Born: 18th November 1961 (as Steven William Moffat)
Episodes Broadcast: 2005-2008, 2010-2017

Steven Moffat was born in Paisley, Scotland, and was a devoted follower of Doctor Who from an early age. He attended the University of Glasgow, where he completed a Masters degree in English; he was also involved with its student television station. Moffat then spent three years as a high school English teacher, during which he began writing plays. In the late Eighties his father, Bill Moffat, provided producer Sandra Hastie with the idea for the children's series Press Gang, on the condition that the younger Moffat be given the opportunity to write the pilot script. Hastie was impressed with the result, and Moffat went on to author the show's entire 1989-1993 run. Scriptwriting quickly became his full-time job.

Moffat took inspiration from the end of his relationship with wife Maggie to develop the critically-acclaimed sitcom Joking Apart. He also created the short-lived Chalk and wrote for Stay Lucky and Murder Most Horrid. In 1996, Moffat met producer Sue Vertue at the Edinburgh Festival; her mother had been Terry Nation's agent when he created the Daleks for Doctor Who. They would marry two years later, with son Joshua born in 2000 and Louis in 2002. 1996 was also the year that Moffat earned his first professional Doctor Who credit, on the chronology-bending short story “Continuity Errors” for Decalog 3: Consequences from Virgin Publishing. Then, in 1999, Vertue drafted her husband to script The Curse Of Fatal Death, a high-profile Doctor Who spoof for the Comic Relief charity appeal which starred Rowan Atkinson and former Press Gang regular Julia Sawalha. The same year, Moffat was invited to contribute to the launch of the series of Doctor Who audio dramas from Big Finish Productions. However, when he learned that Paul McGann, the then-current Doctor, was not yet involved, he decided against participating.

Moffat's television profile skyrocketed when he created the seminal sitcom Coupling

In 2000, Moffat's television profile skyrocketed when he created the seminal sitcom Coupling, for which he also gained his first credit as an executive producer. Moffat was then commissioned for Russell T Davies' revival of Doctor Who, and initially contributed 2005's eerie The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances for Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor. Moffat maintained his involvement with each of David Tennant's three seasons as the Tenth Doctor, developing a reputation for “timey-wimey” storylines and memorable monsters, notably the Weeping Angels of Blink in 2007. He also created one of Doctor Who's most enduring supporting characters in the form of River Song, played by Alex Kingston and introduced in 2008's Silence In The Library / Forest Of The Dead. Away from Doctor Who, Moffat developed the 2007 serial Jekyll and embarked on a planned movie trilogy featuring the beloved comic character Tintin for director Steven Spielberg.

The trajectory of Moffat's career was forever changed in July 2007, when Davies revealed that he was planning to leave Doctor Who and wanted Moffat to succeed him as showrunner. Initially reluctant, Moffat eventually agreed after much deliberation and took over the programme with The Eleventh Hour in 2010. As a result, his work with Spielberg was limited to 2011's The Adventures Of Tintin. Moffat cast the unprecedentedly-young Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor, and developed a complex multi-year storyline involving the mysterious Silence. At the same time, he and Doctor Who writer/actor Mark Gatiss created another television phenomenon in the form of Sherlock, a modern-day updating of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes mysteries which propelled Benedict Cumberbatch to stardom.

In 2013, it fell to Moffat to oversee the celebrations surrounding Doctor Who's fiftieth anniversary. The pressure was immense and Moffat found himself mired in self-doubt. Nonetheless, the result was the phenomenally-popular The Day Of The Doctor, for which he created a hitherto-unknown incarnation of the Time Lord, played by acting legend John Hurt. His opportunity to write for McGann's Eighth Doctor finally arrived in the form of the online prequel The Night Of The Doctor. Moffat also recorded a cameo appearance in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, Peter Davison's loving satire of the show, and served as an executive producer on An Adventure In Space And Time, Gatiss' docu-drama about the early days of Doctor Who. Moffat then cast a third Doctor when Peter Capaldi took over as the lead character's twelfth incarnation at the end of the year.

During Capaldi's tenure, Moffat broke new ground by introducing Michelle Gomez's Missy. When she was ultimately revealed to be a female incarnation of the Master, the irrelevance of gender to Time Lord regeneration was established once and for all. Moffat continued to challenge himself with unusual narratives, such as 2015's Heaven Sent, in which the Doctor and the unspeaking Shroud were essentially the only characters. But he was now anticipating his own departure from Doctor Who, and intended to bow out with the 2015 Christmas special, The Husbands Of River Song. However, Moffat agreed to remain on Doctor Who longer than planned in order to provide his successor, Chris Chibnall, with the time he needed to wrap up other commitments.

Moffat's effective farewell to Doctor Who was his 2018 novelisation of The Day Of The Doctor

This meant that Moffat not only oversaw a third season for the Twelfth Doctor, but was also the executive producer of the short-lived spin-off, Class, in 2016. The same year, his services to television drama earned him an appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. Once again, Doctor Who was loathe to let Moffat go: he now expected to exit alongside Capaldi in 2017's World Enough And Time / The Doctor Falls but, when it was realised that Chibnall would be unable to record that year's Christmas special, the two men extended their stay to include the valedictory Twice Upon A Time. Moffat's effective farewell to Doctor Who was his novelisation of The Day Of The Doctor, published by BBC Books in 2018.

Moffat's work in the Twenties began with another Gatiss collaboration, this time on Dracula. It was followed by an adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger's popular novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, and a reunion with Tennant for the thriller Inside Man. Moffat will return to Doctor Who to write an episode for Ncuti Gatwa's Fifteenth Doctor in 2024.