Will Variety Of Tone Continue, Or Will Moffat Choose A Consistent Feel Throughout Each Season?

Most seasons or producer-eras of DW keep to a certain tone template for their run - eg Season 7 grrrrrittiness and - oh, go on then, it's Christmas - grrrrrrrrrrrrravitas; a Masterly Season 8 with Dudley Simpson on high doses of LSD; a so-called Gothic trilogy of seasons from 1975-77; Key To Time etc etc. Despite obvious variety in storylines, its that Tone element that remains intact.

One of the strengths (or weaknesses for some) of RTD's reign was the remarkable shift in tone over 13 episodes, and maybe a reason for schizophrenic voting trends as the show segued, for example, from a knockabout Slitheen romp to intense high drama with a lone Dalek and continued this trend pretty much throughout the four years. Folks who can happily change Worzel heads each week will have been in hog heaven.

Now, although Moffat has hinted that he won't be veering wildly from RTD's template, Moffat's idiosyncratic stamp will surely make its presence felt on all episodes within a run to greater or lesser extents, just as RTD's fingerprints are left on every story thus far - with maybe Moffat's receiving the least 'tampering' due to contractual clauses, but I still *feel* the big Welshman's presence breathing over every ep's shoulder.

Will Moffat eventually settle into a house style where tone remains consistently solid as a rock despite variable storylines/ideas, and if so, will it actually begin to bore viewers who desire a bit of slap with their tickle and grrrrrrrrrrrrravitas?

Tone should be in the midpoint between Human Nature (extremely bleak, only 'joke' is Baines' racist remark to Martha) and Aliens of London (almost 100% jokes, not bleak at all).

In fact, tone should be that of the two-parter The Doctor Dances - very dark, very scary but with quite a few laugh out loud moments.

Who was it who wrote The Doctor Dances again?

I think the Moff will be less prone to RTD 'quirky' self-indulgent stylee moments. BTW this is not a crticism of RTD!

I hope we keep a variety of tone and style, TBH. A samey-ness can creep in, and things start getting a little predictable, no matter how good the stories are if you go that way (the Hinchcliffe era is a perfect example of that, and Moffats own DW stuff, come to that).

Keep the audience on their toes! One of the beauties of this show is how it can encompass loads of different story styles - it's a strength, not a weakness.

The Co=Ordinator wrote:I think the Moff will be less prone to RTD 'quirky' self-indulgent stylee moments. BTW this is not a crticism of RTD!

Having watched Jekyll, I'm not so sure if this is going to be true....

Balbinder Mann wrote:

Keep the audience on their toes! One of the beauties of this show is how it can encompass loads of different story styles - it's a strength, not a weakness.

Absolutely.

Allow audiences to throw their expectations regarding style into the bin before every story transmits; after all, expectation has been the downfall of many a Whovian, myself included - took me a few attempts to 'get' the Series 4 finale simply because of an RTD shopping list of delgadofan desires, theories, hopes and all the other rubbish that makes DW fandom such a wonderful but twisty obsession. Now I can't praise the finale enough for its ingenious conceit, scattered structure and constant punctuation of wit - DW as true Rock and Roll. He's sneaky, that Rusty - as clever as they come but a card-carrying cheeky bastid with it.

Balbinder Mann wrote:I hope we keep a variety of tone and style, TBH. A samey-ness can creep in, and things start getting a little predictable, no matter how good the stories are if you go that way (the Hinchcliffe era is a perfect example of that, and Moffats own DW stuff, come to that).

Keep the audience on their toes! One of the beauties of this show is how it can encompass loads of different story styles - it's a strength, not a weakness.

Absolutely. I like the variety of styles. It wouldn't be Doctor Who without variety and I think might lose some audience.

Lucy McGough wrote:Tone should be in the midpoint between Human Nature (extremely bleak, only 'joke' is Baines' racist remark to Martha) and Aliens of London (almost 100% jokes, not bleak at all).

In fact, tone should be that of the two-parter The Doctor Dances - very dark, very scary but with quite a few laugh out loud moments.

Who was it who wrote The Doctor Dances again?

Well, I don't know Lucy. I loved both Human Nature and Aliens of London (yes, really) so I'd still want that variety personally.

Fortunately, we have someone taking over who's just as intelligent and TV-literate as RTD, and understands that variety is the name of the game.

The Doctor can travel anywhere in space or time (alright, mostly it's earth) so it stands to reason that each week, each adventure, is going to be different from the last. That, to me, has always been part of the programme's appeal.

If anything, I think Moffat will go more out-there and really annoy those 500 angry blokes in the Other Place. I'd love to see him do a tightly plotted - his forte - PG Wodehouse style farce. I can just imagine it being brilliant. He's also commented that he's excited about writing more big, ballsy action/adventure stories.

Over here, BBC-America is now showing series 4 on Saturday evenings. And during commercial breaks (Yes, I know, commercial breaks. During Doctor Who. Good Heavens!) they have been showing some interviews with the Moff that are not on the series 4 box set. Two of these interview snippets (they're no longer than sixty seconds in order to be part of a commercial break) in particular are of interest in this discussion.

In one, which aired during Partners in Crime, the Moff noted and openly praised RTD for having the ability to write such completely different stories as Partners in Crime and Midnight, and having both work within the structure of the series 4 narrative. In another, he talked about the formula for creating an episode of Doctor Who as coming down to this: you open the episode with perhaps two minutes of the Doctor and a companion in the TARDIS, and then get into the meat of the story. From there, you have 45 minutes to introduce a whole new world, a plot, and a group of characters that you have to move around and then dispose of. And it takes a really big idea each episode to do that.

This tells me that his style of approaching creating a whole series of Doctor Who will not be too dissimilar to RTD's, in terms of having varying tones and styles being presented. I find that re-assuring, and I'm eager to see what he presents us.