This is a great little interview with the Moff by Alan Sepinwall. It gives some insights into why he wrote River. No spoilers for the upcoming episodes.
That is a fascinating interview. I was particularly interested in the comment that River talking of her and the Doctor travelling in opposite directions was poetical rather than fact. I'd been thinking that but there are some who didn't agree. It's great to have it in black & white!
What he does seem to excel at is not so much structured planning-in-advance as building in lots of narrative hooks as he goes along that are then available to be picked up later if needed, to create the retroactive illusion of planned complexity. This is one of the key writing tricks for long-form narratives (TV, novel series, etc.) - Moffat is a master at it.
Yes, this. TV in the UK, where you can't tie actors to super-long megacontracts, can't plan things too much over a period of years. Actors aren't signed up for seven years or whatever, it's a series or two at a time with break clauses. So he can't write himself into a corner, where the only possibilities for character A involve character B or where the payoff for character C is definitely going to be this thing in roughly X series hence. Add to that the need in long-running shows to be able to shake things up and regularly go down a different path in reaction to sudden inspiration, cuts or rises in budget, audience and personnel changes... The Rowling way can only work for things like novels, where the writer has complete control over everything. And if HP hadn't sold so incredibly well from the off, if it had only stretched to four books' worth of sales, then a lot of what was loosely planned would probably have been ditched to tie up the story early.
Yeah, unless the TV writer is one J. Michael Stracyzinski, I feel like I really have to dial down the expectations of how much things are planned vs. fluxing for TV writing. JK knew after book 1 that she'd be in it for the long haul and could plot out whatever she wanted; but TV is way more fluid than that. Writers leave themselves hooks and they fit long-term ideas into their immediate needs.
My guess is that actually Moffat had no idea whatsoever what "Silence will fall" meant when he wrote Prisoner Zero's lines, and he's been winging it since then. I don't know if he's gonna be able to dovetail all of that arc back to the idea of the Pandorica either, and I'm certainly not holding my breath that it's all gonna make sense in the end. That said, I'm still enjoying it, just, keeping my expectations in check. I've been burned before (Farscape, I'm looking at you...)
I love reading Moffat interviews - not just for the trolling, although that's fun, but that he is deeply passionate about what he does, dedicated to the show. Such a typical Scorpio, though, taking on Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who at the same time. Of course, it's not sane, Moff. You would probably be bored with a sane life.
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My guess is that actually Moffat had no idea whatsoever what "Silence will fall" meant when he wrote Prisoner Zero's lines, and he's been winging it since then. I don't know if he's gonna be able to dovetail all of that arc back to the idea of the Pandorica either, and I'm certainly not holding my breath that it's all gonna make sense in the end. That said, I'm still enjoying it, just, keeping my expectations in check. I've been burned before (Farscape, I'm looking at you...)
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