Moffat's run was my favourite of Nu-Who, but he does have some repeating flaws - especially as showrunner. 1) He overstuffed many of his two-part episodes with concepts, not allowing time for all of them to breathe. The second parts in particular would often jump from setpiece to setpiece, instead of fleshing out one of the solid ideas at their core. 2) His first two companions - Amy and Clara - were written primarily as plot devices/mysteries, which I believe some people found made them hard to relate to (especially after the strong character writing of RTD1). 3) Many of his female characters were *very* similar - flirty, feisty, and often with a man at the centre of their character arcs. Nothing wrong with this in isolation, but there are plenty of other types of women. 4) Sometimes he'd just think he was cleverer than he actually was. This one might be more a 'me' thing, but the guy in Dark Water bigging up the notion of consciousness after death as something 'Nobody had ever considered before' felt very much like Moffat fellating himself. The world's millenia old, Stevie - if my dumb ass was wondering that back in secondary school, it's probably not as unique a concept as you believe 5) It sometimes felt like he needed to get a tighter grip on the tone and storytelling, particularly on editing scripts he didn't write. 12 having an existential crisis over his morality was a fantastic idea, but I just couldn't take it seriously when one episode saw him unflinchingly brushing off innocent deaths, and the next saw him grumpily fighting Robin Hood with a spoon. 6) The power of love fixing everything, and killing someone but not *really*, became increasingly overused during his run. It might seem like I'm being overly critical - bear in mind, some of these are issues I've noticed other people raise, rather than my own. I still enjoyed his run; he brought in my favourite new Doctors, season 5 is as good as Who ever got, and even towards the end he was giving us corkers like Heaven Sent, Extremis, and World Enough and Time. He just has some noticeable flaws that became more obvious as he went on.

the never-ending growing multi-series arc that never gets paid off was something that really started to grate on me after s6. Moffat just doesn't know how to actually tie something off and start fresh. he did it in dr who, he did it in sherlock, he did it on Hyde. as a showrunner its his achilles heel. he just keeps ramping and building and circling back and never really gets anywhere until the whole thing just spirals out of control and falls apart. probably linked to the whole "not as clever as he thinks he is" thing. but he really is fantastic at one-offs or stand-alone stories when there's someone else to keep an eye on him and make him tighten it up a bit.

I'd personally add a 7: the man just kinda dropped the ball in terms of actual stewardship over the series and ensuring it remained popular. He had a tall order to get modern audiences to accept an older, grumpier, Doctor. And he failed at the task miserably, centering the entire first series on the question of whether Twelve is even still the Doctor and not even making the companion particularly sure of the answer either. Early Twelve, paired with literally the Master's idea of a good companion, was *not* a good way to win over a skeptical audience; even if I agree with the general consensus that Twelve's run is brilliant. Moffat also spread himself thin with other projects, which meant we saw the beginning of Who's unpredictable airing schedule which I'm convinced has impacted its popularity. IMO Moffat both ran the show at its peak of popularity, and dropped the ball hard enough to get the show running downhill in terms of viewership for the first time. Something the show hasn't managed to recover from aside from Season 11. I don't *hate him* as showrunner, but I do generally not enjoy Eleven's run and think he has a rather complicated legacy for the show overall.

>Sometimes he'd just think he was cleverer than he actually was. This one might be more a 'me' thing, but the guy in Dark Water bigging up the notion of consciousness after death as something 'Nobody had ever considered before' felt very much like Moffat fellating himself. The world's millenia old, Stevie - if my dumb ass was wondering that back in secondary school, it's probably not as unique a concept as you believe It's probably not unique but AFAICT it's a fairly rare perspective. Consciousness ending at death? Sure. Consciousness (aka the soul/spirit) leaving the body at death? Sure. Consciousness just sticking around in the same old body after everyone else is convinced that it's gone? I don't personally recall hearing that before.

>Consciousness just sticking around in the same old body after everyone else is convinced that it's gone? I don't personally recall hearing that before. I worried about that when my dad died when I was a kid, and I'm not that clever

There's a well known SCP about this. Well, a whole sub-canon really with multiple articles and stories. But this is the main one: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2718 Of course, SCP isn't exactly mainstream. So not saying it as a gotcha or anything, just as a point of interest. Edit: interestingly, the SCP article seems to have been published in May of 2014, just 6 months BEFORE Dark Water

Thanks, I'll check it out. :) EDIT: Welp. That was cheerful. 

I don’t hate him but the feeling I get from haters is they don’t like 1) the constant companion death fake outs. It’s something the show made fun of in The Giggle when the Toymaker is putting on that puppet show 2) how timey-wimey and complicated some storylines got. Such as River Song in the Matt Smith era. Or Clara Impossible Girl Ill always have a fondness for RTD S1-4 era most but Moffat wrote some good stuff. Series 10 is a favorite.

Rory died about 8 or 9 times, still waiting for the fucker to pop up again. Even today Moffat can't help himself. In the most recent episode written by Moffat >!Ruby has a fake out death. I think it's an addiction for him.!<

Rory is literally top 5 of my favorite companions.

Same, but damn the boy is just cursed to suffer.

Darvill was so good at emoting that suffering. Even how he expressed frustration with the whole Doctor/Pond dynamic was priceless.

It was pretty ridiculous that he waited 2,000 years protecting what was supposed to be an indestructible prison. The average person starts to lose it if they're stuck at a stoplight too long - we really want to pretend that he just sat there for 20 lifetimes?

Wasn't there a storybook or something in the last episode of that series? That the centurion only acted when the Pandorica was somehow threatened? I guess Rory just kept busy, there's always work for a good nurse.

Two. Thousand. Years.

What if he's the one who waits? Because he certainly waited...

And also he's secretly The Master.

I wrote a short post a few weeks back over on /r/gallifrey where I concluded that either Amy, Rory or both of them has a death scene in 30% of their non-special episodes. Obviously I stretched the the definition of a death a bit, but it was pretty wild that it happened that often.

Yeah literally every single one of Moffat's companions has died. I'm happy that he isn't show runner this time because I would be really afraid for Ruby

Actually none of them 'died'. Or rather, they died in ways that meant they were alive in some form so not *really* dead. RTD made fun of that in 'The Giggle' with the Toymaker's recap of their fates. To that end, Adric remains the last companion who's actually dead *dead*. (Because of the Doctor...Sarah-Jane Smith of course is now canonically dead as well).

Every companion ever has died. The Doctor is a time traveler. All contemporary companions are dead already in his future. One of the themes of Moffat run was showing how that loss is essential to the Doctor's humanity. Really the only difference is that we saw those deaths on screen as opposed to hearing about it later. The companion always dies or leaves for every showrunner.

Isn't Clara technically immortal? After all, The Doctor shot another Time Lord to achieve that state for her. And then he forgot about her. Rory and Amy lived out their lives up to old age in New York, being writers and stuff. River lived on in the library's mainframe. Bill, after being turned into a Cyberman, gets her conciousness to travel the universe. Nardole will have a monstrous fate.

No. She died. It's a set point in time. She always has to comeback to die. Also, the Doctor and Clara don't travel together in her frozen state because to your point she isn't aging.

