Doctor Who: 8 Possibilities For Series 8

3. Fresh Voices

doctor-who-exterm Doctor Who's pool of writers has remained fairly consistent - some, myself included, might argue stagnant - since the advent of Steven Moffat as showrunner. This has almost certainly caused the show to suffer in a few different ways. Moffat and Mark Gatiss (the two writers with the greatest number of episode credits since the beginning of Series 5) are also showrunners/writers for Sherlock, and at times the strain this has placed on their work for Who has been very clear. Many of the strongest episodes of recent years have been penned by writers outside the extremely small Who "family", most notably Neil Gaiman (The Doctor's Wife) and Neil Cross (The Rings of Akhaten). Along with this, it is worth noting that not a single episode of Series 5-7 has been penned by a female writer. That's at the very least extremely disappointing, and at worst, one of the reasons for the show's recent unfortunate habit of casually dropping sexist jokes and placing female characters into decidedly inferior positions in relation to men. In point of fact, there has only been one credited female writer (Helen Raynor, 4 episodes) on the Doctor Who staff since the beginning of the 2005 reboot of the series. So does the arrival of a new Doctor predicate the arrival of at least some new men and women behind the curtain as well? I think that it certainly should.
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Matt is a freelance writer and aspiring TV and film scriptwriter. He has a bizarrely eclectic skillset, and the interests to match. Find more of his work and ramblings over at the Breakwater Industries page on Facebook. He is a regular contributor to WhatCulture.com, and his work has also appeared in the essay collection "Joss Whedon: The Complete Companion", published by Titan Books.