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| '''Steven Moffat''' (born 1961 in Paisley, [[Scotland]]) is televised ''[[Doctor Who]]''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s most award-winning writer. As of 2010, he is the only person to write for every televised [[the Doctor|Doctor]] since [[Rowan Atkinson]]. More significantly, he is the current [[head writer]] for the programme, a position which he undertook at the beginning of the [[Matt Smith]] era.
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| [[File:Steven_Moffat_Dalek.jpg|thumb|right|150xp|Steven Moffat with the World War II Dalek.]]
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| ==Prior to ''Doctor Who''==
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| Moffat came to ''Doctor Who'' after a successful career of writing for situation comedies that begain in the [[1990s]]. He was a major creative force on ''Press Gang'' and ''Coupling''. His love of ''Doctor Who'' sometimes crept into his scripts for these programmes. In ''Coupling'', for instance, the character of Steve explains the use of sofas as protection against [[Dalek]]s, and Oliver is seen wearing a sweatshirt with the slogan "Bring Back Doctor Who."
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| ==Mid-nineties opinions of the original series==
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| Prior to his first script for ''Doctor Who'', Steven Moffat was a fan who sometimes publicly opined on his love-hate relationship with the program. In the mid [[1990s|nineties]], he was wont to extoll the virtues of [[Peter Davison]]'s acting abilities, saying that the reason "he's played more above-the-title lead roles on the telly than the rest of the Doctors put together" is "because — get this! — he's the best actor." Furthermore, he has called ''[[Snakedance]]'' and ''[[Kinda]]'', "the two best ''Who'' stories ever."<ref>[http://doctorwhoforum.com/showthread.php?t=194947 Moffat, Steven. "Season 19 Overview".] ''In-Vision'' #62. 1996. Posted to doctorwhoforum.com. Registration required.</ref>
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| During a discussion after at least one round of drinks with [[Andy Lane]], [[Paul Cornell]] and [[David Bishop]], he claimed that although "as a television format, ''Doctor Who'' equals anything", he couldn't hold up the program as an exemplar of great television to "anybody I work with in television." He went on to call the original program "slow", "embarrassing", and "limited by the relatively meagre talent of the people who were working on it." He spoke particularly harshly of [[1960s|Sixties]] ''Doctor Who'', saying:
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| {{quote|If you look at other stuff from the Sixties they weren't crap — it was just ''Doctor Who''. The first episode of ''Doctor Who'' betrays the lie that it's just the Sixties, because the first episode is really good — the rest of it's shit.|Steven Moffat}}
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| Moreover, he expressed some disdain for the [[Virgin New Adventures]], which were, at the time of the discussion, the then-dominant form of ''Doctor Who'' fiction. "There's 24 of them a year. That's too bloody many! I've never wanted 24 new Doctor Who adventures a year in my life. Six was a perfectly good number." However, he did call "brilliant" the notion that the NA's "sometimes successfully" reinterpreted a television program "aimed at 11-year olds" for adults, involving "a completely radical revision of the Seventh Doctor that never appeared on television."<ref name=TSV>[http://nzdwfc.tetrap.com/archive/tsv43/onediscussion.html Bishop, David. "Four Writers, One Discussion"] ''Time Space Visualiser'' #43. March 1995.</ref>
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| ==Work on ''Doctor Who''==
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| ===Writer===
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| It is unsurprising, then, that he didn't significantly contribute to the flood of ''Doctor Who'' prose that was published in the 1990s —�though his first piece of professional ''Doctor Who'' fiction was a [[1996]] short story for [[Virgin Books]] called "[[Continuity Errors]]". "Errors" is one of the few non-televised ''Doctor Who'' stories Moffat has written and established a pattern of Moffat only writing ''short'' stories in prose.
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| Unlike many of the writers for the BBC Wales version of ''Doctor Who'',he has predominantly written for television. Soon after "Errors", he wrote the first piece of televised Doctor Who after the [[Doctor Who (1996)|1996 TV movie]] — the [[1999]] [[Comic Relief]] story ''[[The Curse of Fatal Death]]''. When the [[BBC Wales]] version of the program started in [[2005]] he began writing a string of [[BAFTA]]- and Hugo- award-winning storylines, which included ''[[The Empty Child]]''/''[[The Doctor Dances]]'', ''[[The Girl in the Fireplace]]'', and ''[[Blink]]''. Steven also wrote ''[[Time Crash]]'', the first multi-Doctor story of the new series, as well as ''[[Silence in the Library]]/[[Forest of the Dead]]''. His only prose contributions during this period were three more short stories, each for a version of the old [[Doctor Who Annual]] concept.
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| ===Head writer===
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| On [[20th May]] [[2008]], Steven Moffat was announced to be the executive producer and head writer of Doctor Who starting on the fifth season in [[2010]], taking over from [[Russell T Davies]], the man who revived the show in [[2005]]. He said in a BBC press release [http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/s4/news/latest/080520_news_01]: "My entire career has been a Secret Plan to get this job. I applied before but I got knocked back 'cos the BBC wanted someone else. Also I was seven. Anyway, I'm glad the BBC has finally seen the light, and it's a huge honour to be following Russell into the best - and the toughest - job in television. I say toughest 'cos Russell's at my window right now, pointing and laughing."
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| Although Steven Moffatt cast 26-year old [[Matt Smith]] into the role, Moffatt had previously been quoted to prefer older actors playing the role of The Doctor. "Although I loved Peter Davison and Paul McGann, probably the best two actors in the role, I don't think young, dashing Doctors are right at all. He should be 40-plus and weird-looking - the kind of wacky grandfather kids know on sight to be secretly one of them."
