Doctor Who Season 8: 10 Ways They Could Screw It Up

5. Mark Gatiss Is Back...

Aside from Moffat, Gatiss is the new series€™ longest serving writer, which is a bit of a mystery considering he rarely strays beyond €˜competent€™. At his best, he€™s come up with decent facsimiles of old Who- The Unquiet Dead is zombified Hinchcliffe/Holmes, Victory of the Daleks a cheeky act of theft from The Power of the Daleks- but at his worst, which he commonly is, his stories embody the mid-season lull- nobody remembers The Idiot€™s Lantern, nor do they want to remember Night Terrors. Up until last year, Gatiss had been restricted to one script per season. Perhaps because of his close association with Moffat- they co-created Sherlock together- this was upped to two for Season 7b, with Cold War and The Crimson Horror both passable adventures. That€™s fine if you have a well-established Doctor popular enough to weather middling fare, but when you€™re essentially rebooting the show, you need something bolder. So the news that Gatiss would be contributing another two scripts to Capaldi€™s inaugural season is hardly cause for celebration. Worse still is the possibility that Gatiss€™ increased involvement with the series (witness also his over-rated anniversary biopic) points to him replacing Moffat- which could be sooner rather than later. Let€™s be clear- Gatiss is a solid writer outside of Who. But his tendency towards nostalgia isn€™t right for a series that, we€™ve been promised, is going to embrace sweeping changes along with its new leading man. It may just stall any momentum Doctor 12 manages to generate.