Looking back on Moffat's time on the show, there is honestly so little that I find memorable after five series. It had a great cast of actors, memorable characters and monsters, and some good episodes, but his run was, overall, forgettable in my opinion.
Moffat's strongest series to date is still Series 05--his very first series after he took over from previous showrunner, Russell T Davies. It was also Matt Smith's first series as the 11th Doctor, and Karen Gillan's and Arthur Darvill's first series as companions Amy Pond and Rory Williams.
It was an amazing series because it had a central theme that connected all of the events from each episode together into a larger story. There was actually a point to every story being told in each episode, linking back to one central question: what are the consequences of the Doctor's interference in the spacetime continuum? The result, as it turned out, were rips to the spacetime continuum (the "time cracks"), causing various paradoxes that made the universe unstable. The solution? Reboot the universe to fix all the time cracks and restore the timeline. It was a very strong start to what appeared to be a very promising era. But come Series 06 and it all fell apart very quickly.
Like Series 05, it had a very strong beginning with the introduction of The Silence, but Moffat failed to capitalise on their concept. Almost nothing interesting was done with these mysterious aliens after their first two episodes, and their origins were not explored in further detail until Series 07 where their presence had zero consequence to the overall story. When you got to the finale of Series 06, it turned out to be an origin story for River Song, a character that appeared in the previous two series.
A series centred on the mysterious River Song would've been an amazing story if the buildup was better executed. If the individual episodes actually felt like they were part of a larger story and not self-contained stories that were only marginally relevant to the overall story. If the focus on River had been better established, the revelation of her being the daughter of companions Amy and Rory (who also happened to be a Time Lord because she was conceived in the time vortex) would've packed a stronger emotional impact. But the buildup was simply not there, and all of the clues pointing to her secret origin were all over the map at best. And then there was Series 07...
I really don't know where Moffat was trying to go with this series to be honest. It was very much "two series in one" with no central theme connecting the two together. The first half of Series 07 briefly teased the new companion (as Oswin Oswald), but mostly saw the departure of companions Amy and Rory. It was not until the second half Series 07 that we were fully introduced to Clara Oswald as the new companion. However, she really only served one purpose in the series: to die twice in her first two encounters with the Doctor in order to provide the Doctor with a new mystery to solve. Literally, her entire existence for Series 07 centred on her two deaths being a riddle that needed solving. It was a story concept that robbed Clara of her agency and reduced her character to being a plot device, which was a great disservice to actress Jenna Coleman.
By Series 08, the show had acquired a new actor to portray the 12th Doctor, Peter Capaldi, while Jenna Coleman continued on as companion Clara Oswald. Moffat also tried to get back to basics with this series by once again having an underlying theme centred around a new character known only as "Missy" played by Michelle Gomez. For the most part, Moffat was trying to rekindle what made his first series so successful the first time and tried to develop episodes that built up to the larger story, leading to the mysterious Missy's reveal.By the time we got to that point in the series, the audience was genuinely surprised by the reveal. While there was speculation that Missy would turn out to be a Time Lord, barely anyone expected her to be the Master. Part of the reason the reveal worked so well is that the show had never previously established that a Time Lord could change their sex from a regeneration. In every case, they stayed the same sex and identified with the same gender in each new incarnation.
Another reason the reveal worked so well is because actress Michelle Gomez sold her character well as the newest incarnation of the Master, successfully upholding the legacy of her predecessors. She brought with her the insanity of John Simm's Master, but also the character's integrity and wit as previously established by Masters Anthony Ainley and Roger Delgado. In addition to maintaining continuity with the previous Masters, Gomez also brought her own charm and stamp to the role in a way that made her performance truly her own. She brought with her a psychotic Mary Poppins look (complete with an umbrella) and a wicked sense of humour that made her an unpredictable adversary to everyone who encountered her.
With Gomez' Master, you could never tell when she was being serious or when she was being ironic. She was often serious in an ironic sort of way and frequently joked about doing things she never ended up doing. In addition to confusing everyone around her on her true motives, she was also dangerously calculating and incredibly flexible in every situation. When she found herself no longer in control of a situation, she always found a way to shift control back to herself and make everything work to her favour.
