Production Notes (Steven Moffat Q&A) for Doctor Who Magazine #491: "The best story in the universe is always about someone who doesn't know they're the hero."
I posted the one from #490 three days ago, and this is the one from #491. #492 comes out next week, and I'll post the Q&A from that when it comes out.
What's this?: Each month in Doctor Who Magazine they have 'production notes' - a column by someone involved in the production of Doctor Who, and normally in the form of Steven Moffat answering reader-submitted headlines. Because these questions have often been used as a source for blogs to write misleading stories, u/samueldlockhart started typing them up for r/gallifrey.
Hey thanks for doing this! Now I don't have to buy it: Yes you do. Well, if you can find it before the next one comes out on the 15th. It had 97 other pages, which included: a in-depth preview of the first 4 episodes; an interview with Kate Walshe about the creation of special effects; a feature on Lego Dimensions; an interview with Doctor Who's costume designer; a feature on recasting the parts of the Second and Third Doctors in the audio adventures; the third part of DWM's Twelfth Doctor comic-strip "Spirits of the Jungle"; a deconstruction of The War Games; reviews for all of this month's DVD/CD/Book releases and EVEN MORE.
u/samueldlockhart is the one who usually does these, but I've done a few too, and these have probably fallen off our radars, but we'll remember to do them in future!
JOHN PAUL DARBYSHIRE asks: In The Hungry Earth, the Doctor takes Amy and Rory to Wales in 2020, and Amy and Rory see their older selves in the distance, waving at them. But in The Angels Take Manhattan, Amy and Rory are sent back in time and spend the rest of their lives in twentieth-century New York. So how can their future selves be in Wales 2020?
Trying to make sense of the dates in Doctor Who? Good luck. Teams have tried, and wept of their failure. Nick Pegg (the Daleks) never stops toiling over the UNIT dating controversy (personally, I think they were all at it, usually with Jo Grant), and figuring out the exact dates for the Ponds is a nightmare. But having said that, here's the official don't-look-too-close answer. The Amy and Rory from the future in The Hungry Earth were from Series 7A, when the two of them are only occasionally travelling with the Doctor. Some time between The Power of Three and The Angels Take Manhattan, they glanced at the calendar, remembered The Hungry Earth, and for a lark, went on a trip.
In case Nick Pegg is bored inside his Dalek (he lives there now, it's easier) and decides to pipe up, pointing out some anomalies in this perfectly correct answer - the grumpy old fool doesn't hold with my UNIT dating solution either - then I refer you to the joint effects of the Time War and the universe being rebooted in The Big Bang. Some dates got squidged. Yes, squidged. There was Time-Squidgery. Brian Cox explained it to me once. Or at any rate, he nodded when I cornered him with a gun and the script for Blink. I think he cried too, so he must have been sincere.
##ROB WIDDAS asks: Does the Doctor ever take a day off? Phone in sick to avoid saving-the-universe-duties?
Well, see The Snowmen for details! Sulking on that cloud for as long as he could bear. (It was probably only ten minutes, but shh, don't tell him.) But in truth, I think he has loads of days off. He's not the avenger his fans and enemies like to imagine - he's a bloke with a time machine, slamming around the universe, trying to make summer never end. He wants to meet people, see amazing things, and understand the universe. And sometimes, by accident, he ends up fighting the good fight. But that's not what he's trying to do - it's just that those two passionate hearts won't let him see people suffer and not intervene. He's the eternal passer-by who becomes the last man standing. The best story in the universe is always about someone who doesn't know they're the hero of it.
KATE JAMESON asks: Does the Doctor have a birthday, and if so, when is it?
Tsk. The 23rd of November. Pay attention.
NICK MAYS asks: Would you ever consider doing a 'true' historical story, with no sci-fi elements apart from the TARDIS and the sonic screwdriver? Like they used to do in ye olden days?
Well, yes. Sort of. I've actively courted the idea a couple of times, but so far it hasn't worked out. If I'm honest, I never loved the 'true' historical ones as much. Objectively, I can often see that they are often very good, and often better than the loopier sci-fi around them. But between you and me, I rather like loopy sci-fi with bonkers monsters, and insane unfeasible plots to hollow out the earth, or weld the solar system together, or whatever a well-financed laughing man in a cape had come up with this week to justify his underground monorail network...
... and I'm breaking off this answer, because there's a file on my computer of notes and scraps of ideas, and I thought I should check my working. And there it is, an idea for a historical I'd completely forgotten about. And it's not half bad. Okay, I'll be pondering that for the rest of the day.
If it happens, it's your fault. Remember that.
TESS PURSER asks: If you could choose any alien, human or monster to exist in real life, which would you pick? I'd choose K9, Sarah Jane Smith or Aggedor.
Wrong answers. All of them, wrong. The correct answer is, of course, the Doctor.
SPA SIBO asks: In Dark Water, we see Clara has put up lots of sticky notes with key phrases on them, presumably as reminders of the things she hadn't told Danny about before, but was now going to reveal to him before their phone call was shockingly cut short. One of them read 'three months'. What was the meaning behind that particular note?
In my head, nothing more than that she'd been lying to him for that amount of time. It doesn't matter what's in my head, though. I'm only the writer, I'm done. It matters what's in your head.
MARK HOLDING asks: Since the earliest days, whenever we viewers follow the Doctor into the TARDIS, he seems to take quite some time getting to the console before the TARDIS takes off. But when we stay outside, the door barely has time to close before dematerialisation occurs. What's your in-universe explanation for this quirk?
Oh, you and me both! I've worried about that for years. And in fact, decades before I got anywhere near Doctor Who, I came up with an answer. It's not in the show - it is not canonical - but I offer it up.
The TARDIS know the future. Or rather, the TARDIS makes no distinction between past, present and future - for any time machine, time is all one long event stream, hanging there in causality, unmoving and unchanging. In other words the TARDIS already knows when its connection to real time and space will no longer be necessary, in any given part of the event stream. So as the Doctor and friends move towards the console, in the world outside the doors, the TARDIS has already fast-forwarded to the take-off the Doctor is about to perform.
Any good? Got something better? All head canons are equal!
Speaking of head canon, I've got some more lined up for you. Saturday 19 September, it all begins again.
[I've spoiler tagged the entire paragraph, as it teases information about episodes that have aired and episodes that have not yet aired.]
[If you can't read the spoiler text, I have put the words in an image on imgur here.]
Answers soon. Some of them may break your heart...
If you have a question you'd like Steven to answer, email dwm@panini.co.uk with 'Ask Steven' in the subject line.
Posted Oct 11, 2015, 5:17 PM UTC · edited