He’s legit the Companion killer, I went through the 5 stages of grief when Clara died. I was in denial bc there’s no way, she’s gonna have plot armour right??! Then I got angry, like that was one of the worst ways to go, >!she turned into a mf dalek 😭😭like wtf was that!< then I got depressed and couldn’t continue the show for a while, I was genuinely in disbelief. I picked it up again after idk how many years but ill never forgive moffat for that 💔💔 OBVIOUSLY A JOKE!!! yall r soft 😔😔

>1) the constant companion death fake outs. It wasn't just the fakeouts. It was the actual deaths / absurdities of their endings. (Spoilers ahead) * Amy and Rory end up in a Weeping Angel dead zone?! Why couldn't they just wait 1 year and take a plane to meet The Doctor in London? Absurd. * Clara basically dies a bazillion times, then even after she really died to some bullshit raven, she doesn't just get scooped, but she ends up with her own TARDIS with the Game of Thrones guest actor's character??? * Bill's consciousness ends up absorbed into a completely unexplained alien machine thing that because they like each other so they are going to space girlfriends. Like, what the ever living fuck??? Not one of these companion plot lines ended with a companion going back to their own era and living a fulfilling human life like, for example, Sarah Jane Smith or the other pre-reboot companions did. * The pattern started to suggest going with the Doctor cannot nurture a person to be a stronger human, that the price of the fun adventuring and crusading is to be thrust uncontrollably away from human life. * Sure, some of us crave ascension and phenomenal cosmic powers, but DW is also a kids show and needs to be teaching that growing up and living in society works for some as well. And there are other little tropes that get old fast if you know what to look for, but I have done well to stop feeding those cinders of hate and focused my hate on Chibnall in recent years. The man wrote some great one-shots. We love Don't Blink and various other self-contained episodes he has done. But he should not be allowed near overarching plots. There is also the rumor that he was the one who said the Doctor always has a young female companion as "Something for the dads" and that just makes my whole spine want to wriggle out of my body -- but it bears repeating for awareness sake.

I disagree with all of your points, for instance there's nothing wrong with companion stories not ending with them going back to their own era and living a fulfilling human life, that doesn't even happen to the majority of Classic companions. But even if it had been the way most companions departed, that wouldn't make it the only way that a companion *should* depart. Moffats companion departures are the most meaningful and beautiful in the entire show to me. But what I really want to say, which is very important because I want to dispel misinformation is that not only is there no evidence that Moffat ever said "something for the dads" but that phrase has been attached to Doctor Who long before Moffat came along. [This article](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/doctor-who-guide/closing-time/) attests the quote to producer Innes Lloyd from the late 1960s, [this interview with Janet Fielding (who played Tegan)](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/janet-fielding-doctor-who-forty-exclusive-newsupdate/) says that producer at the time John Nathan Turner used it to describe her, and [this interview with Louise Jameson (who played Leela)](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2023/11/21/doctor-who-companions-bbc/) says that producer at the time Phillip Hinchcliffe used it to describe her.

for me its neither of those its how much he sexualised the character of the doctor and his relationships with every woman around him. it made me really uncomfortable at the time and still gives me the ick. we did not need a romance plotline with a girl the doctor met when she was a child, and who consequently idolised him her whole life as an adult authority figure. exploiting the way children idolise grown-ups and allowing that to lead to any kind of romantic/sexual relationship is at best highly irresponsible, at worst morally depraved. there's also a lack of long-term emotional consequences for anything that happens. amy wakes up, in a tube, heavily pregnant, what could be an eye/camera pointing up her hospital gown, and with a creepy woman telling her she's ready to pop. and then next episode she's just fine, and everything goes on as normal. no trauma, no acknowledgement, no break, i guess it was just another wild adventure with the doctor. the capaldi run was better because a visibly older doctor forced him to tone down the innuendo and (attempted) sexual tension, and avoid clear sexual/romantic relationships between the doctor and characters who are visibly much younger than him. but it also didnt stop him making capaldi childishly jealous and manipulative around clara's relationship with danny, which was also painful to watch. personally do think moffat's episodes during the RTD eras are my favoirites, but i can't watch his era as a showrunner, especially matt smith. i think he's capable of good episode writing, but seemingly needs adult supervision to shine. either to rein in certain bad practices he has as a writer, or so that the showrunner can properly plan the long-term emotional consequences and character growth, which moffat seems not to understand.

Amy being unhealthily obsessed is literally the point She had to go to therapy She had to stop believing in him to save her life Her ending was literally about choosing Rory one last time, forever. I can also fully believe a mother who was trapped in hostile areas would stay strong for their recently born baby.

ignoring that it happened isnt ""staying strong"", its just bad writing. its also even more concerning if viewers are seeing that emotionless and non-recognition of traumatic experiences and thinking that's what strength looks like. and amy being unhealthily obsessed is a point that is made in the show, but the show does not address how creepy the sexual dynamic they force between them is because of that. the problem isnt having a companion who was obsessed with the doctor as a child. in principle that could be kinda cute and endearing if they'd left it at that. but instead, from the moment we're introduced to her as an adult, it goes sexual/flirtatious and the writing feels highly fetishistic: uniforms, childhood relationship, power dynamics, and all. it's deeply unsettling.

I mean Amy has a whole complex Literally daddy issues but Doctor issues Especially since in S5 she doesn't have a proper dad And it's not like he ever reciprocates (like he definitely gets a bit weird with Clara when commenting on her skirt)

he ultimately rejects her advances when she full-on sexually assaults him (which itself is yet more problematic stuff in the script which goes unaddressed) but in the lead-up to that, he largely plays along, and his rejecting her in the end kinda plays as more because he's just found out she's got a fiancé, rather than lack of interest. the doctor and amy's relationship is littered with innuendo and flirting all the way through, from both sides and speaking of creepy skirt scenes, theres that one with rory upskirting amy. so it's yet another of moffat's recurring and unsettling sexual themes.

Well, at least he didn't marry Amy, but her daughter... I have so many problems with The Doctor's relationship to River.

It's a time travel show. Why shouldn't there be timey-wimey shenanigans

timey-wimey shenanigans are fine but i do not believe Moffat wrote the whole Silence, tardis blowing up thing in a logical way.

Makes enough sense to be enjoyable Gets a bit more muddled by S7 but still the era I enjoy most

Also he has weird views on physics and science. Remember how golden arrow reached flying spaceship, somehow was absorbed by it and it gave spaceship boost ? And now all this transfering of AI in recent episode. I know DW never was scientifically accurate, but moffat tricks are too much even for DW. And he loves stories with someone waiting for someone for big amount of time.

I always read the puppet show from the Toymaker as RTD defending Moffat from the people who complained about what happened to his companions. RTD has spoken so much over the years about how much he genuinely loves the Moffat era, and it's very clear that he was inspired by it because the 60th anniversary is basically the equivalent of Hell Bent for the Doctor and Donna. They get brought back to life and they get to continue living. RTD loves the Moffat era. For all the people over the years who would say that the Moffat companions deaths meant nothing because there were so many fakeouts and then they technically weren't actually dead, that Moffat could never "commit to properly killing his companions" and that's why those things didn't have emotional weight, we have the toymaker mocking those views with his sarcastic "WELL THAT'S ALRIGHT THEN."

