Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat took their places among the celebrities at the Radio Times Covers Party, but couldn’t resist a little silliness
We sometimes talk about former Doctors and companions remaining a kind of family, whether they worked on the show together or not. It’s a shared experience few others can quite understand and, inevitably they wind up spending a lot of time in convention green rooms together.
The same it would seem is true for former showrunners.
Since leaving the show in 2017, Steven Moffat has returned to social media (hurrah!) to find Russell T Davies already lying in wait for him. And it’s been glorious to see them cross swords in online banter. But they may well have raised the bar when Moffat came across Davies giving an interview at the Radio Times Cover Party.
Two Doctor Who legends collided at last night’s #RadioTimesCoversParty…. keep your eyes peeled on https://t.co/BlQTUqnF98 to see what happened next! #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/3MgNHXg0Wv
— Radio Times (@RadioTimes) January 30, 2019
Davies and Moffat’s good-natured back and forth on Instagram has also been as full as wit as you’d expect from the two Doctor Who writers
Of course, at Christmas the two were spotted on Instagram gently poking fun at the New Paradigm Daleks from Victory of the Daleks and how, after being introduced to much fanfare, they were almost immediately dropped.
When Davies posted a picture of himself with the Media City Christmas decorations, including a gigantic light-up version of the red Dalek Supreme from Journey’s End, Moffat couldn’t resist. “Honestly, Russell! You’ve gone and made the Daleks too large and colourful!” Almost instantly Davies replied, “It’s okay, I’ll just pretend it never happened x.”
Other topics in their Instagram crossovers have included Mary Poppins Returns (“But. But. But. It’s not Julie Andrews!!! Are you trying to tell me this is canonical”), Davies accidentally breaking his Thirteenth Doctor model (“I’m telling Chris!”), and Sherlock (Davies: “I auditioned for Molly Hooper. They decided to go in a different direction.”)
Both showrunners exited social media during their time as Doctor Who showrunners. But now they’re not being worked to death by the relentless Doctor Who machine, it’s great to see them back.
