Things are feeling kinda timey wimey. Steven Moffat, the man who showran Doctor Who when Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi held the titular moniker, has come back to the franchise.
Russell T. Davies, who helmed the show before Moffat in its Eccelston/Tennant days, is now back as showrunner. The two worked together then, and now Moffat is back to pen an episode in the show’s upcoming season, where Ncuti Gatwa (pictured above) is now the Doctor.
“Yes, okay, fair enough—apologies to everyone I’ve very slightly misled—I am in fact writing an episode of the series of Doctor Who. Exactly like I said I never would,” Moffat said in a statement on the official Doctor Who website.
He added, “What can I tell you? There was begging, there was pleading but finally Russell agreed to let me have another go—so long as I got out of his garden. Working with old friends and a brand new Doctor I couldn’t be happier. Sorry I was a bit reticent on the subject for so long. It was all part of an elaborate plan that would have delighted millions but at the last minute I forgot what it was.”
The director of Moffat’s episode is Julie-Anne Robinson, who also directed the episode that comes right after “The Church on Ruby Road,” which premiered on Christmas last year. “Steven Moffat gave me an intense challenge as a director,” she said in the same statement. “I asked him for a keyword to describe the overall tone of the episode he said: ‘Hitchcock.’ I can’t wait to see what everyone thinks.”
We can figure out what we think when the next season of Doctor Who with Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor premieres on Disney+ on May 10, 2024.