Incumbent Doctor Who writer, producer and showrunner Steven Moffat has just received an OBE for extraordinary contributions to drama.
He received his OBE at a ceremony at Buckingham Palace yesterday, Thursday 4 February. Moffat is now an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. The award was presented by Prince Charles. Moffat said he was “astonished” when he received news of the honour, but it is likely no one else was surprised by the richly-deserved award.
Moffat already has a plethora of prizes to his name, including Nebula and Hugo Awards. He began writing for television with the widely-acclaimed Press Gang and later created Joking Apart and Chalk. When Doctor Who came back to television in 2005, it was Moffat’s writing that helped re-introduce the Doctor to an adoring public. By 2010, Moffat was in charge of Doctor Who and had reimagined Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famed detective stories as Sherlock with Mark Gatiss. Since Moffat took charge of the show in 2010, Doctor Who has become the crown jewel for the BBC.
Over the years, Moffat has written some of the most beloved Doctor Who episodes of all time. While The Empty Child and The Girl in the Fireplace were masterpieces, Blink, the indelible story of Sally Sparrow (Carey Mulligan) and the Weeping Angels, is perhaps his most revered work. Moffat knew that his stories for Doctor Who were horror, but also believed that the show was for families to watch together. He told Radio Times many years ago that, “You have to remember that being scared of the dark and being scared of monsters is basically a childish impulse. There’s always something of the nursery about horror … Adults never quite grow out of their childhood fears. They just belong in a different part of our heads. Doctor Who isn’t a childish programme, but it is childlike: it’s a programme for children.”
Moffat has the incredible talent to produce and write for two of the BBC’s biggest programmes – Doctor Who and Sherlock. “I’ve got not one, but two dream jobs so to get this lovely thing for already indulging myself in public, seems like an excess of good fortune,” Moffat told the Scottish Daily Mail yesterday, after being presented with his award.
“It’s very exciting,” Moffat told the Observer last year, when asked about writing for character he had admired his whole life. “You can sort of claim that tiny bit of the picture I’ve filled in, look at that tiny bit over there. That’s my piece in the mosaic.”
It was recently announced that Moffat will be leaving Doctor Who after its 2017 season, with Chris Chibnall, creator and writer of Broadchurch, succeeding him.
