Doctor Who: Steven Moffat - He's The Greatest Dancer!

Chris Morley hits the floor.

As it's Valentine's Day and love is in the air what better time to look at romance in the world of Doctor Who, specifically from the pen of Steven Moffat. Because in retrospect, looking back to the return of Doctor Who to our screens in 2005, what Moffat did across his debut double-hander of The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances was to shed a little light on the more adult side of personal & romantic relationships.

Sure, it had been touched on as far back as The Aztecs with the First Doctor's rather chaste by modern standards back & forth with Cameca.......

DOCTOR: Oh, really? Oh, my dear. Cocoa beans?
CAMECA: We use these to barter for our daily needs.
DOCTOR: What am excellent idea. A currency you can drink. Delicious.
CAMECA: You know our custom?
DOCTOR: Yes, my dear, of course.
CAMECA: The drinking of cocoa has it's own special meaning.
DOCTOR: Yes, I agree. A rare delight. We should take a cup together.
CAMECA: Are you certain?
DOCTOR: Yes, yes, quite. Now, give me some beans and I'll prepare them.
CAMECA: You insist upon this?
DOCTOR: I do. I insist absolutely. As a token of my esteem.
CAMECA: The gods are smiling favour through your eyes. May it always be so. My dear Doctor, I accept with all my heart.

But Moffat came along & poured hot chocolate all over that! All while exploring what it really is to love somebody, with a little background dancing.

No prizes for guessing what was really on the mind of the man who would be showrunner when he dropped the hint that the Doctor had been both a father & a grandfather at some point pre-Time War. For hopping into bed with the emotional weight of that was sex itself, the physical process behind the implied conception of those children & grandchildren given physical space to breathe in a way that nobody besides Moffat has ever really touched upon - it's there even in the opening exchanges between the Time Lord & a companion he's still in the early stages of getting to know as they chase the Chula ship.

“All those red alerts, all that dancing.”

The seed that there may be something more between them firmly planted.

And then we get the most rounded writing penned for the character of Captain Jack Harkness, prior to his becoming a walking innuendo. The term companion given a new layer of meaning when Rose first speaks of the Doctor to the former Time Agent.

JACK: I try never to discuss business with a clear head. Are you travelling alone? Are you authorised to negotiate with me?
ROSE: What would we be negotiating?
JACK: I have something for the Time Agency. Something they'd like to buy. Are you in power to make payment?
ROSE: Well, I, I should talk to my companion.
JACK: Companion?
ROSE: I should really be getting back to him.
JACK: Him?

Music, so often referred to as the food of love, enters the fray. Here it comes via the period-appropriate sounds of Glenn Miller, first as Jack returns for the Doctor & Rose, and again when the Doctor remembers he can dance, and delivers a line that could be a waggish description of the career & indeed longevity of the late Sir Bruce Forsyth!

“Nine hundred years old, me. I've been around a bit. I think you can assume at some point I've danced.” 

No wonder it stings a bit when Ms Tyler questions his stamina in a sense.

ROSE: He saved my life. Bloke-wise, that's up there with flossing. I trust him because he's like you. Except with dating and dancing. What?
DOCTOR: You just assume I'm....
ROSE: What?
DOCTOR: You just assume that I don't dance.
ROSE: What, are you telling me you do dance?

But he'll demonstrate a certain fleetness of foot once they whirl about the TARDIS.

DOCTOR: Rose! I've just remembered!
ROSE: What?
DOCTOR: I can dance! I can dance!

Proof he's not lost it arrives post-regeneratively in Moffat's first entry for the Tenth Doctor when the Time Lord takes the hand of Madame Du Pompadour, though its implied that she takes the lead for this particular foxtrot through matters of the heart, as acted out by then real-life lovers David Tennant & Sophia Myles in quite the courtly dance across the reign of King Louis. Well, it is France & the eighteenth century, so what the hell?

REINETTE: Listen to me. There is a man coming to Versailles. He has watched over me my whole life and he will not desert me tonight.
LOUIS: What are you talking about? What man?
REINETTE: The only man, save you, I have ever loved. No, don't look like that, there's no time. You have your duties. I am your mistress. Go to your queen.

And so a second three-way becomes apparent. Ooh, matron! Little wonder he gets a bit giddy.

“I'm the Doctor, and I just snogged Madame de Pompadour. Ha, ha! “

And he'll get a bit more from the “mistress of Louis the Fifteenth, uncrowned Queen of France? Actress, artist, musician, dancer, courtesan, fantastic gardener!” later, the lucky thing.

Her experience in intimacy comes to the fore, of course, having been bubbling under the whole time.

REINETTE: A door, once opened, can be stepped through in either direction. Oh, Doctor. My lonely Doctor. Dance with me.
DOCTOR: I can't.
REINETTE: Dance with me.
DOCTOR: This is the night you dance with the King.
REINETTE: Then first, I shall make him jealous.
DOCTOR: I can't.

Where he couldn't then, the whole dynamic in a sense twists when Mofat takes over as the new showrunner and gets to fully indulge his Saturday night fever, Matt Smith now taken for a whirl with Karen Gillan & Arthur Darvill in the Eleventh Doctor's earliest demonstrations of his own moves - where before he knew he should be dancing but can't bring himself to, now he's not even sure when he's being led onto the floor!

Whether that's by Amy herself...

...or the daughter she & Rory later conceive inside the machine he calls Sexy by means of a rather big bang - Steven giving full reign to a little schoolboy humour.

“Like I said on the dance floor, you might want to find something to hang on to.”

Oh, I say!

River then lands on top of her rather bewildered paramour during Moffat's two parter The Time Of The Angels/Flesh And Stone in a first hint there might be something more between her & the chap in the bow tie & tweed jacket.

The TARDIS bunk beds proving handy in the execution of the dance with no pants as Moffat rams home the point that things on Doctor Who had got a lot more grown up since the days when a simple cup of cocoa would see you betrothed...