Moffat: "The companion is the main character"

[Anthony Williams]

From Digital Spy:

Doctor Who exec Steven Moffat has suggested that the Time Lord's companion is the show's "main character".

The showrunner told BBC America that the story of the sci-fi drama is "always the story of the companion".

"It's always their story," said Moffat. "It was Rose Tyler's (Billie Piper) story, it's Amy Pond's (Karen Gillan) story - the story of the time they knew the Doctor and how that began, how it developed and how it ended."

He continued: "The story begins again, not so much with the new Doctor, but with the new companion. The Doctor's the hero, but they're the main character."

Moffat also described the idea of the Doctor (Matt Smith) travelling alone as "depressing" and "unhealthy".

"I thought about the Doctor travelling on his own and it always faintly depresses me," he admitted.

"I'm not sure what he does on his own but I don't think it would be healthy. He's far too old and he's seen too much."

New Doctor Who companion Jenna-Louise Coleman was unveiled to the public last month.

The Titanic actress will make her debut in the BBC drama's 2012 Christmas special.

So, do you agree with Moffat, or do you think that the man is seriously out of touch with what the show should be? Knowing our members, I imagine there will be people of both persuasions here!

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Ironically when the show started it was - really it was all about Ian and Barbara encountering someone alien and converting the viewers astoundment. But once they left (and probaly well before), the Doctor had really come truly centre stage.

I think for years since we've had companions = person in peril.

Just towards the end of the original run, we had the idea of a whole series around a companion and her life with Aces last season. But since it's come back it had gone overboard with that. Certainly I feel that Moffat writes his companions a bit like Mary Sue fan-fiction at times - "this woman is going to turn out to be the most important person in the Doctors life ... EVER!".

Though RTD was a bit like that Rose = "Bad Wolf", then "the day I died", Martha being the rebel in the last episode uniting humanity, Donna "the most faithful companion who would die".

Now we have River "the Doctors wife, and woman who kills the Doctor", Amy "the Doctors wife's mother" and Rory "they guy who dies and dies again".

A lot of people are supposed to die ... but they never really die for long.

[Andrew Curnow]

The problem with that, IMHO, is it means that, like you say Mike, every companion suddenly has to be so important to the Doctor that it makes it difficult to then dump one companion and move onto the next - but that really is what the show always does. I think Donna was probably the best 'new' companion in that respect, in that there was clearly no romantic feeling involved, they were just good friends. All this business with Amy having resurrected her dead fiance and being mother to the woman who in an abandoned timeline marries the Doctor....

It suggests that the new companion isn't going to be 'just' somebody nice who the Doctor meets, but instead will have some deep and major significance, and I'm afraid I think it's a shame if they can't just write a good strong part without a load of plot-based baggage.

So I'd say in the modern day the companion should more or less take joint billing with the Doctor but should NEVER be the main character over and above the Doctor.

[Dino]

Maybe he's setting the ground for a new comedy series "Oh, Moffat!"

Interesting statement he made. And I can see even in the classic series how this worked for characters like Ace (And should have worked for Leela) but as along as the Doctor isn't relegated to the back seat so much, I'm not really paying that much attention. Just waiting for the thing to get back on television.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

It suggests that the new companion isn't going to be 'just' somebody nice who the Doctor meets, but instead will have some deep and major significance, and I'm afraid I think it's a shame if they can't just write a good strong part without a load of plot-based baggage.

You just hit the nail on the head. I think producers put too much in making the companions important by making elements in an arc "all about them". But it kind of in some ways reduces the companions to plot devices on legs. Okay usually nice legs but nevermind ...

No-one seems to come along for the ride and just develop as they go along at the moment, they all have to be "secretly linked" to the story. It's all becoming a bit soap opera-ish!

[Stuart Wallis]

It suggests that the new companion isn't going to be 'just' somebody nice who the Doctor meets, but instead will have some deep and major significance, and I'm afraid I think it's a shame if they can't just write a good strong part without a load of plot-based baggage.

So I'd say in the modern day the companion should more or less take joint billing with the Doctor but should NEVER be the main character over and above the Doctor.

Well said sir! There's nothing wrong with companions becoming embroiled in the plot of this week's episode (and if they're not, drop the concept of companions). The hint as to who the star of the show is though, comes in the title. For years, the concept of the show has been Doctor and Co. as galactic touristsdropping in on a planet at a crucial time, sorting things out and moving on to the next place at the end of the story. If the machine ain't broken, don't fix it. The idea of having the companion pushing the Doctor to one side has grown so wildly out of proportion to the basic tenets of story telling during the past couple of series that the weeds of confusion have become so overgrown that it's hard to see the garden designers original layout of sunflowers.

