4. Steve Moffat Can Handle Shorter Singular Stories
Finally, James wrote that some of Steven Moffat's best adventures have been longer episodes such as the Empty Child and Library two-parters and the extended-length Series Five premiere The Eleventh Hour, and while if anything this simply re-enforces some of my earlier points, to a large extent it does disjustice to the extent of the Moff's writing capabilities. On top of the aforementioned longer adventures, the showrunner has provided us with plenty more compact, effective one-off romps like The Beast Below, A Good Man Goes To War, Let's Kill Hitler, The Wedding Of River Song and his two fantastic Series Seven contributions so far since taking over from Russell T Davies. It's important not to forget that the Moff's offerings each season form just a small part of the 'boxset' as a whole, and if anything to return to the serial format would likely limit the appeal for new writers to join the show for one-off episodes and indeed two-parters. Would Richard Curtis, Neil Gaiman, Mark Gatiss, Toby Whithouse and the countless other big writers who've joined the show in recent years really have been likely to endorse being part of a programme dependent on longer contained serial storylines with little room for manoeuvre or creative freedom? This is something we could debate, but I'd wager the answer to this is 'No'. For now, then, I would assert that the best route for Doctor Who remains for it to retain its standalone/two-part format for the foreseeable future, lest the ratings begin to drop as a result of repetitive storylines that fans so often idolise from the classic series as being flawless. If the ratings do begin to take a big hit, then we'll reassess the best strategy, but for now that shows no signs of happening. What are your thoughts on the standalone/serial format debate?