Stephen Moffat Incorporated “Fan Theory” Into Doctor Who Lore
It’s widely known that if a form of media goes on for a long time, especially decades, eventually, the people who watched, heard, read, said media will eventually come to make it themselves if the media is still there. For Doctor Who, that’s never been more apparent, as more and more people want to write (or act in regards to current Doctor, Peter Capaldi) for the half-century running series.
For current Doctor Who showrunner Stephen Moffat, he’s long noted how much of a fan he is of the series, even before he started making it himself. But a fun fact recovered by Radio Times revealed that he didn’t forget some things he said years ago about Doctor Who. Check out this post he made about what “The Doctor” really means in his mind:
“Here’s a particularly stupid theory. If we take ‘The Doctor’ to be the Doctor’s name – even if it is in the form of a title no doubt meaning something deep and Gallifreyan – perhaps our earthly use of the word ‘doctor’ meaning healer or wise man is direct result of the Doctor’s multiple interventions in our history as a healer and wise man. In other words, we got it from him. This is a very silly idea and I’m consequently rather proud of it.”
Sound familiar? It should! If you watched “A Good Man Goes To War” in the Matt Smith’s run on Doctor Who. In a scene from the episode, companion (and future “wife”) River Song relays to the Doctor this:
“Doctor. The word for healer and wise man throughout the universe. We get that word from you, you know. But if you carry on the way you are, what might that word come to mean? To the people of the Gamma Forests, the word Doctor means mighty warrior. How far you’ve come.”
Nice little fun Moffat had there huh?