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If there's one thing that's struck me about the first few episodes of the new season, it's perhaps how neatly they've mirrored situations and ideas touched on in earlier Moffat stories. So much so that I felt compelled to sit down and collate these 'similarities' under the guise of some sort of intellectual debate.

Feel free to chip in with your own observations of 'patterns' in Stephen's work. It's just for fun and perhaps to enable us to get a better understanding of the man who's to be our new king =D

Spoilers aplenty will follow, of course. But I'll be nice and flag them up by listing all the examples after the name of the episode they're from :3

Now, here's what I've got so far...

The Un-human:

Something that's like humans, only not. All of Moffat's villains thusfar have adhered to this principle. First he takes what *looks* human, then injects it with a healthy dose of liquid nightmare.

The Empty Child: Was a prime example.
Girl in the Fireplace: The Clockwork droids.
Blink: The Weeping Angels.
Silence in The Library: Two particularly gruesome examples in both the Vashta Narada's victims and the fate of Miss Evangelista in the data core.
The Eleventh Hour: Gives us perhaps the most literal example yet of humans gone wrong with the multiform Prisoner Zero's various guises.
The Beast Below: The Smilers. Played with with Liz 10, but it turns out she's just theatrical >.>

Anguished Love:

People in Moffat's world never have nice, stable relationships. Instead they get treated to all the emotional angst and trauma that one might conceivably expect when some interstellar horror from beyond the stars gets in the way. Suspects include:

The Empty Child: Nancy's tortured love for her brother/son.
Girl in The Fireplace: Shame on you if you don't know this one already.
Blink: Sally and Billy.
Silence in the Library: Ten and River.

I wouldn't keep those fingers crossed for Amy's wedding, frankly :/

Death by Saviour:

Something designed ostensibly to help improve matters does exactly the opposite. Often resulting in many, many, corpses.

The Empty Child: Nanogenes created to cure the sick unleash a zombie apocalypse instead.
Girl in the Fireplace: The repair droids massacre the crew.
Silence in the Library: The Library shows its helpful credentials by EATING SOULS.
The Beast Below: The voting booths are designed to save the subjects of the United Kingdom from having to live with the guilt of their sin. They're also more or less death-traps if you happen to be morally minded. Ironically, in this episode a 'genuine' saviour does show up in the form of the space whale. It, itself, is then summarily imprisoned and tortured for its trouble.

The Late Reveal:

Something that would more or less have solved the mystery of the week from the word 'go' shows up very, very late in proceedings and is only seen by the audience. Damn you, dramatic irony!

The Girl in the Fireplace: The mystery of what those droids were doing punching all those holes through to eighteenth century France is eventually explained...in the closing shot.
The Beast Below: If only the TARDIS had approached Great Britain from below and seen from the off the whole thing was moving on the back of a ruddy great space fish. It would have meant for a markedly shorter episode yes, but still...

The Kids Aren't Alright:

Moffat's stories quite often feature children in pivotal roles. More than likely, they'll be in some form of peril or other. If not, they probably *are* the peril.

The Empty Child: Come on, you can work this one out :/
Girl in the Fireplace: Young Reinette has a very busy fireplace.
Silence in the Library: Charlotte Abigail Lux is a *very* special little girl.
The Eleventh Hour: Amelia Pond, age seven or thereabouts, is having trouble with a crack in the wall.
The Beast Below: Starts and ends with children crying. Everything in between is mostly their fault, too.


Morally Grey (Courtesy of Ceribri!)

Moffat's monsters rarely act out of malice, but rather are driven to their actions as the logical result of their behavioural patterns.

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances: He just wanted to find his mummy.
The Girl in the Fireplace: The clockwork robots are just following orders to repair the ship, and Reinette's name/picture on it causes them to assume she's the key.
Silence in the Library: They're defending their territory, as they live in the books..or whatever it was.
The Eleventh Hour: Your Mileage May Vary, but Prisoner Zero was only trying to escape capture and didn't intentionally try to hurt anyone by copying the coma patients.
The Beast Below: The Smilers are only trying to protect the nation from the truth they believe will kill them all.
Victory of the Daleks: The scientist robot was only doing what he thought was best and didn't know what the Daleks were planning. (a Mark Gatiss episode, with Moffat as showrunner)
Time of Angels: Your Mileage May Vary, but the Angels are trying to escape the crack - however, they are much more malicious this time, resorting to killing (to obtain a voice) rather than displacement in time.
Cold Blood: (written by Chris Chibnall, w/Moffat as showrunner) The Silurians are defending their territory from the drill, since they were there first.
Vincent and the Doctor: (written by Richard Curtis, w/Moffat as showrunner) The invisible monster was left behind because it is blind, and therefore it lashes out in confusion and fear, not rage.

Oh wow. I caught the Girl in the Fireplace/TBB reveal and the Kids Are Important thing but that's about it.

This thread is reminding me a lot of the entries in TV Tropes for Doctor Who (and there are a LOT). And Moffat is repeatedly mentioned under the Nightmare Fuel/Nightmare Fuel Unleaded categories as being very good at this (and Mood Whiplash).

He creates characters that make you scared enough to run behind the sofa and then yet another one that makes you scared of the shadows behind the sofa. gonk
Moral: WE'RE NOT SAFE ANYWHERE.