I would've argued Series 08 as Moffat's best series since Series 05 for the way he handled the Master's reintroduction alone. What keeps me from listing this series as among his best series is the utterly ridiculous motivation he gave for the Master's return: to create a Cyberman army for the Doctor to use in all of his missions across time and space. It was not a motivation that fits the character of the Master, even the incarnation Michelle Gomez portrayed.
At best, the Master starting a Cybermen invasion on Earth by converting the dead (including the recently deceased) into Cybermen is something the character would actually do, but as a way of tormenting the Doctor. He would especially make it personal to him by converting his deceased allies and companions into Cybermen, and programme them to specifically target his living allies and companions (including previous ones) for cyber-conversion. That is what I would've expected from Michelle Gomez' Master, and it would've been in character for her to do that.
Then there is Series 09, the most forgettable series of Moffat's run. I cannot even begin to tell you what was actually good about this series without reading the Wikipedia page on it because that's how underwhelming it was as a whole. There were memorable characters like the return of Michelle Gomez' Master, the return of Davros (who was last seen in Series 04), and Maisie Williams' character Ashildr, but no truly memorable central storyline if there was one. The only truly memorable event from this series was Clara Oswald's pointless death. Pointless because, somehow, the idea of companions departing on their own after they've had their fill is too abstract a concept for Moffat.
I was ready to give up on this show after an overwhelmingly creatively bankrupt Series 09. I realised by this point that Moffat had to do something radically different for me to continue following his run on this series. That "something radically different" came in the form of casting Pearl Mackie as the Doctor's newest companion, Bill Potts, the show's first queer companion since Captain Jack Harkness, and the show's first black companion since Martha Jones and Mickey Smith.
Now, I'm not naive enough to believe Moffat was ever going to write a black lesbian character well given his past record with women, POC, and LGBTQA representation in general. In short, he doesn't know how to write either POC or queer people like actual human beings, but as stereotypes, and his track record with women isn't any better. When he's not killing them as tools for progressing a storyline (aka, women in refrigerators), he characterises them in terribly stereotyped ways, even if he does give them funny and clever things to say in his scripts. But even with Moffat's shortcomings as a character writer, I could at least count on Pearl Mackie to sell me on her character through her performance alone. She didn't disappoint!
One of the things I absolutely loved about Bill's character in Series 10 was how completely comfortable she is with herself. She's openly queer, she's outgoing, she's an everywoman in her day-to-day life, and she's pretty adventurous before she meets the Doctor. If something captures her interest (like the Doctor's physics class at the university she works in), she goes after it regardless of the rules, which makes her very similar to the Doctor in that regard. If something doesn't make sense to her, she points it out, and she's not afraid to speak her mind. Pearl Mackie brings all of that to her performance as Bill, which easily makes her one of the Doctor's most memorable companions, at least for me.
I also loved the way Mackie played off of Peter Capaldi's 12th Doctor in a way that presented her more as a friend and as an equal rather than as a "student." She valued his friendship but was also not afraid to establish boundaries when it came to her personal life outside the TARDIS. I also liked how impressionable she was whenever the Doctor took her on various adventures which helped to ground her character, and I loved that she valued her "down time" as well, which gave her some degree of depth. Though Moffat could've spent more time developing the character and her backstory, the way Mackie brought her character to life made those shortcomings a bit less prominent.
For most of this series' run, I was pretty confident Series 10 was going to turn out to be my favourite Moffat series since Series 05. Though there wasn't a central storyline in this one either, it did have more memorable self-contained stories that were actually good. The strongest episodes of the series, in my opinion, were the ones involving the mysterious alien Monks because it put Bill in the centre of the stage. Not only were most of the three-parter episodes told from her point of view, but she played the most important role in the story. Her actions were the cause of and solution to the story's central conflict and she was the character responsible for helping to restore the Doctor's vision following the events of "Oxygen." She got to be the hero of this particular story.
The Master was put to the test in the final two episodes of the series where she was reunited with her former incarnation (John Simm) in a setting that would see the origin of the Mondasian Cybermen. The setup for the finale already had very strong potential, but it was in these two episodes where Series 10 nose-dived for me.
