Steven Moffat Returns to Doctor Who With New Short Story Starring Doctor 13

Steven Moffat had run Doctor Who for six seasons, but by the Jodie Whittaker's Doctor 13 came around, the EP role was switched over to Chris Chibnall. What's interesting is, Moffat has released a short story featuring the 13th Doctor, and it kind of bridges his era of Who with the current one.

Here's a short excerpt of Moffat's The Terror of the Umpty Ums:

The reeking flesh mass was silent for a moment before twisting and stretching its upper, frontal skin lumps into a new configuration. Karpagnon's visual circuits processed and pattern-matched the configuration within two nano-seconds: apparently the human was smiling. Karpagnon considered for a moment and elected not to retaliate.

"Did you hear me?" emitted the Human from its flapped aperture. "Did you understand? Do you understand what I'm saying?" The encoded sound stream was accompanied by a fresh flow of smells also emanating from the aperture. Karpagnon's sensory filter began processing the new odours, while his tactical monitor noted that they were unlikely to be directly significant to the Human's communication. The light spray of moisture was similarly dismissed. "I'll be back tomorrow morning. Dr. Johnson and Dr. Ahmed will be here too. Do you remember them?"

No explicit threat detected, noted the Tactical Monitor, while the Strategic Oversight Junction added that an implied, non-explicit threat was still possible – but then the Strategic Oversight Junction was like that. Beef and onions advised the Sensory Filter.

You can read the full story here.

The story focuses on a Deathborg called Karpagnon who finds himself meeting the Doctor. It's actually filled with a lot of callbacks to Moffat's time on Who, even the line ‘We're all stories in the end' from the episode of Matt Smith's regeneration into Peter Capaldi.

This is actually Moffat's first return to the series after ending his involvement with Doctor Who back in 2017. Since then, he has teamed up with Mark Gatiss to work on the mini-series Dracula. Now he's working on another property featuring another classic monster called Jekyll.

As for Doctor Who, it's possible that the next episode could be held up by the Coronavirus as well, but it is expected to come out sometime later this year.

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