I’ve been meaning to post this since s15 aired but now that everyone is mad at RTD’s mishandling of the show, I feel like I should point out that several decisions and factors were clearly out of his hands, and the reasons for things shaking out the way they have was strongly the result of some behind the scenes powers (including but not limited to Disney) . That said, what he did in the aftermath of it, was entirely his decision to make. How he wrote Ncuti’s exit and Belinda’s ending was up to him, and he chose…that.
In contrast , Moffat was faced with a similar conundrum after the massive undertaking that was the 50th special. The 12th Doctor was unplanned. He originally intended to have 11’s arc extend onto series 8, focussing on Trenzalore and expanding on the setup from Name of the Doctor. To add to that , there was the issue of Matt Smith’s knee injury and his …baldness , due to another role he was doing. Matt decided to take his final bow after Day of the Doctor , and he was forced to write together a story that resolves all the plot threads ( what was behind the cracks in the universe, What the Silence was, Trenzalore) , sets up the next doctor ( and resolving the 12 regeneration limit with the introduction of War) and do 11 justice, all in the span of 1 episode. Oh and it must be Christmas-y ! Time of the Doctor was what we got and while it wasn’t perfect and the execution felt a bit abrupt, it was never “????” It was certainly a far cry from the train wreck that was the s15 and Clara didn’t even need to get benched for it. It was executed well enough that I wouldn’t have even known if he hadn’t told us himself. The Reality War was a choice, the Interstellar Song Contest, sidelining Belinda, the Doctor’s “daughter” was a choice , bringing back Rose in the split second before the curtains dropped was a choice. None of these exigent circumstances applied for the finale of s14 and yet it also suffered from his telltale lack of vision.
This is not to say that Moffat would fix the show. Far from it. That man had his go and if Joy to the World is any indication, he’s exhausted all his ideas. The show has outgrown him to the point that you can recognise one of his episodes by a distinct staleness. It does however continue to hold RTD accountable. No excuses. He was by no means a bad writer , but he was pathologically incapable of bringing a plot line to a close. The hallmark of his writing has always been to make the juiciest and most intriguing setups and then when faced with the resolution, go absolutely bonkers and throw everything at the wall while using the blandest of interpretations and going in the most derivative and uninspired directions. I was gnawing at the setup for Ruby, the thing hiding in the TARDIS and the Pantheon. Tumblr came up with theories that were more interesting by several orders of magnitude, but I was instead met with a lukewarm pie dropped 2 inches from my face. Too close to even make a satisfactory splat.
So no, the show going on hiatus wasn’t his fault, but it was his responsibility. It was his to save. It suffered from his incompetence for the task and his refusal to move past his glory days. I firmly believe that any other successor to Chibnall could have avoided this, partly because they probably wouldn’t have made the Disney deal in the first place, and even if their writing was as much of a mess as RTD’s, at the very least they would have been obligated to show their own doctors more respect than having them be spat out from David Tennant and be slapped with Rose Tyler’s face on their way out.
