Good News For Whovians

Stephen Moffat has been named Doctor Who showrunner starting with the fifth series, following next year's short series of longer episodes, giving David Tennant a break from all the gurning, grinning, and relentless flappy-legged running (I say this with affection). Cheekily the BBC had been saying Piers Wenger (who produced Ballet Shoes and little else) was going to be Executive Producer, but he'll be sharing that job with Moffat. I've been going around the internet being a killjoy saying Moffat would never take on the job, as he never seemed interested in the job, and is currently working with Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson. Seems I was horribly horribly wrong, and not for the first time. Still, it's the best news possible. His Who episodes have been not just the best on that show, but possibly the best dramas on BBC One for years.


Of course, this means the fans will have to start hating him whenever the Doctor does anything that might contradict something that happened twenty-five years ago, or for maintaining the current tone instead of pretending Russell T. Davies' run never happened and returning the show to its Jon Pertwee/Tom Baker "glory days" (in quotes because even though I'm fond of that Who-era, I like this version of the show even more). RTD gets blamed for everything on the show that doesn't work and ignored for everything that does. If people realised how much work he does on the show, including major rewrites on episodes that fans love and use as ammunition in their war against his writing (a fact that makes me laugh and laugh and laugh), they'd back off. I'll be sad to see him go, as he's done an amazing job, but maybe now he'll get to write shows that will be praised as good drama and not just dismissed as bad fan-fic by Whovians (who, of course, think their fan-fic is superior).


As for the current season, I'm enjoying it (though we've yet to get a stone-classic episode), and liking Catherine Tate as Donna about a thousand times more than I thought I would, and not just because she doesn't worship the Doctor. Talkbacks about the show are almost unreadable as all that fans seem to want to say, other than "RTD is the worst thing to happen to this show since John Nathan-Turner even though without him the show would never have come back but I don't care because all I want are my Horror of Fang Rock DVDs!!!", is that Rose and (especially) MARTHA JONES are crap because they loved The Doctor. For crying out loud, if you're going to fall for someone, I think it's fair to say you're going to fall for someone who is handsome (apparently), sexy (equally apparently), brave, dashing, honourable, funny, intelligent, gallant, and has his own time machine. How is falling for that guy a bad thing? And didn't MARTHA turn her back on him in the end? (That's a rhetorical question, because she totally did, you haters!) Shut up, stupid talkbackers. Go away and re-read your Patrick Troughton-era novelisations.

Even more good news for us fans; the next two-parter is written by Moffat!



It could turn out to be poo, but I doubt it. The only bad thing about that is that Doctor Who is off for a week because of the fucking Eurovision Song Contest, now rendered utterly unwatchable with the removal of Ireland's entry, Dustin the Turkey.



I'm hypnotised by the revolving glitterboobs on the front of Dustin's trolley.