other than that his contributions have been abominations imho.

Roberts was jettisoned by Moffat wasn't he, just like Harper (the director, sorry if I've got his name wrong)?

Why are folk saying Raynor out of interest? I know she's a nice lady (I remember her humble and eloquent posts on what was then Outpost Gallifrey iirc) but wasn't she the writer for both the much-derided Daleks in Manhatten/Evolution (not as bad for me as for many, but still not great) and then the Sontaran two-parter (very 'meh' for me)?

I don't have too much faith in Chibnall (the only great thing he's done for Who is Pond Life, which they couldn't even be bothered to film, imo) so I think the 'writing team' with him as the chair is the best and only way to go since he has the job.

For me as a huge fan of the show (but not as much as many of you) the biggest problem for me since it came back has been the narrative inconsistency in the characters. Martha was great when given decent stuff to work with, I loved her, but absolutely awful when she was reduced to only 'rejected love interest' or simply written badly.

More importantly ofc, the Doctor. I don't know enough to know if it was Cornell's fault but hiding from the Family of Blood so he didn't do to them what he ultimately did (very uncharacteristic at the time) and letting them roam around killing everyone else was a very bitter aftertaste in what was otherwise my favourite New Who two parter ever. Then all that 'Timelord victorious' nonsense which never went anywhere.

Under Moffat (as mentioned) we had an inconsistent Clara, especially in series 7. We had a pay-off where Tom (of all people!) was enticed back to tease the great re-finding of Gallifrey, reinforced by Missy's fake co-ordinates and when he finally finds it...he stomps around moodily and takes it all over at the click of his fingers

I find the jump in the Doctor's character and motivation from week to week or across broader arcs really takes me out the 'fairytale' and gives me a jolt of 'oops that was poorly done/unnecessary//undoes his character from previous episode(s)'.

So I welcome the new approach with a showrunner but a team as well to provide consistency hopefully, if only so the writer doesn't make such choices without being challenged/having those ideas bounced of others, e.g.:

- Um, Steven, you've written an episode where Danny's descendant is heavily implied to be Clara's too, in fact it's the emotional hinge and resolution for the whole episode. Don't you think you should find a way to follow that through because you've killed him off now before she's pregnant?

- Um, we've already got the clones from Almost People, and seen one of the Doctor in fact. Don't you think that would be a better way to explain why he seemed to die at Lake Silencio than this Tesselector thing, which he could use in all future adventures too so that he's never in danger, ever. The clone does that too of course, but at least it's been somewhat signposted and is not just trying to be clever just to appear clever. On that note, maybe it's a good idea not to come out to the press and tell them that the Doctor 'definitely dies' and just let them speculate? It'll be even bigger publicity for the show as everyone knows Matt Smith is continuing anyway and you're lying.

- Um, so Dorian sacrifices himself in the Battle of Demons Run (or whatever it was) and ends up as a head in a box, but only chooses to reveal the prophesy of Trenzalore to the Doctor once he's in that rather 'unfortunate' state. Don't you think the Doctor might have heard such a universally famous prediction before, or that Dorian might have chosen to reveal it before he died?

- Um, in the same episode it finishes with the Doctor saying he knows where the baby is and he's going to get it back, and disappears in the Tardis. Don't you think it's rather 'limp' then that that scene's forgotten about and takes a series or so to be resolved with no mention whatsoever of the baby in the meantime?

I don't blame this on Moffat, just as I don't blame RTD for Love and Monsters, letting Moffat write TGitF (one of my favourites ever) with Tennant falling in love with someone other than Rose when just half a series later he loses 'the love of his life', or any of his other own mis-steps. I admire them for what they've done, and feel that these problems have come from a weight that is too much for one person to cope with and successfully pull off while trying to write brilliant episodes themselves, all the finales, and yet oversee and re-write everything else. It's simply too much.

So, I very much look forward to the new set-up as long as the stories and characters are more consistent, and the ridiculous flaws less prominent. That's down to Chibnall and the team now. If it doesn't 'work' it's not down to the set-up imo, it's down to the personnel chosen.

All imvho



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