Description
The second book in the Screen Storytellers series, this is the first critical appraisal of television writer Steven Moffat. It spans the early sitcoms that draw on his own autobiography to the hugely successful reinventions of Doctor Who and Sherlock to his attempts to revise and revitalize Victorian horror classics and beyond.
In a decades-long career as one of the world's most successful television writers, Steven Moffat has reimagined almost every major character in British pop culture, from Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who to Dracula and Dr. Jekyll. The scholars contributing to this volume offer diverse and wide-ranging viewpoints on Moffat's career and work, as an immensely influential television creator whose impact is still underestimated. They present a comprehensive and insightful exploration of Moffat's contributions to screenwriting and television to provide a rich, multifaceted understanding of his unique storytelling techniques and the evolution of his style. The range of approaches blend academic analysis with practical insights to offer a unique look at Moffat's influence on modern television storytelling.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Steven Moffat Is Smarter Than You
William Rabkin (University of California, Riverside-Palm Desert, USA)
PART I: How He Works
1. The Doctor, The Detective and The Time Traveler's Wife: A Pilot Study
Marco Ianiello (University of Notre Dame, Australia)
2. Moffat's Doctor Who as Everyshow
James Felder (NYU/Tisch School of the Arts, USA)
3. The British Friends: Coupling
Karen Jeynes (University of Pretoria, South Africa)
4. The First Word: The Roots of Moffat's Doctor Who in His Earliest Works
Jaime Beckwith and Leslie McMurtry (University of Salford, UK)
5. Writing About Himself: Moffat's Reinvention from Autobiography to Genre
Robert J. Binney (University of California, Riverside-Palm Desert, USA)
PART II: Early Works
6. Voices, Silences, and Today's Youth: Narrative Strategy in Press Gang
Tom Muir (Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway)
7. Man Up: Coupling and the Rom-Com
Mary Irwin (Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, UK)
8. Adaptation, Fidelity, and the Crisis of Paternity in Moffat's Jekyll
Linda Belau (University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley, USA)
9. A Real Human Being and a Real Anti-Hero: An Analysis of Moffat's Character Construction
Doga Col (Maltepe University, Istanbul, Turkey)
PART III: Later Works
10. To Build a Genius: Narrative Templates and Visual Construction of Moffat's Characters
Simona Adinolfi (Ghent University, Belgium) and Sylvia Genovese (University of Edinburgh, UK)
11. Temporal Distortions: The Art of Non-Linearity in Moffat's Doctor Who and Sherlock
Sony Jalarajan Raj and Adith K. Suresh (MacEwan University, Alberta, Canada)
12. Watching as New Reading: Exploring Narratology, Intertextuality, and Reader Response in Moffat's Television Series
Roksana Zgierska (University of Gdansk, Poland)
13. Sherlock: Challenging the Cartesian Thinking Man
Shreya Das (The Sanskrit College and University, Kolkata, India)
14. The Complex Count and the Curing of Toxic Masculinity in Dracula
Ahmad Hayat (University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA)
15. “This Man Belongs to Me!”: Revealing the Queer Sadomasochism of Dracula
Ian M. Clark (Queen's University, Ontario, Canada)
Index