There's so much that went wrong here, beginning with the missed opportunity to revisit plot threads from "The Tenth Planet" the episodes couldn't fully explore due to a smaller budget. He even had the opportunity to more strongly tie the origin of the Mondasian Cybermen to his Master character arc, especially given the presence of the previous Master in that origin. Instead, he wasted all that potential on a mediocre story that failed to capitalise on that premise.
One thing that should've definitely happened in these two episodes was have the story take place on Mondas itself instead of a spaceship containing an artificial environment. Not only was it necessary to see the conditions Mondas was left in that forced the people of this planet to resort to cyber-conversion as a way of surviving, but it was an especially missed opportunity to explore this story from Bill's point of view.
Bill is the character we're supposed to identify with and placing her on a twin Earth like Mondas, complete with a twin United Kingdom had very strong story potential. How similar are human cultures on Mondas compared to those found on Earth? How are they different? What do the Mondasians use as their primary resources and how are they being depleted? Why are they being depleted? What are some of the ongoing conflicts taking place on this planet?
Does Bill meet any of the native Mondasians? Does she meet a Mondasian who looks exactly like her? Does Mondasian Bill lead a similar life to Earth Bill, or is it a different life altogether? How is it different? What does she learn of Mondasian Bill's plight and does she offer to help? How does Earth Bill react when she learns what the Mondasians' "survival plan" really entails, and does she try to stop her Mondasian counterpart from being cyber-converted?
How does Bill feel to learn that the person behind both the Mondasians' plight and their conversion into Cybermen is none other than the previous incarnation of the Master, whom the Doctor is confident can reform? Does Bill draw any parallels to the genesis of the Cybermen on Mondas to the time Missy also generated Cybermen on Earth a few years back, leading her to deduce the Master's identity?
Just as important, what does Bill realise about her own life after meeting a version of herself on a twin Earth that got converted into a Cyberman? Does she decide to continue her adventures with the Doctor from this moment forward? Or does she decide she wants to live her life to the fullest on Earth knowing how dangerous travels with the Doctor can be?
THAT is the the story I wanted to get out of the finale. A better exploration of the origins of the Mondasian Cybermen with stronger character arcs for both Bill and Missy. What we got instead was a story where the previous Master had Bill converted into a Cyberman as plot device to torment the Doctor and the rest of the finale was preventing a Cybermen invasion of...a spaceship. It was a very underwhelming story for such an interesting premise. To top it off, if the Doctor was never going to regenerate at the end of the final episode, why bother teasing it at all? Especially if he was going to embark on a new adventure with his previous incarnation, the 1st Doctor, for one more story? Why not create the premise for regeneration there?
On the whole, Series 10 was a strong series that concluded with an incredibly week ending. While Moffat at least did damage control on his initial fridging of Bill, it didn't make the rest of the story worthwhile. The same can truly be said about Moffat's run on the show in general--a feeling Series 10 seems to ironically drive home. Strong beginning, weak ending. Memorable actors, characters, and monsters, some good episodes, but a largely forgettable era.
Whether or not I continue with this series with Chris Chibnall as the showrunner will heavily depend on what he does differently from Moffat, and even by extension Davies. Things I would like to see done differently is better character development of the Doctor's companions and to actually let the companions depart on their own without killing them for shock value or to prove a point about the Doctor's dangerous lifestyle. If Russell T Davies could do it, I don't see why Chibnall cannot.
I would also like to see more diverse actors cast in the role of the Doctor instead of always casting a white heterosexual man. Both Davies and Moffat made it explicit canon that Time Lords can regenerate into anyone without restriction. They can become a different race and a different gender--two things we saw happen during Moffat's era. There's no reason why it can't be done. So why not cast a woman of colour as the Doctor this time and give her another POC companion who is also fabulously queer?
The demand for casting more diverse actors has nothing to do with "political correctness," but everything to do with making casting choices that are truly reflective of a diverse world. It's about offering the same opportunities to diverse actors to take on lead roles as white male actors. It's about seeing diverse people as human beings that everyone can still relate to instead of treating them as deviations from a non-existent norm. It's all about dismantling casting practises that come from a place of institutional racism and sexism and not about fulfilling any casting quotas.
If Chibnall brings about those much needed changes to the show, I'll stay onboard!
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