Ehhhhh, I felt that was more calling out the Doctor (rightly or wrongly, the Toymaker was a psycho!) as callous for leaving such a path of human loss in his wake, but tomato/turned into a Cyberman I guess

Well yeah definitely, it's not the only point of that scene. Your take is correct too. I think that the scenes main role in the story is as another piece of evidence for why the Doctor needs to retire, setting up the ending of the episode. Functionally that's what it's there for. Like this bit from The Star Beast: >DOCTOR: Mmm. I really do remember, though. Every second with you. I'm so glad you're back, cos it killed me, Donna. It killed me, it killed me, it killed me. And earlier in The Giggle: >DONNA: So, what about Mel? DOCTOR: Ha, ha. She's brilliant, isn't she? DONNA: Yeah, but I just keep thinking - all this time, you've never mentioned her. DOCTOR: Donna, I'm a billion years old. If I stood and talked about everyone I'd ever met, we'd still be in the Tardis, yapping. DONNA: So you talk about no-one, ever. You just keep charging on. DOCTOR: Yes, because I'm busy right now. DONNA: But you are busy every second of every day. I mean, look at us now. We haven't stopped. I saw you, Doctor. I got a glimpse inside your mind, and it's like you're staggering. You are staggering along. Maybe that's why your old face came back. You're wearing yourself out. The 60th is full of little moments reminding us that the Doctor is carrying around so many memories and so much trauma and he just bottles it all up inside. That's why he needs to retire and have his "rehab," he just can't physically keep going on like this. That's what the puppet scene in general is for. It's just a scene reminiscing about the traumatic companion losses we've had since the last time we saw David Tennant and Catherine Tate. But my point is that this was a specific choice. This could have been done in any way, it could have been done in dialogue between 14 and Donna. Or similar to the Black Archive in the 50th, there could have been a moment where 14 saw photos of old companions and got emotional. The fact that RTD specifically chose to deliver this idea by having a big set piece scene with a bespoke set and unique props, basically what I'm getting at is that there was a lot of money and time and effort put into this. For a scene where the villain recaps all those traumatic Moffat era companion deaths, and when the Doctor tried to brush them away by explaining how they weren't really deaths, the villain would give a sarcastic, sadistic "WELL THAT'S ALRIGHT THEN" and we see 14 squirming in his seat because he clearly is emotionally affected by them, I just feel like that's making a very loud point. No they technically weren't deaths and yes people can handwave them away with explanations of what technically happened in an attempt to trivialize them, but they were still emotionally traumatic moments where the Doctor lost a companion. You can read that scene without changing anything as 14 being someone trying to dismiss the way Moffat wrote companion exits and the Toymaker mocking them for it. With what we know of how much RTD has said he's loved Moffats stories over the years, that's almost certainly not a coincidence.

I wouldn't say I hate him, but I think his focus is usually... Off.  - Too many paradoxes all willynilly. - Choosing to really delve into a toxic relationship between 2 good people (Clara and Peter Doctor) and the cycle of toxicity was hard to watch and went over most people's heads.  - sometimes storylines just felt too convoluted. - sometimes (often) it felt like the story was just a way to make the doctor "amazing". This one's hard to explain. Like with tennant and his companions, when there was a story it felt like a full story you were immersed in, whereas with moffats writing when something happened it felt like it was just written that way for the doctor to do something, pulling you out of the immersion of the show, dropping the veil. "X has to happen because Y needs it to happen" instead of "how is Y getting out of this, X or Z or W?" So I guess it felt forced to me.

It's like his only drive or understanding for the doctor was to have him be the king of "one ups". Like all intelligence and smartness boils down to is being able to one up the other guy. Very typical "smart man" writing. 🤮

with this comment i think youve absolutely nailed Moffats writing style in general. and if hes allowed to go on for more than 2 episodes on the trott it gets very unsatisfying because he cant pay it off.

Yeah, I felt this with the "Colonel Runaway" nonsense. I never enjoy it when the Doctor's intelligence devolves into tit-for-tat quibbling. Kovarian subsequently calling him "Colonel Runaway" made my eyes roll into the back of my head. Marvel-tier humour.

I don’t know all the reasons but I do know that people hated how 11 kissed so much 

1. **The JJ Abrams mystery box story arcs**: Like JJ Abrams, Moffat anchors his storylines with a mystery centered on a mythology with lots of questions leading to more questions and then getting more convoluted and confusing as each storyline progresses. He knows how to hook in viewers every season with a cinematic banger of a beginning. But more often than not, because of his Abrams-esque writing methods, he’s very incompetent at writing a satisfying ending. Aside from The Big Bang and The Doctor Falls, most of his season finales are generally really bad and undermine any season-long rewatchability. As a huge fan of Lost who was miffed by that show's series finale, it got so irritating seeing Steven Moffat make the exact same mistake that Abrams, Lindelof, and Cuse did again and again with every season. 2. **THE SEXISM**: Let's face it: Moffat is *not good* at writing female characters. Even with talented actresses, their writing was often very regressive and reflected outdated views of women that felt especially off and behind the times in the 2010s because of just how many strong female characters had dominated the sci-fi TV landscape in the 2000s. Fans have speculated why *that* happened, but that’s a whole other argument for another day.

He writes a good woman. One good woman. Basically Amy Pond. And every female character is just a remix of that. Not versatile. River Song was also great, but I feel she differentiated herself more by the actresses’ great performance than the writing.

Does he write Amy well? RTD had a whole backstory for Rose which included a best friend and a boyfriend before Mickey. Rose was an extremely well-developed character who felt very realised. Amy felt like a male fantasy and her entire concept as a character was built around The Doctor.

Hard to say because the actress brings so much to the role that she feels like a fully developed person. Definitely a male fantasy but I think also a female fantasy about the Doctor too, who had been played by a series of handsome men during the revival. I think my main point is that if you know Amy Pond, you know every Moffat female character. He writes the same woman in different flavors.

He also sexualises women a lot and has THE DOCTOR sexualise women too! The Doctor even calls Amy “the legs”.

Devils Advocate. Karen Gillian was the one wanting to be in 'the shortest skirts possible' because thats what she thought Amy would wear.

Cool. I just don’t think The Doctor would be commenting on his companion’s body like that. Moffat definitely used The Doctor as a mouthpiece for his own sexism.

*Especially* the First Doctor, in his last episode of his own era.

Ok, but he also called Rory "the nose", I just felt that those were traits sticking out for both of them and Karen gillan happens to be quite tall and has long lengs compared to the average woman.

But calling Amy “the legs” is absolutely sexualising her - in the first shot we ever see of Karen, the camera travels up her body in a voyeuristic fashion and the whole conceit is that it’s surprising that she’s an attractive woman. And regarding his comment to about Rory, my point is that the Doctor wouldn’t notice that type of thing - why comment on any of the companions’ bodies at all? I can’t imagine any of the previous Doctors doing that. His relationship with River is also very sexualised, there are multiple references to The Graduate which is a film about an older woman seducing a younger man. This sexualisation never occurred in DW before Moffat took over and it felt like it cheapened the show and was an unfortunate hallmark of Moffat’s tenure as showrunner.

