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Steven Moffat and Fandomâs Favorite Troll
Iâm going to be honest and fans may hate me for it but they have to remember that I am a fan myself. A proper list-making-borderline-autistic fan. I am head mingmong. Iâm King Ming. But I donât do anything for the fans. I honestly donât think that the fans want me to do anything for them. Except maybe for the odd little line now and then. Some little thing somewhere. Russell does that. I do that. We all do that. And only you will get it. But we donât do anything for the fans. There arenât enough fans. Thereâs the whole audience. There are fans but thereâs millions of an audience. (Soon 2008)
Steven Moffat is, at first glance, very different from some of the other auteurs profiled here. His work is primarily located in Britain and less integrated in the US media landscape, but is nonetheless decidedly influential. The properties he leads are centered in television, and unlike Joss Whedon, he hasnât made the leap to film with its correspondingly larger potential audiences and budgets. However, he is perhaps the quintessential example of a fanboy auteur, having a high degree of both making media of which heâs specifically a fan and taking a textual-fidelity affirmational approach. Moffat is also an inheritor of Doctor Who, a franchise that has been increasingly centered on its devoted audience since its return in 2005. In fact, Matt Hills (2006, 103, 107) argues that Moffat shows âhow fans can become celebrities by virtue of moving across into the category of media professionals/producers working on the very text which they are fans of,â as one of âan elite group of fans who have written for and produced the 2005 BBC Wales-producedâ Doctor Who. Hills (2006, 111) further notes that the existence of this group âis partly a product of Doctor Who fans having grown up with the show they love, being inspired by it to work in the media industry,â and subsequently being in a position to work on Doctor Who when it was reinvigorated. While Moffat is part of a larger group of fans-turned-media-makers, he in particular has emerged as an auteur figure. Hills (2010) argues that Moffatâs auteurization started in the Russell T. Davies era of Doctor Who, when common fannish practices of finding out everything about production led them to learn about the other figures involved with the show, including Moffat, and their distinctive creative characteristics. However, it has also been reinforced by Moffat himself through practices of self-praise, tight control, and insistence on his vision at all costs. Moreover, Moffat functions particularly clearly as a brand; as Louisa Stein and Kristina Busse (2014) argue, his involvement with Doctor Who brought that cult audience to Sherlock out of the gate. In this way, Moffat crystallizes the fan auteur in particularly clear form.
In this chapter, through an analysis of more than 950 news stories, we interrogate how Moffat both avows and disavows fandom. On the one hand, Moffat-as-fanboy is both the author of the show and his own ideal audience, both performing and expecting broad and deep knowledge of the textâs history. On the other hand, he has tension with actual fansâas opposed to the imagined fans who are just like himselfâand rejects those he thinks are being fans the wrong way. We then explore Moffatâs auteur side, characterized by insistence on doing things his way; his past as a continuity- and detail-obsessed curatorial fanboy shows through in sometimes overly complex stories and a dictatorial approach that at once leverages knowing all of Who and Doyle and abides by it only when it suits him. Indeed, we contend that the most salient characteristic of Moffatâs brand may well be being abrasive to anyone and everyone. We finish the chapter by considering the substantial concerns his work raises around inclusionâor lack thereof.