[J.R. Southall]

Of course, this isn't really what Moffat's saying though, is it?

Essentially, the Doctor is in every episode of the series. And as a character who's been on screen for the better part of fifty years (give or take the odd decade-and-a-half long hiatus), there's really only so much you can do with that character.

What Steven Moffat is saying, therefore, is that the writer (and leaving aside the 'most important' stuff just for a moment), if he wants to include character development in his series arc, must then use a character other than the Doctor in which to convey that development.

Thus not only do 'we' see the story through the companion's eyes, but we grow and develop with them too.

He's not saying the companion is "more important" than the Doctor, but that as a tool for the author to use, the companion is infinitely more accessible. The Doctor is at the centre of the series, but the companion is at the centre of the storytelling.

It's a massive distinction.

[Andrew Curnow]

Although that's probably true, I'd say that he's kinda destroyed that argument with Amy - a character whose husband is either dead or a 2000 year old plastic Roman, plus whose own daughter she only really knows as a friend during school years and then as a grown woman with an entirely different face, whose parents were dead but now aren't.... It's a struggle to really claim her as a really accessible POV for the viewer.

I mean, maybe it's me, but as a kid I never ever struggled with this business of 'viewer identification'. I know that many esteemed people, from Barry Letts down, have claimed that the audience can't really understand the Doctor, so need the companion for that purpose, but genuinely it's never struck me as valid - maybe way back in 1963, but very quickly the character of the Doctor became so obviously 'our' friend that we surely always 'identify' with him. We're rarely, if ever, so confused or alienated by him that we need another character for the purpose of feeling 'safe'.

Actually, I'd also suggest that in the 21st century Who, one problem has been precisely that the writers HAVE wanted to give the Doctor 'character development' - unfortunately, they all seem to end up wandering down the same line of 'ancient traveller, very lonely, death follows in his wake' meaning that both the carefree early 10th Doctor became more & more sad as time went on, and likewise the carefree early 11th Doctor, both 'characters' reaching a point of 'giving up' on taking a fellow traveller on board. I appreciate that the notion of giving the character 'a journey' is probably needed in order to attract top-notch actors, but it just does run the risk of getting a bit samey.

IMHO of course!

[J.R. Southall]

Oh I agree about Amy (my post was really about the meaning of what Moffat said; whether he can actually follow through on it is another thing entirely...), although I think that when it comes to the classic series and identification characters, it's not so much about feeling 'safe' as it is simply caring about the characters whose adventures you're supposed to be following. Certainly personally, I struggled throughout most of the 1980s to care about any of the regular characters, and when Adric died part of me was actively hoping they were starting a trend (this sort of thing comes up actually in the podcast I've got going out in two weeks' time). I do think you need someone for the Doctor to talk to, and as that person is almost always going to be changing more often than the actor playing the Doctor, then it follows that the writers are always going to spend more time thinking about the companion character - the Doctor pretty much writes himself, other than a few idiosyncrasies between one incarnation and the next, but the companion always needs to have some thought put in, and will therefore always be more central to the writers' thinking. If I was writing Doctor Who, I know I'd have a lot more questions for the showrunner about the companion than I would about the Doctor (particularly if we'd not seen either of them on screen yet).

[Stuart Wallis]

Now there I would agree about the opposite end of the scale; the 80s, since you used that as an example, was a period where little thought seems to have gone into the regular characters eg. the main thing that seems to have changed with Tegan was the clothes, and Adric was arguably not even that lucky. I'm still not convined, however, that the the balance of the Doctor/ companion relationship should swing too far in the direction of the companion; and also, as you intimate, that the plots shouldn't disappear up their own page twelve, scene eights, just to make a bit of sleight of hand that appears to make the companions and the writers look better than they are.

[Anthony Williams]

Look at it like this...

As a small child, who from Doctor Who did you want to be? If you are male, did you want to be Jamie, Harry or Adric? Of course not, you wanted to be The Doctor. Or, at least, that's who I wanted to be. Obviously, this is a bit more of a problem if you're a little girl...

