Steven Moffat is a man famed for the rippling repetitions in his work; recurring themes bubble beneath stories, surfacing for air at crucial plot points. From the timey-wimey to the woman who beat Sherlock, there are always clues to resolutions. His stories are nearly musical in the way that they relate back to something that was mentioned earlier, like returning to a chorus for the ease of familiarity. But do these repeated themes stay in their respected shows? No, of course they don't. Moffat's Doctor Who is more similar to his Sherlock adaptation than you think. Sure, he cast dark-haired, white, British men in a leading role, and gave them companions. But the similarities run so much deeper than that. And that's not a grand Moff masterplan to colonise all of British television with his ideas of what relationships should be, and what heroes should be: the original writers of Doctor Who tried to steer their lead character away from the "anti-hero" tag, and onto a more Holmes-like path. Sherlock and the Doctor are intrinsically similar characters, with huge differences of course, but I'm here to talk about the Moffat eras. I'm here to show you similarities between Who and Holmes that the Moff enjoys bringing out in his work. Here are ten examples of the more in-depth similarities between Moffat's - and Mark Gatiss's - big two characters, the Doctor and Sherlock Holmes. And for ease of writing, when I talk about Moffat's input on Gatiss episodes and vice versa, I am assuming that they work closely together. What else have you noticed that connects the two? Comment below!