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| ===Major themes===
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| Steven Moffat's work on ''Doctor Who'' has exhibited three major themes: romance and sexuality (especially concerning The Doctor), the power behind the Doctor's real name, and the consequences of time travel and its resulting paradoxes. Other recurring elements in his stories include children's fears (whether they be bombs dropping in World War II, monsters under the bed, statues coming to life and the most common childhood fear, the dark) and the Doctor having a lonely childhood or a banana. Another common characteristic is that "Everyone lives": two of his stories feature no deaths at all, while the other two feature only deaths by natural causes. Another characteristic is antagonists who are not necessarily evil, merely doing what they are made to do. 3 Times Moffat has used time-travel to very quickly build an emotional relationship between someone and the Doctor when they encounter him fleetingly, and see him again many years later - [[Madame de Pompadour]], [[Sally Sparrow]], [[Amy Pond]]) and even Amy and [[Liz 10]] with themselves in [[The Beast Below]]. We have the reverse happening between the Doctor and [[River Song]] in [[Silence In The Library]].
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| ===TARDIS Telephone===
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| Moffat uses TARDIS as a telephone box on a number of occasions to even surprise the Doctor. [[The Empty Child]] could make the TARDIS outside phone ring. At the end of [[The Beast Below]] the Doctor enters the TARDIS and the console phone is ringing, '''Doctor '''''Hang on, is that a phone ringing? '''''Amy'' '''"People phone you?" '''''Doctor '''''"Well, it's a phone box. Would you mind?"'''
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| ===Monsters===
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| Moffat's monsters are all very basic looking, but intricately designed. The [[Empty Child]] look like people wearing gas masks, but are actually mutants created by subatomic robots modelled after a dead child, the [[Clockwork Robot]]s look like people in standard French dress, but are actually clockwork repair droids using time-windows to try and repair their ship with human parts, the [[Weeping Angel]]s look like statues, but are actually ancient perception-locked time-trapping assassins, the [[Vashta Nerada]] look like shadows, but are actually carnivorous swarms taken from trees and manufactured into books, [[Prisoner Zero]] looks like a man with a dog, but is actually a shape-shifting worm hiding in Amy Pond's house via a Crack in the Universe and the [[Smiler]]s look like dummies, but are actually androids involved in a killer Government conspiracy. Moffat's monsters have also be highly regarded by fans as the scariest monsters, though [[Russell T Davies]]'s [[Family of Blood]] and [[Midnight Entity]] have been also regarded.
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| ===Awards===
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| Since his involvement with the revived series began, Moffat has been something of a Hugo Awards "juggernaut", being nominated for episodes of each of the first four seasons of the series: ''[[The Empty Child]]''/''[[The Doctor Dances]]''; ''[[The Girl in the Fireplace]]'', ''[[Blink]]'' and ''[[Silence in the Library]]''/''[[Forest of the Dead]]''. Moffat set a record for winning the Hugo three years consecutively, with his episodes defeating episodes of ''Battlestar Galactica'', a ''[[Star Trek]]'' fan film, episodes of ''[[Torchwood]]'' and other episodes of ''Doctor Who'' written by the likes of [[Paul Cornell]] and [[Russell T Davies]]. The winning streak came to an end when Moffat's ''Library'' two-parter was defeated by an Internet production, ''Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog'', although only by approximately 100 votes.<ref>[http://www.thehugoawards.org/content/pdf/2009%20Final%20Ballot.pdf 2009 Hugo Awards Final Ballot results]</ref>
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| ==Personal life==
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| Moffat is married to his frequent production partner, [[Sue Vertue]], who produced ''[[The Curse of Fatal Death]]''. By her, he has two children who are, as of [[2010]], in the target audience age range of ''[[Doctor Who]]''. His children have been seen on ''[[Doctor Who Confidential]]'', making backstage visits to the set of ''[[The Girl in the Fireplace]]''. Moffat has disclosed in ''[[Doctor Who Magazine]]'' that he often shares details about newly-arrived scripts with his kids.
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| ==Filmography==
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| ===[[List of Doctor Who television stories|Doctor Who - TV stories]]===
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| *"[[The Empty Child]]"/"[[The Doctor Dances]]"
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| *"[[The Girl in the Fireplace]]"
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| *"[[Blink]]"
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| *"[[Time Crash]]"
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| *"[[Silence in the Library]]"/"[[Forest of the Dead]]"
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| *''[[The End of Time]]'' (final scene; uncredited)
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| *"[[The Eleventh Hour]]"
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| *"[[The Beast Below]]"
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| *''[[The Time of Angels]]''/''[[Flesh and Stone]]''
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| ===[[:Category:Parodies and pastiches|Doctor Who parodies]]===
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| *''[[The Curse of Fatal Death]]''
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| ==Who-related bibliography==
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| ===Short fiction===
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| * "[[Continuity Errors]]" (''[[Decalog 3: Consequences]]'')
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| * "[[What I Did on My Christmas Holidays by Sally Sparrow]]" (''[[Doctor Who Annual 2006]]'')
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| : ''Later adapted for television as [[Blink]].''
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| * "[[Corner of the Eye]]" (''[[Doctor Who Storybook 2007]]'')
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| * "[[A Letter from the Doctor]]" (''[[Doctor Who Storybook 2009]]'')
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| ==External links==
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| {{imdb name|id=0595590|name=Steven Moffat}}
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| ==Footnotes==
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| <references/>
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| [[Category:Doctor Who television writers|Moffat]] | | [[Category:Doctor Who television writers|Moffat]] |
| [[Category:Doctor Who fans|Moffat]] | | [[Category:Doctor Who fans|Moffat]] |