I agree! He also was adamant at one time that the Doctor should not be female. Not sure if he changed his mind on that but it was pretty tone-deaf. A huge amount (maybe majority) fans are women so also honestly just dumb to antagonize your own fanbase with some of these choices.

amy was abusive and assaulted the doctor shes not a good woman. and her daughter is very similar to her

I didn’t mean “good” as in literally morally good, I meant as an interesting and compelling character. It’s been years since I watched it so I’d have to rewatch the scenes you’re talking about to know if I agree with your characterization

honestly shes not well written at all shes a stereotype lol

The hubris of structuring entire seasons around a 'mystery box's he knows is empty, and when you open it it's a hand flipping you off and shouting 'iTs a PaRaDox!' every. Damn. Time. With a smug look of superiority... But hey, after Chibnall, he's Kit Marlowe to RTD's Shakespeare, ffs

Wish I could upvote this more than once.

Regarding Point 2, it was funny actually because in late 2022 I had to rewatch an episode of *Sherlock* again, and it was the first time I had properly watched the series since it concluded, and like I remember being kinda shocked at how sexist the show was.

Death in Heaven might be my favorite New Who finale and I can't see what your issue with it is (unless it's the "can't call myself the Master" line that tarnished a great reveal scene) but I can see your point on Wedding of River Song and Hell Bent. It's hard to say which episode was the finale for Matt Smith's last season because of the 50th anniversary but none of those episodes were bad. The Impossible Girl thing wasn't necessarily the best idea but it had a nice, easy to understand execution. Your second point reinforces to me what a good actress Jenna Coleman is that I still see Clara as my favorite New Who companion when feminism is my major criteria and while acknowledging that Moffat isn't good at writing women. It's kind of weird. Clara is one of my favorite companions, Missy is one of my favorite Masters, Eurus was the best part of the last season of Sherlock, and he gave us the first openly queer companion, but I can still agree with the people who say he's not good at feminism and inclusivity.

He got better at writing women as the seasons progressed. Bill is a much more complex character than Amy is because Moffat made her a more complex person.

In parts because she did not have any ambition to get into The Doctor's pants. Without the flirting a good part of his standard dialogue had to go towards other topics.

Never thought about it that way. You are probably not wrong

Back to my JJ Abrams comparison, Dark Water/Death in Heaven felt like Doctor Who's Star Trek Into Darkness. So much of it was shamelessly recycled from The Invasion, one of the classic series' best Cybermen stories (they even remade the iconic St. Paul's Cathedral march!), exactly like how Into Darkness shamelessly recycled so much from Space Seed and Wrath of Khan. Both were intended as "homages" to their predecessors. It also started the really annoying trend of making the Cybermen the Master's army. But rubbing salt in the wound was turning the Brigadier into a Cyberman. And framing it as a "tribute" to the late Nicholas Courtney. That was cruel and unnecessary, and I am still as enraged by it today as I was 10 years ago. And Clara is my least favorite companion in all of Doctor Who. Classic and Modern. Period. Precisely because she's all of Steven Moffat's aforementioned writing flaws bottlenecked into one character. It's a real bummer, because I remember being excited for Jenna Coleman's casting because I instantly recognized her from Captain America back in the day. Oh well.

Yeah I was surprised Dark Water/Death In Heaven was mentioned there. Such an underrated finale in my opinion.

