Moffat Reveals Reason For Long “Doctor Who” Delay

Yes, it’s been a long layoff between Doctor Who seasons this time around, but that’s exactly what producer Steven Moffat and the BBC want.

Moffat recently told Digital Spy that the long lay off will help keep the series going because fans will be worked up into a frenzy by the time new episodes air later this summer.

“The more Doctor Who becomes a perennial, the faster it starts to die. You’ve got to shake it up, you’ve got to keep people on edge and wondering when it will come back,” Moffat says. “Sherlock is the prime example, as far as that goes. Sherlock almost exists on starving its audience. By the time it came back this year, Sherlock was like a rock star re-entering the building!”

Moffat says he feels that Doctor Who is and should be an “event piece” for the BBC.

“So keeping Doctor Who as an event, and never making people feel, ‘Oh, it’s lovely, reliable old Doctor Who — it’ll be on about this time, at that time of year’. Once you start to do that, just slowly, it becomes like any much-loved ornament in your house — ultimately invisible. And I don’t want that to ever be the case,” he adds.

And once again, I must add as a long time Doctor Who fan that being asked to wait a few extra months for new Who is nothing. Ask me about the wilderness years from 1989-2005…