Is He or Isnât He? Avowing and Disavowing Fandom
Moffatâs status as someone whose media-making is bound up in his own fandom is well known. Notably, he turned down a three-movie deal with Steven Spielberg to make films based on the comic book character Tintinâ considerably higher profileâto focus on Doctor Who instead. In an article describing Moffat as âfandomâs evil overlord,â a fan and critic notes that he âwrites fanfiction for a livingâ:
While Doctor Who is something of a cult favorite in the U.S. and overseas, itâs mainstream family viewing in the U.K. Three generations have grown up with the show, and Doctor Who has now reached the point where most of its cast and crew are lifelong fans of the show. Basically, its writers are filming fanfic of a TV series they watched as kids. And whatâs Sherlock if not a modern-era fanfic of the Sherlock Holmes stories? (Baker-Whitelaw 2013)
However, despite this diagnosis, scholarly analysis differs on whether Moffat is more fan or auteurâperhaps because he himself both avows and disavows fandom. Ellen Harrington (2014, 79) argues of Moffat and his Sherlock collaborator Mark Gatiss that âtheir status as fans legitimizes their connection with these characters, allowing them to pursue Sherlock Holmes and reinvent him, all the while unabashedly following Conan Doyleâs detective formula and including the sort of nostalgic details that reward fans of the original series.â That is, because they are fans, they can stick quite closely to the âformulaâ without shame. Hills (2014, 35), by contrast, contends that there is no such full-force embrace of fannishness, as âdistinctions of media professionalism need to be conserved and defended, such that showrunners are always positioned as more than just fans.â Hills (2014) calls this approach âheretical fidelityâ: Moffat and Gatiss emphasize how faithful they are, but also play up their authorial agency to make different choices. Breaking with faithfulness is key because âif production discourse was one-dimensionally about faithfulness to Sherlockians and the Canon then Sherlock would move too close to the realm of fanfiction, lacking markers of professionalized and valorized official authorshipâ (Hills 2014, 35â36). Indeed, this need to both embrace and distance himself from fandom is visible across Moffatâs career.
On the one hand, Moffat performs the quintessential fanboy. Echoing the common fannish approach of authority through length of tenure, he stakes a claim to have consumed the media text from its inception: âA dedicated âWhovian,â he claims to remember watching the first Doctor, William Hartnell, who quit the Tardis when Moffat was fourâ (Burrell 2011). Moreover, he compounds this hipsterism with an insistence on how much harder he had it back in the day: âThat form of fandom was much more active than it is nowâŚ. You only had what you could create yourself. There was no Who on TV. We had nothingâ (Colgan 2014). This, too, is a bid for authority through authenticity. Further, he makes a point to stake out his broad and deep knowledge of the textâs history. He certainly does so with Doctor Who: âSteven Moffat has joked he would triumph over [Who actor and fan] Peter Capaldi in a battle of who is most knowledgeable about the hit show,â saying, âHis love, we can compete on that, just let it be understood. But in a face-off, in a head-tohead [sic], heâs nowhere bloody closeâŚ. Iâm ahead on knowledge. I am. Honestlyâ (Liverpool Echo 2015). Moffat similarly frames himself as even more knowledgeable than Arthur Conan Doyle himself:
We were also trying to work out an obscure point of continuity that Doyle gets wrongâŚ. In his first story Watson has a wound in his shoulder and in this second story itâs transferred to his leg. So we came up with the idea it was actually psychosomatic. Therefore he was in therapy. We were just to trying to fix an incredibly obscure continuity error. Thatâs how it started. We get paid for this. (Burgess 2013)
Moffatâs fannishness is particularly clear here in his excitement that they can be obsessed for a living, but also in his deployment of encyclopedic knowledge.
Moffat brings his fandom perspective to bear repeatedly, as when, in an interview following the leaking of unfinished episodes, he admitted that he too would have looked when he was a fan:
To be honest, I donât blame the guys who went and looked, cos I wouldâve. I wouldâve as a fan. It would have ruined it for me but a new Doctor? Iâd have had to go and have a look. They have at least learned something, which is what episodes look like when we sign off on them, like Into The Dalek, it just looks ridiculous! Itâs some people running around some rooms that have an extraordinary fixation with green curtains. Itâs nothing at all! (Mellor 2014)
This fannishness also spills into production. Sometimes, the collapse of the self as fan auteur and âthe fansâ is overt, as when Moffat says, âYouâre writing what you would want to watch. You are writing your personal obsessions and hoping that people will share themâ (S. Heyman 2014). At other times, it is more indirect. As Hills (2014, 34) notes, the discussion in commentary tracks centers on âMoffat and Gatissâ own status as âSherlock Holmes fanboys,â with this gendered identity being (problematically) extended to those assumed to be listening to the DVD commentary.â Many incidents thus demonstrate that Moffat-as-fanboy both is the author of the show and serves as his own target audience.