*cough*

So I've got one. Morally Grey.
All of Moffat's baddies thus far (I think) aren't acting out of malice, they're acting on what they think is right.

Spoilers through The Beast Below will follow.

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances: He just wanted to find his mummy.
The Girl in the Fireplace: The clockwork robots are just following orders to repair the ship, and Reinette's name/picture on it causes them to assume she's the key.
Silence in the Library: They're defending their territory, as they live in the books..or whatever it was.
Blink: ...okay, so those WERE freaky creepy monsters, but wasn't it explained as they're just sending someone back through time, not killing them? I've (un)surprisingly seen this episode one of the least number of times considering how much I like it.
The Eleventh Hour: Your Mileage May Vary, but Prisoner Zero was only trying to escape capture and didn't intentionally try to hurt anyone by copying the coma patients.
The Beast Below: The Smilers are .. I don't even know, but the way I saw it, they're trying to protect the nation? ship? colony? from having dissenters by feeding them to their giant space whale prisoner who was only trying to help them in the first place.

Here's an obvious pattern: Moffat creates entirely new characters rather than bring back new ones. Good and bad morally gray alike.


What about the arc-word/recurring theme for S5, even though that's not a pattern he's had before?
I think somewhere Moffat said that the Big Bad (or a catalyst of it) would be appearing in each episode (a la Bad Wolf).
I'm guessing it's the crack. The first one was the important crack in the wall in The Eleventh Hour, then there was another one on the ship near the end of The Beast Below that gave a meaningful shimmer (like Donna's ring seemed to do but nothing came of it).

Hmmm, in the case of Blink the creatures were just doing what they were supposed to do...send people back in time and feed off of their life enrgy that their present live left behind, as the Doctor says "they kill you inthe kindest way possible--by letting you live." If you noticed, though, the people who were sent back all lived very happy and full lives, albeit slightly odd lives knowing they were from the future. Have you ever noticed also that Moffat usually alows everyone to live? Mind I am in America and have yet to actually see season 5, but the other I will touch base on...

Empty Child: In the words of the Doctor "This time everyone lives!!" The nanogenes did actually save everyone once they figured out that we are not mindless zombies with a gas mask face, a random scar on our hands, and all desperately looking for our 'Mummy'.
The Girl in the Fireplace: Ok...this one is not a great example but Reinnette did not get hurt by the droids and neither did anyone else at the party, but she did die in the end from a natural death--not murder.
Silence in the Library: All the people who had been killed were 'saved' in the computer program, and everyone else was released. Everyone was happy.
Blink: They let you live so you can die...nuff said.

I do have to say that all these epidodes are quite enjoyable. Moffat is a good writer. Excited for Sturday to see the new episode for the new season on BBC America!

The THEME THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME:
Time Lord S**!
(in the interest of discretion, I shall now use the 1980's Pop-song lyric euphemism so beloved of Moffat, "dancing")

"Empty Child/The Doctor Dances": Simply states the theoretical possibility. Introduces Jack Harkness, a "51st Century Guy" who will dance with anything he can get a leg over. The Doctor appears openly aware of such things for the first time in his lives (secretly in love/lust in Old School eps is a whole 'nother Oprah).
"The Girl in the Fireplace": Brings us Mmme. Pompadour, whose professional credentials are pretty much limited to one thing.
Reinette asks the Doctor to dance, he stammers, "uh, I don't dance" (sop to old-school fans who like to imagine all previous Doctors as virgins). She tells him it's time he learns and whisks him off to cotillion class, French-decadence style. Doctor reappears intoxicated, with clothing dissaranged, singing "I could have danced all night" (well, with 2 hearts, maybe he can. It's all in the hydraulics). As far as Dancing goes, he's (officially) gone from theory to practice in this ep.
"Blink" Even though the Doctor's practically an extra in this story, he does say "I'm rubbish at weddings. Especially my own." So now he's gone from drunken one-night-stands to at least an attempt at a stable relationship.
"Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead": We meet River Song, a smart, funny, fairly attractive woman who knows the Doctor better than any drooling fan, and who posesses a book recording their times together, events she is willing to die to protect. What's in that book? I mean, to paraphrase my sister "Obviously, they were dancing" (she did NOT use the word dance). Is she his lover? His wife? The mother of his children? Dunno 'bout y'all, but I'm DYING to know. Inquiring minds, all that. The point being that they appear to have had a stable, long-term relationship. The earth may tilt off its axis . . .
"The Beast Below" Ends with a highly ambiguous hug. Does Amy still see the Doctor as a father-figure, or is she in love with him? Does the Doctor still think of Amy as seven-year-old Amelia, tearing her aunt's kitchen apart to figure out "What Tiggers, um, Time Lords, Like Best"? Or is he hoping for a kiss-o-gram? burning_eyes
Curse you, Stephen Moffat, you've taken over my brain! And made me scared of statues! And lint!

Does anyone here know CPR?! Is there a Doctor in the house? lol
please excuse the bad pun.

To be fair, they fixed that by the end of the 1st series.

They are all doing it because they have some need to do it. Could be programmed or be trying to survive so even if the Dalek's are pure evil, they are still doing something to survive and acting on orders long gone. That's the theme.