Gas-masked zombies menace Doctor Who in one of the best episodes since the show was revived in 2005. Since then, Doctor Who has been transformed from a programme that made BBC executives blush with embarrassment to one which they now use to justify the existence of the corporation. Its head writer and Executive Producer Russell T Davies can take the credit for that, but by New Years Day, it will be a line on his CV, and Steven Moffat will inherit all that was his, bringing a new Doctor, Matt Smith, with him. Like Davies, Steven Moffat is a TV writer who began his career in childrens television, who acts as his own producer, and who’s been dreaming of running the Doctor’s life for decades. He’s with me now for his first broadcast interview as the new Head Writer on Doctor Who.

 Steven, this programme was once the secret love of a small group of die-hards, the love that dared not speak its name. Now it’s a national obsession with 11 or 12 million viewers per episode. Is there any margin for error in this job?

Steven Moffat: Oh, there’s quite a bit really, isn’t there? But I’d be lying if I said I worry about that too much, because I was one of the die-hards, and because I loved it for all those years that fools didn’t, I knew it was brilliant, I knew it was just fantastic, I knew it would be a success. I never had the slightest doubt when I heard it was coming back, and that Russell was running it, and indeed that I was going to be joining in a bit as well. I never had the slightest doubt it was going to be a hit.

But is there any way up from 12 million viewers a week?

SM: Well there’s 12 and a half. I don’t know, let’s find out.

At the end of the last series of Doctor Who, the Daleks attempted to explode reality itself, the Christmas story is called The End of Time... After that, ideas for the series have to be a bit more local don’t they? How else will you be able to negotiate this sort of narrative hyper-inflation?

SM: Well first of all, don’t assume that we’ve faced the biggest threat yet, I believe we do have a bigger one, which is great... But one of the great advantages of Doctor Who is that the menace can a times, and very compellingly, be very, very small. The clip you played from the very popular episode The Empty Child there was no real evil influence at all, and the major fear factor was a little boy looking for his mummy. Doctor Who can be small and domestic, and brilliantly effective.

But that’s the case with many of your episodes which I think are generally regarded as some of best since the revival.

SM:  Certainly by me, yes...

You don’t really do the end of the universe, do you?

SM: Well you know I think you have to save the end of the universe for the end of the series. I certainly wouldn’t like to think we’d do that in episode 6, and there’s a tradition – not just in Doctor Who, in many shows – of building to a big finish, and one of the things you can do in Doctor Who is the end of the universe. There’s other things you can do, there are other kinds of story.

But in your episodes, people tend to survive, they tend to live through in some way at the end of the story, and I’m just trying to tease out some of the ways in which your version of this programme might differ from what we’ve got used to in the last five years or so...

SM: I think the critical thing about Doctor Who is when its working, when its really on form, every story differs from the last one. It’s not a case of ...  the basics of the series are very small. A man and his best friend exploring the whole universe and space and time and fighting evil where they find it. You know, it’s really rather quite simple. Each individual story has to differ, and as it happens,  I suddenly realised, having written six episodes for Russell’s run of the show, that I hadn’t killed anybody in six episodes, which is a remarkable run! I didn’t manage that in Press Gang. I killed loads of people in Press Gang and that was on at 4:45. It was just something that happened. I don’t know why...

So are you saying that we won’t notice the difference?

SM: Well to be honest I’ve killed some people in new series. Not actually killed, just killed fictional people. Actually killing them is ever so frowned on, especially in the new BBC, you can get into terrible trouble.

For killing them in graphic ways or for killing them..

SM: No, I meant killing actual people.

I see, yes indeed...

SM: Probably as bad as an overspend...

So how are we going to detect your presence in this new series? What changes will there be tonally or philosophically?

SM: It’s the hardest one for me to say. I suppose I’ve always... My view of it is I would say maybe more dark fairytale, its very I think a fairytale Doctor. And I don’t think that’s a new perception, I think its an old one, but you know it’s quite literally a fairytale, it’s the way we warn our children of the horrors of the real world, by telling them yarns and stories that tell them there are terrible things sometimes in the dark, and there are people who want to eat them. I think that’s what it is...  I think it’s a fairytale.

So darker generally than what we’ve been used to, because I mean your episodes have been among the most gothic of the last five years...?

SM: It depends. Dark is a complex word. Scooby Doo is quite dark, and Doctor Who’s got quite a lot of that Scooby Doo darkness. Russell is a tremendously dark writer underneath some of the froth that he enjoys. I like the shadow and the darkness...

But you’re going to have less froth?

SM: The scariness is what I like I suppose, that’s true, but you know there’s fun and there’s jokes. I was watching The Empty Child recently actually, because I’m an egotist and I like to watch my own work on television, and there’s a lot of jokes in The Empty Child, an awful lot of jokes.