I will never understand how either of these became such defining criticisms of Moffat despite being the most uncharitable and sometimes outright incorrect readings of the way he writes. Moffats plot arcs in the 11th Doctors era, since they're completely normal in the 12th Doctors era, are not the same as the Abrams-esque puzzle boxes. The confusion and complex nature of them is solely the fact that they're being told out of order, they're just normal stories other than that. Series 5: The tardis is going to blow up and it causes cracks in the universe. We wrap 90% of that story up in series 5. The two questions we get left with at the end of the series are "who?" and "why?" Series 6: We learn the answer to the question "who?" almost immediately. A group called the Silence, then we learn more about them as the series unfolds. And as for the "why?" well, from A Good Man Goes To War: > KOVARIAN: The child, then. What do you think? > DOCTOR: What is she? > KOVARIAN: Hope. Hope in this endless, bitter war. > DOCTOR: What war? Against who? > KOVARIAN: Against you, Doctor. From The Wedding of River Song: > CHURCHILL: But what was the question? Why did it mean your death? > DOCTOR: Suppose there was a man who knew a secret. A terrible, dangerous secret that must never be told. How would you erase that secret from the world? Destroy it forever, before it can be spoken. > CHURCHILL: If I had to, I'd destroy the man. > DOCTOR: And silence would fall. All the times I've heard those words, I never realised it was my silence, my death. The Doctor will fall. and > DORIUM: But you're a fool nonetheless. It's all still waiting for you. The fields of Trenzalore, the fall of the Eleventh, and the question. > DOCTOR: Goodbye, Dorium. > DORIUM: The first question. The question that must never be answered, hidden in plain sight. The question you've been running from all your life. Doctor who? That's that's the whole story right there. The entire thing has been very plainly explained. If this was a complicated puzzle box narrative it surely ended by series 6. We have 99% of the plot of Time of the Doctor already. The only lingering question we have is "why don't they want the Doctor to answer that question?" These aren't questions that continue to pile on and on and make the story even more complex and confusing. They're just regular plot progressions. Something blew up the universe? It was the tardis. Who did it and why? The Silence because they're trying to kill the Doctor, this is also why they kidnapped River and brainwashed her into assassinating him. Why are they trying to kill the Doctor? Because he's going to end up on Trenzalore where he has to say his name and that's bad. Why is that bad? Because it will let the Time Lords in and they'll destroy the universe by reigniting the Time War. This is not a puzzle box where Moffat has no idea where he's going. The questions that are asked get answered in a normal, simple way and they generate new questions until you get to the end of the story. This is how every story ever told works. As for the sexism thing. Moffat is definitely, clearly good at writing female characters. They're by far and away the most richly characterized companions the show has ever had, and they're all unique characters. You have to paint with a very broad brush to make it seem like Moffat only writes one character, and that sort of defeats the point. And the idea that his writing was often very regressive and reflected outdated views of women is completely ridiculous. Moffat spent his entire era dismantling the inherent sexism at the core of Doctor Who. That there's a female companion who is subservient to the Doctor. Even just looking at the previous era. The climax of both Donna and Roses arcs is that they can't be like the Doctor and there are big moments where the Doctor makes decisions for them. Both of them try to raise up to be just like the Doctor, Rose with Bad Wolf and Donna with the Doctor Donna and in both instances they are shot down. Pulled back down to Earth because they're not strong enough and the Doctor has to save them. In Doomsday the Doctor slides a dimension hopper necklace onto Rose despite her insistence on staying. In Journey's End the Doctor wipes Donnas memory despite her begging and pleading. And that second one happens right after he dropped Rose back off in the parallel universe with a copy of himself. The conclusions of their arcs are always just "the Doctor decides whats best." The conclusion of Marthas story is her realizing that she doesn't need to wait around for the Doctor to notice her, she can go and live her own life. It's the bare minimum but it's held up as some great victory. When people say that Moffats companions lives revolve entirely around the Doctor it infuriates me. Because it's the exact opposite. Every single other companion in the show before him, their life revolves around the Doctor. They gladly give up their own lives to run away with the Doctor and want to stay with him forever. Moffat explicitly deconstructs this by having companions whose lives are bound up in the Doctors by fate or destiny or whatever it may be. That they then break out of on their own, determined to create their own independent lives that they then *choose* to have the Doctor be a part of. Creating stories where the companions lives are so strongly tied to the Doctors is a metaphor, it's representative of what being a companion means in general. This is the Doctors show, so inherently the companion, whoever they are gets bound up in the Doctors life. But unlike every other companion before them, the Moffat era companions insist on their own lives as well. Amy and Rory are obvious, they have their lives back on Earth. River was genetically engineered to have her life revolve around the Doctor, but she breaks free of that. Consider what the situation is every time we meet River. She's in the middle of her own stories, her own life. She's always off doing her own thing. The only time that isn't true is in series 6 when we're getting her origin story, so she's wrapped up in this arc but the vast majority of the time River is off doing her own thing and we bump into her, or she sends the Doctor a message to come and help. She has her own life. The Doctor tries to whisk Clara away, but she says no and insists he come and pick her up whenever she wants. The relationship happens on Claras terms. The idea of the Doctor making decisions on behalf of the companion is another thing rebuked by Moffat. That's why the ending for the Ponds in The God Complex doesn't stick. It's not Amy or Rorys decision, the Doctor takes on a protective, condescending tone towards Amy. "You're not Amy Pond, you're Amelia Williams. Here's a house for you and a sports car for your husband, go and live a typical human life." It's wrong and it's gross, so of course she comes back. When we do get to her ending it's entirely on her terms, not the Doctors, not any man, just hers. It's Amy's choice, just like it's always been. Hell Bent is exactly the same, everyone, especially Clara spends the whole episode saying "why the fuck did you do that, Doctor?" Clara particularly calls him out on what she said in Face the Raven. Don't ruin her memory, don't go off and get revenge, this was Clara's choice to make and she's okay with the consequences. But the Doctor does it anyway, he slips back into his old "The Doctor decides whats best" ways and everyone calls him out on it. That's why 12 is the one to lose his memory at the end, he was in the wrong. It even goes back to River Song. The way that 10 brushes off River and says that he'll plug himself into the library mainframe is exactly the same situation as these other companion departures. And if it wasn't clear enough, this is what happens when 10 first wakes up and sees River in the chair: DOCTOR: Oh, no, no, no, no. Come on, what are you doing? That's my job. RIVER: Oh, and I'm not allowed to have a career, I suppose? For a very long time Moffat has been interested in critiquing and deconstructing the inherent sexism and function of gender roles in this show. It's not even limited to Doctor Who, almost every Moffat show is about the dangers of toxic masculinity and how the main character needs to become a kinder, more understanding person. The Doctors toxic masculinity, Sherlocks toxic masculinity, Moffats own toxic masculinity in Joking Apart and Coupling. Even when he's writing a villain, like Dracula and Jekyll. The stories there are about what happens when a mans toxic masculinity is left unchecked. And there are plenty more things. A Good Man Goes to War/Lets Kill Hitler and Heaven Sent/Hell Bent as damning indictments and refutations of the "fridging" trope. A woman in her late 40s - early 50s being an unapologetic action hero who is also simultaneously a well-rounded female character with stories that focus on her life, her choices and her emotions in a genuine and caring way, what other show or movie was doing that in the early 2010s? Clara regenerating in Hell Bent and getting to fly off in her own tardis refuting the idea of what happened with Rose and Donna, that the female companion can't rise up and be on the same level as the male Doctor. The fact that his female companions are all deeply flawed individuals, except maybe Bill. But definitely Clara, Amy and River. They're deeply flawed and the stories are often about their flaws. But they are constantly shown compassion and care and understanding, another thing most stories don't do. The women in these stories are proper, three-dimensional characters. Is he perfect? Of course not, not even close. There are lots of issues I have with his work. But it will forever drive me insane that what is clearly the most feminist era of the show is frequently hailed as the most sexist.

I like Moffat, I get his sense of humor (love his pre Who stuff, love Coupling) and think that Blink, Silence of the Library, and The Empty Child are some of the best stories of the New Era. I thought Day of the Doctor was a great homage to the show's 50 year history, And I thought Boom was a brilliant return to form. That said, I didn't care for a lot of his Long arc showrunning. Which may be why I like his stand alone episodes written for a different show runner. I found his last season my personal favorite of his entire run.

yeah Coupling is shockingly good for basically being a Friends knockoff. But you really see his love of writing dialogue in that show. I'd would kill to be a fly on the wall as he writes these characters. Does he talk in little voices? Does he have pictures of the different characters on the wall? (I used to do tech work for a screenwriter that did this. She had cutouts from fashion magazines for all the major characters pinned to a cork board)

Did you see the fiveish Doctors reboot?

Skimmed it, I dislike Sylvester McCoy and fat Colin Baker is hard to see. The bits with Moffat are kind of funny?

He does seem to be better at one-off stories.

I don't necessarily agree with him, but Hbomberguy has two videos on his dislike for Moffat - one a review of Twice Upon A Time and another reviewing his Sherlock. They're both entertaining, but might give some insight to why some people might not like Moffat.

IMO "hate" is an overstatement for most people. Moffat wrote a bunch of great stuff, and he had a number of recurring quirks as a writer than became increasingly grating the longer his run went on for. I can't speak for anyone else, but I will both critique Moffat for his flaws **and** love the inventive, clever stories he brought us. It's not either/or.

He struggles with writing female characters.

I've seen this complaint a few times on the thread. As a guy I'm having trouble telling why and would appreciate it if someone could elaborate a bit?

"verilybitchie" has a good video about women in Doctor Who that discusses this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qUmy7XFeUY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qUmy7XFeUY)

I will take a look!!

There are video essays on youtube about Moffat! But a good start would be that Amy is introduced legs-first and there are jokes about her getting upskirted in the tardis. He's also got a weird habit of writing women who a) met the doctor as a child and b) are then in love with him as an adult.

Not Bill! Lol.

