Steven Moffat will never write for ‘Doctor Who’ again.
The departing show runner – who has worked on the sci-fi series on and off since 2004 – has decided he’ll no longer offer up anymore storylines for the programme once he hands the reins over to Chris Chibnall next year because he feels like he’s done "enough" and wants to "draw a line under it" and move on to other things.
When asked if he will follow his predecessor Russell T Davies by refusing to write for the show again, the 56-year-old producer said: "I’ll draw a line under it. I’ve written more than anybody else, not even by a small margin now. So that seems enough."
But, although he doesn’t want to be involved with the show anymore, he has high hopes for the future and believes ‘Doctor Who’ will remain on screens for many more year.
He added: "Absolutely 100 per cent optimistic. I don’t think we’re anywhere close to halfway through the new series run. There’s a huge amount of excitement in Jodie as the new Doctor. It’s going to pep things up. It’s going to be around forever. And it’s about to enter a golden period … Chris is an extraordinary talent to get to be the third show runner on a show that’d been going for 12 years."
And Moffat – who has also created and written for ‘Sherlock’ – is convinced the new instalment will be very "bold" and different from what the viewers are used to seeing.
He said: "I shouldn’t speculate but I think Chris is going to be bold. That’s his nature. And he knows ‘Doctor Who’ very well and he’d think the time has arrived to be bold."
Chibnall, 47, has already decided to switch things up by casting Jodie Whittaker as the first ever female to play the leading role but Moffat has admitted he toyed with the idea of casting a lady before he decided to go with Peter Capaldi four years ago.
He added: "I did, although if we’d replaced David Tennant with a woman it wouldn’t have worked. It was too early. We could have replaced Matt Smith with a woman, given that his Doctor was more sexless and less of a lad, but then I got obsessed with seeing Peter Capaldi in the Tardis. No regrets about that! … But it was Chris who made the really big decision, and all credit to him."