In which, for the avoidance of doubt, Doctor Who would like you to know that Doctor Who is now a grown up, sophisticated man, who has sex and does sexy things.
Thoughts - I think the line is 'give me *a* day like this', and then later 'Just this once, everybody lives', which I think makes the Elbow inspiration more unlikely 😜
I like 'The Doctor' titles generally, especially when the story is good. I think they also fulfil what *I think* was an RTD ambition, though it could've been a Moffat one, which is to have slutty titles that make you want to watch and pique your curiosity. If the title alone isn't making you do that then something's probably gone a bit wrong. It's arguably cheap, but I think any Doctor Who episode title with 'The Doctor' in it is arguably a slutty title because it implies we're going to learn something new about The Doctor themselves - even if it's not necessarily what we think it is, based on said title. Admittedly 'The Doctor Dances' is probably the weaker of these compared to later offerings, such as 'The Doctor's Daughter', 'The Doctor's Wife', 'The Name of The Doctor', but I think the principle still applies.
A further point about that typewriter scene - fun fact, that scene is written by RTD to pad the runtime, as the episode was apparently underrunning and they needed something inconsequential to act as filler. What I think is really interesting about this is, in the RTD era we always kind of thought of Moffat as the one that wrote the scary episode(s), and then Midnight is kind of the first example I can think of where RTD tries his hand at a scary episode, which up til then had been Moffat's forté.
But in writing that scene for The Doctor Dances then RTD is showing his ability to write properly scary Doctor Who, 3 years before Midnight.
Further to my point above about Moffat writing the scary episodes, though - the fact that I think he developed that reputation obscured the fact that, as you say, Moffat writes Doctor Who as a comedy. It's what in his exit interview with The Fan Show he called his 'sitcom twitch' (incidentally, if somehow you haven't watched said three-part interview with Moffat, you really should, it's fascinating and comprehensive - not least because some of the theories and ideas he expands upon in that interview that underpinned, but weren't always specifically explored, in Doctor Who, formed the backbone of his current adaptation of The Time Traveller's Wife).
But Moffat's sitcom twitch is ever present in Doctor Who and it says something about how he carved out a niche prior to running the show that we don't consciously think of the level of comedy in Doctor Who as a Moffatism.
Thoughts - I think the line is 'give me *a* day like this', and then later 'Just this once, everybody lives', which I think makes the Elbow inspiration more unlikely 😜
I like 'The Doctor' titles generally, especially when the story is good. I think they also fulfil what *I think* was an RTD ambition, though it could've been a Moffat one, which is to have slutty titles that make you want to watch and pique your curiosity. If the title alone isn't making you do that then something's probably gone a bit wrong. It's arguably cheap, but I think any Doctor Who episode title with 'The Doctor' in it is arguably a slutty title because it implies we're going to learn something new about The Doctor themselves - even if it's not necessarily what we think it is, based on said title. Admittedly 'The Doctor Dances' is probably the weaker of these compared to later offerings, such as 'The Doctor's Daughter', 'The Doctor's Wife', 'The Name of The Doctor', but I think the principle still applies.
A further point about that typewriter scene - fun fact, that scene is written by RTD to pad the runtime, as the episode was apparently underrunning and they needed something inconsequential to act as filler. What I think is really interesting about this is, in the RTD era we always kind of thought of Moffat as the one that wrote the scary episode(s), and then Midnight is kind of the first example I can think of where RTD tries his hand at a scary episode, which up til then had been Moffat's forté.
But in writing that scene for The Doctor Dances then RTD is showing his ability to write properly scary Doctor Who, 3 years before Midnight.
Further to my point above about Moffat writing the scary episodes, though - the fact that I think he developed that reputation obscured the fact that, as you say, Moffat writes Doctor Who as a comedy. It's what in his exit interview with The Fan Show he called his 'sitcom twitch' (incidentally, if somehow you haven't watched said three-part interview with Moffat, you really should, it's fascinating and comprehensive - not least because some of the theories and ideas he expands upon in that interview that underpinned, but weren't always specifically explored, in Doctor Who, formed the backbone of his current adaptation of The Time Traveller's Wife).
But Moffat's sitcom twitch is ever present in Doctor Who and it says something about how he carved out a niche prior to running the show that we don't consciously think of the level of comedy in Doctor Who as a Moffatism.