2010 Vision

So the roster of writers for the 2010 series has been confirmed. I can't help but feel that Steven Moffat is playing things a little safe.

For each of Russell T Davies' first three seasons as Executive Producer, he found four new writers to work on the show. Moffat gives us two, Richard Curtis and Simon Nye, both of whom could be considered as whatever the equivalent of stunt-casting is for commissioning scripts: they're both big names in comedy writing, that will attract considerable tabloid interest, with no track record or special interest in sci-fi that I know of.

Of the returning names, Gareth Roberts has been a fixture for the past few years, Chris Chibnall wrote 42 for Season 3 and also oversaw the first two seasons of Torchwood, and Toby Whithouse and Mark Gatiss haven't been on writing duty since 2006.

My worry is that, as far as I can tell, Gatiss and Roberts have both to date specialized in the same sort of fairly cozy pseudo-historical story, possibly featuring major personage from history. When we know that Curtis is writing something that will doubtless be at least partly comedic featuring "Van Gogh stabbing a yellow monster", it's possible that we may not be in for much variety. (It doesn't help that I haven't unreservedly enjoyed any of Gatiss or Roberts' old effort.)

Still, School Reunion by Whithouse seemed a good effort, even if the actual qualities of the script were largely obscured by the nostalgia-fest of the return of K9 and Sarah Jane, and unlike many I don't have much against Chris Chibnall. The first series of Torchwood was a hot mess, but the second was really enjoyable, and 42 was fine, suffering from looking and feeling a lot like the superior The Impossible Planet from a season before, and also being followed by possibly the strongest six-week run of episodes the show has ever known.

In the end, what Moffat's 2010 squad seems to announce is that the man famous for bringing the scares to RTD's show is determined to keep things light and fluffy for the foreseeable future. We don't even know how much his own scripts will continue to bring the darkness, now that he's no longer the one they wheel in once a year to write "the scary one", but the Chief Writer. We really don't know whether he will continue to push the idea of the Doctor as a sexual being that was so prominent in his RTD-era scripts. Matt Smith doesn't look like an obvious successor to Pretty Boy Tennant and his monarch-deflowering hijinks, but you never can tell.

One thing's for sure, it's going to be fun finding out. Is it spring yet?