CS Weekly Archive > From the Trenches > 02/23/07

The Horror of Who:
Coupling and Doctor Who's
Steven Moffat

by jason davis

Steven Moffat created the original smash U.K. comedy series Coupling and claimed a British Comedy Award for his work on that series. So what's one of the UK's best-known TV creators doing writing for Doctor Who? Moreover, how did he win a Hugo, science fiction's Oscar, for his Who work? We caught up with the self-described "complete bastard" at a recent Who-vention to find out.

From kicking off his career with the children's drama Press Gang to comedic triumphs like Coupling, writer Steven Moffat has established a filmography of versatility and excellence. With his Hugo Award-winning Doctor Who script "The Empty Child," he created a new benchmark of terror for the 43-year-old science fiction franchise, and his Jekyll is set to put a new spin on Robert Louis Stevenson's classic novel when it airs on the BBC. Moffat was in Los Angeles recently for the 18th annual Gallifrey One Convention in celebration of Doctor Who, and took time out to speak with CS Weekly about his career, his influences, and the aforementioned Hugo Award.

Why did you start writing?
I always wanted to be a writer. There was never a time where I wanted to be anything else. I can't recall any other ambitions, quite honestly. The very first things I wrote were an adaptation—a very bad one, as you'd expect from a seven-year-old—of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and endless Doctor Who stories. I have the distinction, this year, of writing my own new version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Doctor Who—I've really made progress there.

You mentioned Star Trek scribe David Gerrold's The Making of the Trouble With Tribbles book in your Hugo acceptance speech. Was reading that a big influence early on?
Yeah. Back in those days, there weren't loads of books on what it was like to write screenplays. That really was the very first time I'd read about that kind of thing. Because it was new and exciting, I didn't necessarily understand it. Having made that speech, through somebody else's mouth, I looked at the book again and interpreted entirely differently. I said, "Hang on—he was completely re-written in this." It was a totally different story than the one I thought it was, but it's a very good book. I think particularly because it was a story about a man who wants to get into television and did get into television —that was obviously exciting and inspiring. It was my dream future.

Gerrold makes the point that a good writer needs to be prepared for an opportunity to break in by already having a well-written script.
That's something I've said repeatedly since. It's dead easy getting lucky. You're guaranteed to be lucky several times in your life—it's what you do with it. Young writers spend all their time worrying, in a way that David Gerrold did not and I did not. How do they get to meet the right people? How do they get to the right parties? If only someone would read my script… Forget all that. All these things are easy and will happen. The way you get your script to the right people is that you put it in an envelope. It's fucking easy. The difficult bit is writing something that is so good people will take a punt on a brand new writer. That's it—you have to write an absolutely terrific script.

I think it's Robert McKee who says you will be successful and respected when you write a script of surpassing quality. There's nothing else to learn. Your social skills don't matter. Look at me—I'm a complete bastard. It doesn't matter who you know. One day, you'll know everybody. Back at the beginning, I knew nobody. It makes no difference. It's about the quality of the work. Absolutely everybody starts out writing drivel. The ones who are going to succeed are the ones who recognize they've written drivel, but keep going. The ones who are going to fail are the ones who mistake their own drivel for something marvelous and never progress beyond it. Self-criticism is everything.

How'd you get your first writing gig?
I did loads and loads of writing, none of which got anywhere. My dad had come up with an idea for a television series about a junior newspaper, which he had mentioned to a friend, and that producer said, "I can't pay your for it, but I'd like to develop that." And my dad, opportunistic as ever, said, "Yes, as long as you let my son try a sample script for it." They said, "There's absolutely no chance we're going to let your son write it, but we will read his sample script." I wrote a script for it and they absolutely loved it and gave me the job. Some people take away from that, "See, it's who your dad is." Those people will never get anywhere, because it's not. It's about the fact I wrote a bloody good script. There were so many stories that ended in failure, the trouble is that people like me tell the story of their one success—the one time it worked —and people think that's how it works. It's not. You try and try and try.

Most Americans became aware of your work with the original U.K. version of Coupling. Not only do you create great characters, but you tell the stories in an unusual way for a sitcom—whether it's the split- screen episode or a half-hour phone conversation. Which comes first, the story or the style?
It would vary. Sometimes it was gimmick first. At a certain point, Coupling had become a show that would occasionally do gimmicky episodes. With "Split," the split-screen episode, it started with "Can we do a whole episode in split screen?" One of my favorite episodes was called "The End of the Line" in the second series. It's a very complex episode told out of sequence. At the beginning, I started writing the story in sequence. At a certain point, I thought it'd be much funnier if we don't know that's Jack [Davenport (Pirates of the Caribbean's Admiral James Norrington), who plays Coupling's Steve] on the phone. So I thought we'd tell this half of the story first and then go back and see what's happening on the other end of the phone. Then you go back to the beginning, which is before that. In fact, that episode, one of our most gimmicky, evolved as the funniest way of telling that story, getting the most humor value out of not knowing the whole story until the very end.

You named your lead characters after you and your wife. How much of your life is in Coupling?
It's hardly an accurate portrait, because I wasn't even remotely concerned with being faithful to what our lives were like. Very broadly speaking, I would fit into the category of a Steve, my wife Sue would very broadly fit into the category of a Susan. It was more like, what happens when alpha woman meets beta male? At that stage, I was going through new relationship stuff—I, having been a single man for many years, and she, having been a single woman for many years, we were together and our world changed around us. Our friends changed. Everything altered. It was that period of our lives not in an accurate way, but in a subject-by-subject way. What happens when she finds your porn? We actually shot the exterior scenes for Steve and Susan's house at our own house in Chiswick, at the time.