However, I think to say that the Doctor is only the hero, while the companion "is the main character" (almost exactly Moffat's words) really depends on how you look at it. Of course that was the case in the early years of the show, with Ian and Barbara. But the show evolved. I'd argue that that wasn't really the case again until 1987 and Ace appeared on the scene. Then it became the case again in 2005 with Rose Tyler (who many of you know that I don't really rate as a companion, anyway).

Yet, the last two seasons have really been all about Amy, Rory and River in a way that the series was never so companion-centric before. And I don't really dig that. And as has been pointed out, the argument that the audience can relate better with the companion just doesn't wash when it comes to Amy anymore.

So, actually, I don't agree with what Moffat says, because it just isn't true. And with all his yabbering on about how J-LC's character will be the most unique companion yet etc. etc., it doesn't appear that he has any intention of making it true.

[J.R. Southall]

I still think you're missing the point: Moffat's not saying that it's necessarily the case that they're the most important characters, simply that in order to write the show, you have to write from their perspectives, as the Doctor is the constant and they are the flux.

"It's always their story," said Moffat. "It was Rose Tyler's (Billie Piper) story, it's Amy Pond's (Karen Gillan) story - the story of the time they knew the Doctor and how that began, how it developed and how it ended."

He continued: "The story begins again, not so much with the new Doctor, but with the new companion. The Doctor's the hero, but they're the main character."

Note he says "main character" not "most important". What he's saying is that in order to write a story in a series in which there is one character who is both ever-present and never-changing (to all intents and purposes), then you have to attack the material from the point-of-view of the peripheral characters who you introduce and develop.

He's not saying that Amy and Rory are of necessity what Doctor Who is about, simply that in order to tell a 'story' (rather than just gurgitate a 'plot'*), you need to do so by using the tools that you as a writer bring to the table, rather than the ones that are already there.

And actually it really has always been thus: (to pick a random example) Season Eight was about Jo's introduction to the Doctor (rather than vice versa), about how she developed from being a novice to being someone it was useful to have around, and of how she overcomes her original shortcomings when faced with the Master. At the end of Season Eight she saves both the Doctor's life and that of the whole planet, something she would never have been capable of in her opening scenes.

The same thing (give or take a detail or two) can be said of Sarah Jane Smith, Jamie MacCrimmon, both Romanas, Leela, Steven Taylor, Zoe Herriot, and so on and so on.

Meanwhile the Doctor generally speaking ends each incarnation more or less in the same place as he started it, with the caveat that in his final story he will undergo some kind of a 'conversion' that inevitably can only lead to a change of actor and a reset back to where the character was before.

(* The difference being: a plot is what happens, a story is to whom and for why and with what consequence. In Doctor Who you can never really have a 'consequence' for the character of the Doctor, hence the introduction of secondary characters - ie companions - through whom you can bring relevance to the story.)

[Anthony Williams]

Maybe I'm being picky here, but IS the Doctor a constant? I mean, obviously, we know that the Doctor is going to come out of everything alive (or just regenerate). But that's not to say that he doesn't go through character development, particularly since 2005.

Look at the way that the Ninth Doctor healed from his psychological wounds over the course of Series One. Or the Tenth Doctor's time was about the Doctor slowly coming to terms with the absence of the Time Lords, particularly emphasised in The Waters of Mars, and culminating in The End of Time when he has to face-off with them again. The fundamental problem with Moffat's era (in my mind) is that it has been simply too much about the companion, and there's been a general lack of character development for the Doctor in the way that there was in the RTD-era. Again, this is all in my opinion.

Anyway, back to the point! Ultimately, I agree that there has to be character development in the companions. It'd be ridiculous not to have that. But to say that the companion is the "main character" (which, yes, is different to the "most important character") is silly. The show's called Doctor Who. The Doctor is the main character - he's the reason the show exists. I'm not disputing that the presence of the companions and their story is important - it is. But I don't agree that the companion is the "main character" and I don't think I ever will.

[J.R. Southall]

Yes (and I agree completely about how Moffat has actually gone about it), but the essence of his words isn't that the companion is "the main character" so much as "the main character to write for," which is the distinction I think I was trying to make. Sure, the Doctor does change these days a little, but generally over the course of a longer period and he doesn't have entry and exit points that need rationalising. That's why you need to draw your companions more exactly, so that they get chosen to travel and have reasons to leave that are valid.