At the same time, however, Moffat disavows fandom. In one interview about Sherlock, he said, âOnce we decided to make it modern day it all fell into place. I am a total Sherlock fan but I do think on some adaptations the attention to period detail gets in way of the actionâ (Batley 2010). This âIâm a fan, butâ is exactly the intersection of claiming and disavowing that Moffat occupies. He also projects it onto others: âShowrunner Steven Moffat said he is not worried about signing up self-confessed fan of the show Capaldi to the starring role. âHe can absolutely separate the two things. I mean, he can separate the job heâs doing from the fact heâs a fan of itââ (Leigh 2013). Although the comment is overtly about Capaldi, one cannot help feeling that Moffat is also talking about himself here.
There is even greater tension between Moffat and actual fans as opposed to the imagined fans who are just like himself. Joss Whedonâs and Kevin Smithâs engagement in fan forums over the course of many years created a stronger bond with their audiences; Moffat, by contrast, used his forum and Twitter posts not only to share with his fans but to criticize them. While the original posts are no longer available, fans have archived quotes and screen captures from some of Moffatâs more memorable engagements on the Gallifrey One forums. For example, in response to discussions of whether Rose and the Doctor had sex raised by âThe Doctor Dances,â Moffat wrote:
I say, no I didnât! The whole scene was about the fact they WERENâT at itâ indeed, it was the Doctor being slightly hurt that Rose hadnât even considered him in that light.
Thereâs precious little evidence they ever got up to anything, Iâd have saidâthat it doesnât stop it being a love story, of course (it clearly was) but unrequited surely? Oh, itâs all sex with you lot, isnât it? And when the writer of Coupling says youâre banging on about sex too much, itâs time to start listening. (lolcoholic 2008)
This response exemplifies Moffatâs refusal to listen to fans when they disagree with himâitâs total and does not entertain the possibility that the fan interpretation has any basis in his text. The tendency was even more dramatically displayed when he deleted his Twitter account: âFans first noticed that the account had gone missing in the wee hours last night when they attempted to reference Moffatâs account in their tweets about the latest episode, âDinosaurs on a Spaceship.â Speculation abounded that Moffat deleted the account because of heaps of negative commentary from fansâ (Byrne-Cristiano 2012). While often such deletions are framed as resulting from fans who harass someone off the platform, Moffatâs brand is such that what makes sense to this journalist is that he was fleeing from criticism.
When speaking about fans rather than engaging, the contours of Moffatâs disavowal emerge even more clearly. His unwillingness to engage with fans, on display with the Twitter deletion, is a recurring theme. In a mild version, he simply denies a role for engagement. Thus, while he acknowledged the fan fiction and fan video explaining Sherlockâs survival of a fall at the end of Series 2, he denied that his own work was in dialogue with them: âWe donât look. We canât look. Iâm running two shows that have got very large and very vocal fandoms. I wouldnât admit it to myself if I had to look at it. No, the meta feel comes from the original Sherlock Holmes, the original storiesâ (Cornet 2014). His refusal to look here is overdeterminedâheâs too busy, but also it would be shameful. His response seems almost inherently contradictory to his performed identity as a previous respondent to fanboys on forums, but does help re-secure the lone genius model of the author. More dramatically, he has actually argued against engaging fans as opposed to the broad audience:
How do you tell really? You only hear from the die-hard fans, and they form a tiny untypical fraction of the audience. Far as I can tell, itâs [Coupling] been pretty good. Some very good stuff in the press. A lot of Richard Coyle fans frothing away [after he left the show], of course, like I assassinated him or something, which is fantastically funny and reason enough alone for the internet to have been invented. But leaving aside that inevitable portion of the audience who should only watch television with a handy rag to chew, we generally seem to win people over by the end. The general audienceâthe vast majority who watch it if itâs on and forget about it afterwardsâbarely seem to have noticed the change. (Author 2005)
While undeniably fans are only a tiny fraction of any mass media audience, they are a particularly active and loyal one that provide a great deal of free labor (Stanfill 2019). Disavowing them entirely was relatively common in 2005, but Moffat held much the same attitude nearly a decade later: âI love Doctor Who fans ⌠and I am a Doctor Who fan, but the show is not targeted at themâ (A. Harrison 2013). This statement of âitâs not for youâ is at odds with the demand implicit in his writing to watch like an affirmational, detail-obsessed fan, which we will discuss more in the next section, and his DVD commentariesâ explicit invocation of fanboys, again showing the structuring tension of avowal and disavowal.
