Steven Moffat "can confidently say" he’s done with Doctor Who

“Everyone can stop worrying. I did it for six seasons on the trot. And I cannot imagine going back into doing that. I cannot. I simply cannot picture it.”

He added: “I loved the show. I don't want anyone to think I didn't love the show. And I loved every second I spent on it, although some of them were hellish. But I've done that. I have done it and I did it a lot.

“So no offence and no disrespect and certainly no disdaining of wonderful memories. But no, I will not be showrunning Doctor Who again.”

Moffat also noted that despite actually kicking off modern Doctor Who in 2005, Davies worked on the show for a slightly shorter time than he had, joking that his old collaborator needed to “catch up” to even the score.

“I did six seasons, and he's got two seasons to catch up on. So that's fine,” he told us.

“I actually don't mind that, I would quite like him to overtake me. Because it's really weird. It's weird and strange and wrong for your own favourite show to be the one [...] that you wrote the most of. That's wrong.

“So I'd be quite happy for Russell to scoot ahead of me. That'd be nice. That'd be good.”

But who knows? With rumours swirling of old Doctors returning and the Doctor Who 60th anniversary celebrations looming, we’d have to note that Moffat doesn’t specifically deny that he’s done writing Doctor Who entirely – just showrunning it.

And given Matt Smith’s latest comments on the matter, we can’t rule out the possibility that he and his old screenwriter have another shot at the Whoniverse on the cards. Unless they don't – in which case, ignore the final two paragraphs of the article.

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