[Ian Lethbridge-Stewart]

Just wanted to say how much I'm enjoying this discussion. I see both view points. My feelings are closer to Ant's but I agree with the distinction that JR making about writing the show and the companions. I get what JR is saying but like Ant I've felt that since the show's return the companion has almost overshadowed the Doctor in too many of the stories - or it least it has felt like that to me (mind you I don't even like the fact that they get equal billing on the titles - it implies that if they still had a face in the titles that we would get all their faces, which is simply not on)!!!

[J.R. Southall]

Actually, I've been enjoying this discussion so much myself I've just written it up as a 2,000 word essay for the Starburst Magazine website! Should go live in the next few hours or couple of days...

Thanks for the inspiration guys!

[SiHart]

The problem as I see it is with the current companions. Suddenly we have had a rash of "brilliant companions and the Doctor "only taking the best" which while admirable rather defeats the prupose of the companion being the identification figure- you canm't always be the best. Then there are "the most important person who ever lived" which we're told is both Donna and Amy. It's all terribly confusing.

I agree in principle that the companion's story is what the show is about now- we see things very much through their eyes and follow their stories, but I don't necessarily agree that this is the only way to approach the series. I think you could try not doing it and see where that takes you- as long as the companion grows with their travels, they don't really have to be the central figure- look at how they handled Jo in the original series for a way to do this for instance.

[Si Hunt]

The stories are about the companions, the series is about the Doctor.

There's a good reason for that. Few, possibly no, other series have the same character at its centre all the way through. There is, therefore, a limited amount you can do with him if he's the focus of every story; after 50 years, we'd have found out all we need to know about him. So the solution is to make the series usually about different companion characters, with the odd story (say, "Planet of the Spiders") focussing on the Doctor himself.

Si.

[Jon Masters]

The 'companion led character' story repesents one end of a spectrum which has at the other the 'plot only cardboard characters' story, but sadly until we get a change in showrunner we're probably going to stay far closer to the former. That's a shame because DW has been successful by having much more of a mix.

Yes , the balance in the past might have been too far the other way. But the current path isn't a guarentee of great things either - for me, stories like Let's Kill Hitler and the Girl who Waited were just tedious because the whole focus was on the writer's pet characters and there was almost zero plot.

One major detriment , I believe, is that where in classic DW a story would have a host of interesting characters, now there just isn't room for them. By the time you've accomodated Rory and Amy, and probably River, there is really only room for one guest star character, and everyone else becomes a faint shadow or barely drawn sketch. Interestingly, the Nu Who stories where that doesn't happen have been those with (a) no companion e.g. Midnight, Waters of Mars or (b) Heavily sidelined companion e.g. Human Nature
I'd hate to imagine how ensemble pieces like Talons, Robots of Death, Ghost Light, Daemons, Castrovalva etc would have suffered with the current obsession with 'what the companion goes through'. Imagine Nu Who Ark in Space - you'd spend the whole story worrying about what was happening inside SJS's head while she was in Cryogenic sleep !

[J.R. Southall]

I'd hate to imagine how ensemble pieces like Talons, Robots of Death, Ghost Light, Daemons, Castrovalva etc would have suffered with the current obsession with 'what the companion goes through'.

Oddly enough, I think you've just named five stories in which the regulars are very much to the fore...

[J.R. Southall]

Well anyway, here's what I wrote for Starburst if any of you would like to see it.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

I'd hate to imagine how ensemble pieces like Talons, Robots of Death, Ghost Light, Daemons, Castrovalva etc would have suffered with the current obsession with 'what the companion goes through'. Imagine Nu Who Ark in Space - you'd spend the whole story worrying about what was happening inside SJS's head while she was in Cryogenic sleep !

You cracked me up.

Yeah - similarly in Stephen Moffat's Genesis of the Daleks ...

Just touch these two strands together and the Daleks are finished ... well f*** me, a crack in time and space has just occured, and it looks like Sarah Jane is actually the daughter of my original companions Ian and Barbara ... and Katarina has just appeared through a wormhole to warn me that a future companion will "never know if they're right" before they die ...

[J.R. Southall]

But:

Tegan has four arrival/departure stories and Turlough pre-empts the arrival of Ace in the manner in which his character is the focus of anything from Enlightenment to Frontios

There's really nothing new at all about all of this.

[Stuart Wallis]

Tegan has four arrival/departure stories

Nyssa has three for that matter...

[J.R. Southall]

Nyssa has three for that matter...

Quite so!

Moffat's Who is quite obviously the aesthetic of the sixties meets the mindset of the early eighties and given a twist of Coupling... Really, none of this stuff should come as any kind of a surprise!