How did you find the experience of adapting the series for its American remake on NBC?
Frustrating in the sense that they had the opportunity to be terrific—a terrific cast and a terrific writer, Phoef Sutton (Cheers, Boston Legal), and a nightmare of a network that screwed them up. People slag off that show, but I saw the cuts before the network butchered it. Episode three, which Phoef adapted—the one where they go to Jane's aunt's funeral—they sent me the first cut and I thought "Damn, that's better than the original." There were new gags. They'd sharpened up the story. Then the network came in, and it wasn't better. It's horrible because I've seen some very brilliant writers and actors slagged off and mocked for their failure. It wasn't their failure. It was the failure of people who knew nothing about comedy and decided that they did.

It seemed to me like they strangled every laugh out of it.
Exactly. There's no space. No air. Phoef could tell you far more about this process than I can, because I wasn't there. I was just suffering his pain remotely, as it were. Farce depends on pause and hesitation and realization. People had the experience—I heard about this —of going to see the show on the night and thinking it was brilliant and then seeing the show transmitted and thinking, "What did they do?" They screwed with the timing of the actors. I think network interference screwed that show.

What were you doing when you found out that your childhood dream was coming true—that you'd be writing Doctor Who?
I was putting on my dinner jacket in order to go to the British Comedy Awards, where I was, later that evening, to pick up an award for Coupling. It was a brilliant night.

Your two-part story, "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances," contains one of the most memorable images in Doctor Who history. Where did the now-iconic image of a small boy in a gas mask come from?
Just looking in books. It's funny—I've never done research for anything in my life that I've ever written. The very first thing I've ever had to research is bloody Doctor Who—the only show I know everything about. There was a picture of a little boy in a gas mask and I thought that is spooky. It's haunting and tragic because what is more symptomatic of a world gone wrong than a child in a gas mask? You know things have gone to shit when you put children in gas masks. It says everything about despair and misery.

There's a scene in "The Empty Child" where a little boy explains he was evacuated to a farm where he says, "There was a man…" and falls silent. With that one line, you create an entire off-stage story within the overall narrative of the episode. You do much the same during the Doctor's merging of minds in "The Girl in the Fireplace." Is that something you consciously craft or a more instinctive technique?
They're hugely conscious—particularly the one about the kids. That's an apparent throwaway line, of course, but it's obviously not. You've got to explain who these kids are and what it's about. And it's Doctor Who, so you're getting on to the next monster scene or the next chase—you have to do it with tremendous economy and tremendous delicacy. I keep saying it's a children's program that goes out at seven o'clock. You can't say any of that, so you have to find the smallest, slightest way of telling that story. It's frequently more impressive and affecting to do it with just the tiniest nudge. You get it—a world unspoken full of nameless horrors.

What can say about your upcoming Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde adaptation?
It's a modern-day version with a descendant of the original living in 2007 London. He has the same problem—he starts turning into Mr. Hyde. He uses 21st century hardware to try to control his dark side, making it clear to Hyde that if he commits a crime, Jekyll will turn himself in. It becomes a battle between the two for space within the brain. Jekyll's had to leave his wife because this is happening to him. The thing we're saying at the moment is, "What if you had a dark side? What if your wife found out? What if she preferred it?" Jekyll and Hyde—which does she prefer? It's a kind of subtext. That's not a huge, upfront part of the story, but she understands both men.

What advice would you give new writers?
Write all the time. Write as brilliantly as you can—it'll never be brilliant enough. Don't go around saying, "I've got a script and it's better than anything on television." It almost certainly isn't. Now and then, that's been true. With Ricky Gervais, it was true. Everyone else—it isn't better. Write all the time

Jason Davis is the DVD Manager for CS Weekly , a contributing editor for Creative Screenwriting Magazine, and has written for Cinescape.com, MSN.com, and created the TV series Studio 13, which ran on Lorne Michaels' Burly TV network. He lives in the small space left over by his ever-expanding library of books, movies, and music.

Stephen Moffat, Coupling, Doctor Who courtesy BBC Home Video

From the Trenches
Working screenwriters discuss in their own words a particular aspect of screenwriting, from the mechanics of writing to the personal and professional impact that writing has had on their lives. > VIEW ARCHIVE

The Art of Craft
Screenwriting experts discuss how to approach various aspects of writing and the writing life. A mini-seminar each week from the people who write the books and teach the classes. > VIEW ARCHIVE

The Big Picture

Features that cover all aspects of screenwriting, from our "Seven Best" lists to analysis of old favorites and new classics. > VIEW ARCHIVE

Expert Witness
A panel of experts assembled to provide the facts about the screenwriting business. Readers will be able have their questions answered by an agent, producer, entertainment attorney, and WGA representative—and without paying that 10% commission. > VIEW ARCHIVE

Son of a Pitch
A weekly tutorial on how to write a script. Each week deals with a different element of creating a script, with the ultimate goal to provide a step-by-step instruction manual for new writers. The guide for this is a writer just diving into screenwriting himself, who asks the pros questions any new screenwriter would have about this brave new world. > VIEW ARCHIVE

Weekend Read
Film, book, web site and technology reviews from a writer’s perspective. How can these items help a writer on his or her journey, or make that journey more enjoyable? > VIEW ARCHIVE

DVD Review of the Day
DVD reviews from a writer’s point of view. What aspects of this script and features of this DVD illuminate the writing, development, and storytelling process? > VIEW ARCHIVE