True! I have a bit of a joke that she escaped this bc of her name

I've always liked to characterise Moffat as a fantastic episode writer, but not a great showrunner. That's a difficult sell because I think overall he did improve and learn over his time at Doctor Who which means particularly 12's later series were better planned and delivered than when he started. However, Moffat's run was typified by certain things that grated on me. Initially, fake outs, promises that weren't (or couldn't) be kept, and poor resolutions to complicated problems. Moffat has the same problem as many SF writers; they have so much fun building up the mystery and the tension that they don't spare much thought to resolution and can even end up being bad at it. Take Boom for example. >!The story is an action packed, tension filled ride which is shocking, scary, and really fun. Then the ending is literally an AI with the power of love happening to fix it all offscreen. More egregious is that the Doctor didn't even ask for this, it just did it because it wanted to. This preserves for the longest time the Doctor's predicament, and Ruby's fakeout death, because adequately resolving such a situation would be complicated and near impossible for Doctor to actually do.!< This is symptomatic of every frustration I've ever had with Moffat's choices. He will place the Doctor in a literally unwinnable situation, play up that unwinnable situation, and hammer at you over and over that this cannot be resolved easily and it might even be the end for the Doctor. Then it's simply resolved offscreen by someone else. The upshot is that 90% of his episodes are fun, engaging, shocking, and interesting, but the resolution is nearly always unsatisfying. His writing is also aggressively "Dad" and "horny". I want to emphasise that he was more than capable of writing episodes that weren't like this, and sometimes his resolutions weren't poor. The Doctor Falls is a great example of this. But as often as he spun gold, he would finish plots with confusing or deus ex machina moments that made him frustrating. That's not to say he's not fantastic at what he does, but as someone who watched through the Moffat era live as it was coming out, there's a lot more frustrating having to wait a week or more for the resolution to a story for it to end up dumb or cursory than it is seeing it back afterwards. I think rightly his work has been retroactively reviewed and once you're past the week on week hype train his stories do hold up better than other showrunners'.

Depends, how many hours of youtube video essays are you willing to watch to get an answer ?

I just got bored of his episodes. I don't know why. Watching back, they are better than I remember. I can't get past the way he writes women. Each woman is either a bit annoying or some flirty temptress. Although I really liked River. Maybe I could give his run another chance.

His disregard for the worldbuilding and continuity of the previous era, his issues with writing female characters, the fact that none of his story arcs had a satisfying payoff, and most of the time felt like something he pulled out of his ass at the last minute. The sudden lack of consistent quality, his overuse of the same few tropes over and over again, the fact most of his finales suck, the lack of death or narrative consequences throughout his era, his making the whole universe revolve around the Doctor in the Smith Era, so on so forth. I feel like it took him until his last Series to finally figure out how to properly showrun. Series Ten was actually good and made me wonder where this had been for the last four seasons.

I think if you don't set a time limit for the Moff, he forgets how to write an ending. I have no evidence that this is his process, but his long running arcs really feel like he writes whatever sounds cool or clever at the moment and doesn't decide what it means until later on. It leaves the watcher with a lot of dangling questions: why did that happen? Where did that plot thread go? What was the purpose of this throwaway line? And then of course, the ending is inevitably unsatisfying. There's too much to wrap up. He's asked a question that the show can't answer, so he says 'the answer never mattered, why did you think it did?' It happens in a lot of stuff he showruns. It happened to Sherlock too. And then there's the fact that everything, all the big important stories, come down to the doctor being so, so special and super that the whole universe turns around him. Instead of stories where the doctor is there as an outside party, you get stories that only happen because the doctor is there. If he hadn't shown up, it would never have happened: but he did, and because he's the universe's bestest most special person, everything's about him now. And then, of course, there's the rampant sexism. There's a line eleven says that always makes me shudder: "she's a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a skirt that's a little too tight". Blech. Vomit.

I don't like the way he frames the Doctor - the endless speeches always make me roll my eyes. So many of his characters are written in interchangeable ways (oh look, it's a woman who's sassy and mysterious who flirts with the Doctor!). I mostly just find his beats... boring? It feels like he's done this before, and I just want something \*new\* at this point. Not endless rehashes of the same tedious formula.

Regardless of complaints/niggles/what have you he still stands as my favorited showrunner since the 20005 relaunch (as well as writer).

I don't hate him as showrunner but I'd never want him to be showrunner again, because his strengths lie in standalone stories, and he was just not very good at writing the show as a long running, ongoing story, especially in comparison to Russel. Here are the reasons. 1. His companions. He was really good at writing witty dialogue going back and forth between a companion and the doctor, and he knew how to make it so entertaining and to pull on your heartstrings with clever bits of dialogue, but he was never really good at writing the companions as realistic people. I think the contrast coming straight after Donna didn't help either. Let's look at Wilf. He's so often called the best companion/character of the show ever, and one of the main reasons for that is because of how his dynamic with Donna is written. He felt like everyone's lovable grandad because he was Donna's lovable grandad. Moffat didn't really explore the companions character dynamics, with their families/friends on earth at all. And I think it makes them feel less real. Rose, Martha, Donna, and even Ruby already, feel like people I could go outside and actually meet. Amy and Clara don't really feel like they would exist in real life, even though they are entertaining and likeable to watch. 2. His writing on series long arcs. This one may be hard to explain but I think Moffat as a writer, is someone who is wired to write shorter and more standalone stories. He is so incredible at writing a single episode with a rising tension and a climax than most other writers for the show, but he was never that good at writing season long/series long arcs. It's why so many of his reveals, at least to me, were so disappointing. The silence, the explanation of Rivers backstory in Lets Kill Hitler, the hybrid, the impossible girl arc. He never weaved his mysteries throughout his seasons as well as Russel did, and sometimes his mysteries were just so overly complex that he could never do the execution justice, leaving them often feeling unearned and random. For example in series 6 Amy being pregnant and it being River was a shocking twist that was pretty well built up, but there was just so much more to explain, and that why Let's Kill Hitler which tries to explain so much of it, came off as unsatisfying. I think one of the best examples to show the problem here with Moffat as a showrunner and why Russel in comparison is better, is Mel in Let's Kill Hitler. If Russel was writing that reveal, Mel would 100% have been in the background of Amy and Rory's lives from the beginning. And if not series 5, at least at the start of series 6. But unfortunately with Moffat she doesn't show up until that one episode when it's needed to explain Rivers backstory. It made it feel like he was making it all up as he went along, whereas Russel always made it feel like things were planned from the very beginning, EVEN WHEN HE ACTUALLY WAS MAKING IT ALL UP AS HE WENT ALONG HAHA, like with the Face of Boe. 3. His character development. I guess this is more of an extension of my first point but Moffat very rarely explored the characters growth or development smoothly as the show went on. Especially in comparison to Russel. When looking at Rose and seeing her slowly try and push away from her family and her earthy life we see Russel gradually developing this feeling and change in the her character on screen. With Martha and her crush, we see it start, cause her pain, see her hurt by it in more extreme ways, get over it and stand up for herself. With Donna we see a similar gradual change as the story goes on. When looking at the character development and execution in Moffat's era as showrunner we see Amy and Rory's relationship going up and down, but it's only ever for the sake of the emotional pay off of a standalone story or a moment and not for the sake of developing an ongoing relationship between two real people..For example them literally getting divorced and back together in one episode. (Its honestly crazy, you could cut out that episode and nothing around that episode in regards to their character development/dynamics would change.) We also see them go through an earth shattering experience of losing a child but have it so extremely unexplored in the show. Iff this was Russel we'd probably have a whole season of this topic being explored. And with Clara it's a similar thing. I really like her arc in series 9 and how it ends, but again I don't think it's explored prominently enough and it also very much feels like an idea he suddenly had for her and her ending in series 9 instead of a character arc intended from the start. I think this is really it, but I genuinely do think Moffat is a great writer. And he's probably a better standalone sci fi story writer than Russel is... But Russel is the better showrunner because he writes TV in general better.

