When Showrunners Write for Shows

I was reading About Time Volume 7, and it was explaining that part of the reason why the characterization (of everyone, but especially Rose and Mickey) went to hell in Season Two is because RTD was too busy working on his own scripts to actually do the script-supervising job.

And it occurred to me that Steven Moffat has the same problem. After all, the guy was a beast under RTD, but the only thing he's written since taking over the show that comes close to being as good as "Blink" was "A Christmas Carol." And this makes a certain amount of sense; prior to Doctor Who getting shoved around the calendar year, it's safe to assume that Moffat had more time to work on the Christmas specials than he did on regular episodes.  (I'd also like to note that the absolutely Santa-awful "The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe" was dumped on us immediately after the schedule hijinks began, and that only five episodes aired between that and the following Christmas special, "The Snowmen," which was something of a return to form.)

Going back and looking at periods in which the script editor wrote for the show, one notes that the only person who could pull this off without wrecking the rest of the season was Robert Holmes (unsurprisingly) in Season 14 (and probably in Season 12, given what people have said about Terry Nation's script for Genesis of the Daleks). Terrance Dicks wrote "Robot" at the end of the subpar Season 11. Douglas Adams sunk his entire creative talent into "City of Death," the only thing worth watching from Season 17. (Eric Saward got the job because of "Earthshock," so we can't blame him for the rest of Season 19.) (And it's possible that the black & white script editors like Tosh or Spooner pulled it off, but with so many episodes missing from the archive I really can't make that call.)

Curiously, Nu Who's American counterpart and most obvious inspiration, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, had the exact opposite problem. When Joss Whedon took a vacation to write Season Six's "Once More With Feeling," he left the show in less capable hands and the rest is history. (And I'd like to point out that Buffy aired almost twice as many minutes per year as Doctor Who does, which makes me incredibly skeptical whenever somebody tries to defend the recent scheduling shenanigans.)

I'm not really going anywhere in particular with this.