At other times, though, Moffat frames fan desires as something to heed. As one journalist reported, âco-creator Steven Moffat has admitted that he felt the pressure of expectation from fans and their many speculative theories about how Sherlock survivedâ (Owen 2014). He even directly contends, âIâve been a fan all by my [sic] life and I know we have to deliverâ (Western Mail 2013), and itâs likely not coincidental that this embrace of fandom bolsters himself. Moffat has also acknowledged taking inspiration directly from a fan film for the Series 8 credits:
Billy Hanshaw just decided to make a Doctor Who title sequenceâŚ. He put it up on YouTube. And I happened across it and I thought it was the only new idea for a Doctor Who title scene since 1963. And we got in touch and we said, âOK, weâre going to do that one.â So, I suppose when we talk about Doctor Who fandom online, thatâs what we should be talking about. Not all the random madness and hate-filled nonsense that goes on, but we should be talking about the extraordinary creative response that there is to Doctor Who. That we give them a show and they give us our show back, sometimes better. (K. Butler 2014)
Moffatâs framing of the new credits sequence suggests the relationship with fandom he is looking forâa give and take, but one where fandom is receptive to and productive for his idea of the canon. However, he also doesnât miss a chance to reject those he thinks of as not being fans the right way, the ones who are not so useful to him.
The Abrasive Auteur
As this begins to suggest, Moffatâs auteur side is characterized by insistence on doing things his way. Some might view this positively as being an iconoclast, but he is also eligible for some less flattering words. His writing is complexâ or overly complicated; referentialâor self-indulgent; he guides franchises with a firm handâor is a control freak. If we think of the auteur as having a distinctive style, Moffat definitely fits the bill. His writing is notoriously labyrinthine, and has variously been called âconvoluted and alienatingâ (Kelly 2017), âtoo complicatedâ (Todd 2011), âconfusingâ (Burgess 2015), and even âbafflingâ (Wells Journal 2015). As one critic noted of his run on Doctor Who, âSadly, today most of the talk surrounds the over-complexity of the storylines and the fact that script-editor and showrunner Steven Moffat doesnât end stories, instead providing yet more twists and turns, before triggering another story-strand entirelyâ (PR Script Managers 2017). That is, while sometimes narrative complexity is valued as compelling storytelling, Moffatâs critics suspect him of complexity for complexityâs sake.
In addition to being complex, Moffatâs stories are often very insider, assuming a lot of familiarity with the textâs history; in one colorful phrase, a critic suggests that Doctor Who is at risk of âdisappearing up its own space-time vortexâ (A. Harrison 2013). As one broader comment on Moffatâs work noted, this tendency can be off-putting for those who arenât hardcore followers:
Even shows as successful as Doctor Who and Sherlock should be aimingâ especially given the accumulating publicity they receiveâto introduce new viewers, and there were stretches of âThe Time of the Doctorâ and âThe Empty Hearseâ that must have been almost incomprehensible to new or casual consumers. The sections involving the number of Doctorly regenerations and the way in which Sherlock cheated death sometimes felt like a chatroom for aficionados rather than a programme for a general audience. (M. Lawson 2014)
By making such choices, that is, Moffat often closes the doors to viewers not willing to follow him in his obsessions, despite his frequent refusal of the idea that fans are his target audience.
One way to interpret these plot acrobatics is that Moffat is focused on being clever, even at the expense of being substantive. One journalist noted that a particular plot âis no doubt ingenious, and Doctor Who under Moffat is a stylish, madcap fantasy. But I wonder whether I really know Amy Pond. Beneath the sass and the sauce and the wit and (thereâs no getting away from this) the skirts, Iâve yet to completely empathise with her, or work out what makes her tickâ (Martin 2010). One shortcut taken by Moffatâs writing, then, is character development. Another journalist recounts: ââA story is an ending,â Moffat said at Comic-Con, âand how you get there.â This implies that he landed on his dramatic twists first (âWhat if River Song is Amy ...