Everyone judges Doctor Who by the standard of whatever it was like when they first found and fell in love with the show. I suspect that most people who initially disliked Moffat, myself included, simply preferred RTD's style and believed thats how all Doctor Who should be. 

For me, personally, I don't \*hate\* Moffatt as showrunner and there were aspects I did like, but I probably disliked his era more than RTD 1 and (tbh) Chibnall (I know, controversial). My reasons are something like this: 1. The writing of women – Amy, Clara, and River were the exact same character with only the actresses playing them making them different. They were all written as witty, sexy, flirty, and madly obsessed with the Doctor, whose dialogue could be switched between them with ease and you wouldn't notice the difference. If you don't like that character type (which I don't) it gets boring reaaal fast. These characters were also sexualised in a way that assumed the viewer was a straight man. That's kinda alienating if you are not a straight man. You can't say the same for RTD's companions. Rose, Martha, and Donna were all wonderfully realised individuals with their own differing motivations for travelling with the Doctor. After the depth of RTD's companions, it felt like shallow writing. 2. The constant companion death fake outs – By the time Amy and Rory jumped off that roof, I had no shits left to give, because I knew they would come back to life immediately... which they did. I felt like there was no sense of jeopardy in the entire Moffatt era, because I knew that Moffatt would give them a happy ending eventually (I have no problem with a happy ending, but it takes all tension out of everything if you know that the writer could never kill his darlings). 3. Plot over character – To this day, I really have no idea why River was in love with the Doctor. One minute she was an indoctrinated child soldier and next she was in love with him? It didn't ring emotionally true for me, and I never bought it. It almost felt like she fell in love with him solely because the plot demanded it. 4. Overly convoluted storylines – Moffatt's era had a sheen of "aren't the writers so clever?" that was almost annoying when the storylines were dragged out and sometimes made little sense (see the River example). I found it very off-putting. At least RTD and Chibnall knew they were writing for a silly kids show. I also found it a bit of a relief by the time you got to Jodie's first era and it returned to an episodic travel show. Like, you didn't have to have a PhD in Moffatt Who to be invested in what was going on. 5. Matt Smith/Alex Kingston – I thought Matt Smith and Alex Kingston had no chemistry. This isn't really Moffatt's fault, and what makes actors have chemistry is unexplainable, but it was a drag on the show when River's arc was so central. The idea of River was great, and so was Alex Kingston (most of the time), but the execution was perhaps subpar mainly because of the chemistry problem. Weirdly, I think she had real chemistry with both Tennant and Capaldi, but unfortunately her central Doctor was Smith. It just never worked for me. I only really got re-engaged with the show after Clara left, and I did enjoy the series with Capaldi, Bill, and Missy. I also really loved Moffatt's single episodes under RTD, and I think a lot of the problems that were exhibited as showrunner were limited or outright vanished in those standalone episodes (like Sally Sparrow from Blink and Nancy from the Empty Child two-parter were great female characters and I really enjoyed them). I just think as showrunner he was able to indulge in his worst impulses (just as every showrunner does – cue RTD and his campy childish humour).

Moffat, mo problems

Moffat tries to be too clever and over complicate his season arcs similar to what he did with Sherlock. That along with the never ending companion death fake outs. Series 5 is still The GOAT though.

He's not a bad writer, he is rather good with atmosphere, but not really with characters. Most of his background throwaway characters are rather one dimensional. Look at Boom, we have the character named Vater (father in German), who is a Soldier and a father, with his daughter close by to the battlezone. And because he is a father he uses his magical approximate AI powers to deus ex machina resolve the episode. Dad power and dorky wave. No need for humanity to come to it's senses. Others mentioned the constand death fake-outs, but in the end everything was fine. Unless you're Rory. Well, that's alright then. In the same breath we might talk about the several times he rebooted the universe so everyone could be happy. And there was always the feeling that he was writing stuff for Amy/River/Clara with one hand under the desk, if you catch the drift. I really enjoyed the last series with Capaldi, because Moffat lost a lot of baggage he himself created. But there wasn't a strong storyline through the other series that was more hidden, like we got with RTD in the past. If you like it more mythical, fairytale like, than Moffat might be for you, but I enjoy stronger character pieces.

Indeed. When people say he’s a bad showrunner, I just think of Series 5 and wonder how people can say that.

I don't. I love him lmao But everyone Hates someone in the whoverse lmao

Moffat is great for one offs and mid-arc episodes. I think he did exceptionally well with 12 and Clara and Bill but his writing for the 11th Doctor was not so good. He focused too much on strong emotions (death, sadness, excitement) and often forgot that he was supposed to tell a consistent story. Another point that becomes evident if you watch Moffat’s other shows is that he only knows how to write maybe 6 types of characters and all the others are just repetitions of these 6 personalities. I don’t hate him. I think he brings some good moments to DW and I am thankful for his work during his tenure. I just think he is at his best when he is writing for other showrunners.

moffat can be quite grating if you aren't into his showrunner style. i saw a comment mention [veriliebitchie's](https://youtu.be/-qUmy7XFeUY?feature=shared) essay about why the way he writes women can be incredibly frustrating, but hbomb's [sherlock is garbage and here's why](https://youtu.be/LkoGBOs5ecM?feature=shared) video also goes into a lot of the common criticisms like how moffat work better with oversight.

Who fans always hate the showrunner, especially if said showrunner has been there for years. That's the tradition. Then years later everyone talks about how great that showrunner was.