What difference will in make to a much younger Doctor? That presumably changes the dynamic of the reactions of the some of the characters who he’s going to encounter?

SM: Truthfully, it makes absolutely no difference at all, because the man is 900 plus. William Hartnell was too young for this part – they were all too young. Matt Smith isn’t playing an especially youthful Doctor, you can’t play the Doctor as an ingénue, you can’t play him as a young man, he’s an old man. Matt Smith plays the same Doctor in that respect as you’ve always seen – and adventurer, a scientist, a man who’s been around for hundreds of years and sometimes you can tell. So no, actually, I don’t think it makes an awful lot of difference.

But it sounds like you’re saying that it doesn’t make any difference who plays this part, or who’s in charge of this show...

SM: It makes a difference every single week which story you’re telling, and that’s what keeps Doctor Who incredibly fresh despite the fact that its so old.  Each week when we sit down to make a new episode, we aren’t thinking of our house style, how we always make it and what the rules are... We say what are the rules for this story, what is the Doctor like in this story? I really do think its so close to an anthology at time that that’s what keeps it alive, that’s what keeps it so fresh.

When we talked to Russell T Davies six months ago on this programme he said that in the future Doctor Who would be the programme that researchers looked back to to see how television worked, because it’s the most documented programme in television. I wondered whether that affects the way that you conduct yourself, because rather like the Prime Minister, who knows that everything’s noted, everything’s taken down, nothing can really remain a secret forever can it?

SM: Doctor Who secrets now don’t even last after the show.  Who Confidential comes on for the next 45 minutes and explains how the last 45 minutes worked. Yeah, its kind of weird, especially at the very beginning of this job when Matt was first coming in, it was like every time we opened the door there was a television camera pointed at us. So quite an extraordinary feeling. And yes, it is the most obsessively documented show of all time, and yes it will be the historical record of how television was made.

Can I ask you a bit about the succession at it were. Was there some kind of Granita type deal between you and Russell T Davies?

SM: You mean that I was bound to one day take over?

Were you anointed?

SM: Anoited?! You’re sounding dirty now...

At what point did you know that you were going to do it?

SM: At what point? Russell sent me an email about two and half years ago asking if I was interested in it, which was the first time it was ever aired at all. I mean, it had been speculated upon endlessly, that I might be taking over, but I’d never about it with Russell and I   So it was that. He asked me if I’d want to do it.

Doctor Who I suppose isn’t just one programme, its sort of an industry now, isn’t it? It has these two spin-off series Sarah Jane and Torchwood. There have been CGI animations, comic strips. Mark Thompson, the Director General of the BBC, has been talking about resisting further commercial expansion for the BBC. Can you sustain this level of sort of peripheral output, or will some of this come to a stop?

SM: But it’s not like any of us sit around and say we must have a certain level of peripheral output. We just think of a good idea. Russell thought of a good idea for Torchwood, so he made it; a good idea for Sarah Jane, so he made it. It’s not like that. It’s just having a good idea. I mean, you can’t ever think, well our quota of spin-offs is this. Commercial exploitation...

So you don’t ever involve yourself in that side of it?

SM: In terms of Torchwood and Sarah Jane, no.

Sort of the business of it...

SM: Not really, no. I mean I oversee everything, I look at everything. I want to know that everything is as proper and right and Doctor Who-ey enough so I see it all, but I don’t sit and make business plans. What I do think, and this is sort of is a calculation for me to make is what would really make me excited as a Doctor Who fan? What can I get that would be thrilling? What would my little boys love? I’m not thinking in terms of commercial exploitation, I’m thinking in terms of what would be a great big fat treat for people, that’s what you think of.

It’s part of your job also to sort of control the flow of information about Doctor Who, and some of this is quite closely guarded, and certainly it comes out in dribs and drabs doesn’t it. One of your writers for next year, Richard Curtis, has been talking...

SM: According to Richard... The man’s gone mad!

And we know from him that Doctor Who is going to meet Van Gogh next year.

SM: Listen, that man will just say anything won’t he? I don’t know what’s wrong with him...  I don’t think that I control the tide of information. Up to this point I’ve just been stemming it and denying everything.

We have to bring this to an end I think, but could you give us just one piece of information about the new series that nobody outside the production team knows?

SM: That nobody outside the production team knows?

Tease us a bit... go on, do!

SM: God! Erm... the Weeping Angels are coming back.

You heard it here first! Thank you very much indeed, Steven Moffat. His predecessor’s last story, The End of Time, begins on Christmas Day on BBC1, and the Moffat version materialises in the new year.  Steven of course encounters monsters every time he goes into the office...   [LOL]