When I was in undergrad, I met a couple who used to watch Dr Who, till Steven Moffat ruined it. The science turned them off. Like how Moffat had an "impossible" planet orbit a black hole: it's far from impossible.

But what IS impossible is Moffat having written that RTD episode.

It's really very weird how Steven Moffat is a name that SO many people recognize. More so than almost any other TV writer alive. That's maybe an unhealthy level of fame in the first place. But in Moffat's case, it's amplified valid critiques into shallow truisms.

Moffat is a good writer on his own, but he's always bad when he's in charge.

Moffat is unable to write plots that don't get overcomplicated and confusing.

Moffat is physically incapable of ever writing women who aren't just a detail in another man's world. (Press Gang...?)

The problem with arguments like these isn't that they're totally wrong. Often, they have a basis in good critique, or things that just irk you personally.

But I can't stand how Moffat critique became a meme. Like a call and response. I say "Moffat", you say "can't write women".

It's frustrating that it got so viciously personal, that it's STILL something you constantly read today, that far worse offenders don't get this attention, and that it's repeated so unconsciously that people invariably fail to check how Stephen Mofett's name is spelled.

But mostly, it's frustrating that Moffat hate became a conversation-ender. It's hard to discuss his very real flaws as a writer when Moffat's treated less as, you know, just some TV writer, than as a guy who's out to annoy you personally.