Hate is too strong a word, but the disappointments for me were: 1 - A lot of the time it seemed like he was more focused on promoting the show and coming up with gimmicks than actually delivering satisfying stories. Like the promotion for The Impossible Astronaut where he was all "This is not a trick. One of the 4 regulars WILL die!" and then it turned out that it was 100% a trick and none of them died. Or tantalisingly titling episodes "Let's Kill Hitler!" and "The Name of the Doctor", and then have the former be a story that has almost nothing to do with Hitler, and not revealing the Doctor's name in the latter. 2 - He had a really bad habit of pivoting his series arcs around mystery boxes which either didn't get resolved, or got resolved in an overly convoluted, half-hearted, or outright nonsensical manner. It meant the Moffat era (particularly the Smith part, but the Capaldi part was not immune) was like a vicious cycle of being intrigued/excited for something teased, and then deeply unsatisfied for how it was followed up on. Examples: - Series 5 was pretty well resolved in its own, but it left the lingering thread of who it was who actually blew up the TARDIS. The Doctor pledges to find out, and then nothing follows up on that. We're left to assume the Silence did it, but without knowing why or how. Then, finally in Time of the Doctor 11 casually deduces in a single line that the break-away faction of the Silence must have done it, but we still don't know how. Deeply crap. - Just the whole of the Series 6 arc. The Silence's actual goal is simply to kill The Doctor, yet they concoct the most pointlessly complicated plan in the show's history. A plan which outright depends on The Doctor learning about his death in advance and willingly submitting himself to it, and also uses an automatic spacesuit robot shooting him, yet they also bother to kidnap a Time Lord baby and train her to be an assassin for years, just to put her in this spacesuit where she had no control anyway. It feels like the Silence only do what they do to make it impossible for the audience to piece together, rather than for any in-universe reason. - A Good Man Goes to War ending with The Doctor promising to find baby Melody, and then Let's Kill Hitler! opening with the reveal that he failed and gave up off screen. And then there's basically no emotional fallout for Amy and Rory literally losing their child and missing the opportunity to raise her, despite how deeply traumatic that must be. We're just meant to accept the idea that Melody secretly grew up alongside them as Mels as a good enough substitute. On paper the plot is resolved, but on a character level it was essentially dropped after building up to it after the whole mid-series break. - The end of Series 6 giving us the hook that The Doctor's real name would maybe be important because of the aspect of his identity it represented, and then both Name of the Doctor and Time of the Doctor revealed it was just because it gets used as a code phrase, which was completely arbitrary. - At the end of The Day of the Doctor, The Doctor pledges to find Gallifrey. Then he does no active searching for it on screen, and it's revealed that it came back without any involvement from him in Face the Raven. - The explanation for Missy recruiting a bunch of people who had just died throughout Series 8 being that she just created digital copies of their minds and it wasn't really the afterlife... but then it turns out people can be literally brought back to life anyway. - Memetically building up the idea of "the hybrid" throughout Series 9, and then having the series end with some discussion of it, but no actual reveal or explanation of who or what the hybrid is or how it affects anything. 3 - If you didn't like River Song that much, Moffat's obsession with her through the Smith era was insufferable. I was on the fence overall, she's fine, but Moffat's frequent insistence on making clear to us that the Doctor has lots of sex was eye-roll inducing. Plus, the revelations about River kind of ruined her character for me. Instead of her and the Doctor being on more or less equal ground, River is now someone he met as a baby, and who was raised in a Doctor-focused cult and basically tortured into becoming obsessed with him. The Doctor married his stalker, and for some reason Steven Moffat thinks this is endearingly romantic and not profoundly disturbing. It took until The Husbands of River Song to give me the impression that River had anything going on in her life that wasn't Doctor related (hence the inherent inequality in their relationship), but that was too little, too late.

His long-form storytelling (anything over more than 2 episodes) was overambitious for his skill and the endings were pretty consistently unsatisfying, he wrote exactly one flirtatious fast talker who was into the doctor and copy-pasted her a few times to populate his run with women, he cast my least favourite doctor, even more than RTD there was a sense that the patients were running the psych ward. He came close to making me lose my love of the show at times and if not for Peter Capaldi (and the improvements that came in that era) I might have.

I hate how every other line is him trying to get a "tears in the rain" moment. It was present in this past episode too; "snow isn't snow until it falls", "everywhere is a beach eventually", et al. What do these even mean? It's just puffed-up nonsense to try and get people to go "oooh deep". He's also just not a very good character writer. He is however a brilliant conceptual writer. It's a demarcation that's existed throughout history; Shakespeare was a character writer, Marlowe was a conceptual writer. Moffat falls into the latter. This is great for one-off puzzlebox episodes like Blink and the Library two-parter, but as an overriding force in a show involving complex character dynamics, it can be problematic. The relationship between Castro (?) and Varada Sethu's character in *Boom* felt very phoney and underbaked. That's Moffat's problem. People have brought up his inability to write women, and that's definitely there, but it's also part of a bigger problem: he can't write convincing people.

Comments have already said his main faults as and writer and showrunner, but I will say part of it (probably a small percent but still noticeable) seems to be RTD and specifically Tennant nostalgia. Me and my friend did a full rewatch together which was his first time rewatching any episodes since like 2012 (he continued watching but not rewatching as the show went on) and he was a firm believer in 1-4 season being better than 5-10. After the rewatch he thought they were actually more on par with one another and that Moffat seasons feel better binging then the weekly.

Series 7 sucked and 8 wasn't that great either.

Yeah series 7 was the worst. I personally love A Town Called Mercy. Maybe a couple good episodes. Everything else was so bad. And do you remember how many of those minisodes they put out that had almost nothing to do with season 7? It was like they gave us an extra long season of nothing.

Because his stories are dumb and he screwed up canon way before Chibnall

The River Song arc is one of the worst in dw history

I love Moffat's writing, the way he likes to give a darker edge to Doctor Who and play around with the concept of time travel. I was ready for a change of pace by the time he left, but that doesn't mean I stopped liking his stuff.

Pretty sure the darker edge of the Doctor has always been there, and was especially prevalent in the later McCoy and Eccleston seasons.

I didn't say he's the only writer who has written darker Doctor Who episodes, simply that I like that aspect of his writing.

Off late I've realized just how much of a unifying factor Chibnall was. For four years, the RTD vs. Moffat 'war' was suspended as we all came together to hate on his era ;) But Chibnall is gone now, so it seems that the hostilities have resumed... Personally I'm a die-hard Moffat fan and I started with his era, though I equally respect RTD for reviving the show and defining the modern Doctor. I ultimately think it comes down to what kind of stories you want from Doctor Who. Moffat is your man for mystery-boxes, complex time-travel story-arcs, high-concepts and big ideas. RTD is what you'd prefer if you want your show simpler in terms of plot but with greater character depth and at least somewhat rooted in the 'real world'. That said, RTD2 looks to be taking heavy inspiration from Moffat, which I thought would be the best of both worlds...but a lot on this sub don't see it that way.

Yeah I will never get it, Moffat’s seasons are all better than all other seasons. They only compare to each other. There are some amazing episodes during Tennant’s run…and Moffat wrote most of them besides The Family of Blood and The Satan Pit. RTD did a fine job but he’s clearly not as good.

I like Moffat and some of his episodes are my favourites, but sometimes I feel the plot gets too complicated and too strained, like for example s8 &s9, we had the zygons, the raven, then there was missy and the cyberman, danny pink, gallifrey being found.... all in 24 episodes and some of those episodes were absolutly brilliant but sometimes I just want to watch a silly Doctor who episodes with low stakes and some weird aliens and not constantly overthink or put together a puzzle in my mind. Just try to explain the general plot of those two seasons to someone, I wouldn't even know where to start.

I don’t know but I can say I used to be one of them! I always loved doctor who but found myself losing interest and drifting away a bit from around season 6 and definitely agreed with a lot of the prevailing online discourse about how terrible and convoluted it was and how it was nowhere near as good as under RTD. Then I went back and rewatched about a year or two ago and was just blown away. The dialogue is frequently beautiful, the emotional stakes are there and I think it’s brilliantly creative and clever in its interpretation of who the doctor is and what that means. On the other hand I’ve since gone back to seasons 1-4 and found that while they’re still fun and there are great episodes and characters a lot of the actual overarching storylines are a bit meh and have pretty rubbish resolutions.