to clarify
It’s not that I think Moffat isn’t at times “problematic” it’s that I think he gets a disproportionate amount of shit when RTD gets aways with being just as bad but somehow it’s okay when he does it and we’re supposed to wish he’d return and make the show and fandom magical and perfect again.
I know that some of it’s just timing – for instance “Marthagate” in 2007 were in a fandom that had yet to be hit by and adapt to the Racefail moment of 2009 and oh fuck is that glaring when we look back upon it now. Fandom is more… well, more aware and also more virtul-signalling in some instances, but the point is that we have words for these things now. Whereas in 2006 (was it?) we just had to roll our eyes when RTD told us that the Doctor could never be a woman because (paraphrasing as this is from memory) “children would wonder where his willy had gone to.” The Owen-from-Torchwood rape-spray thing, or the “hey why don’t I make the first female black companion be explicitly second-best to a departed white girl?” or the HILARITY of Donna thinking she might have “womanly wiles”, etc, etc… I do think at least some of that would have gotten more annoyed traction in fandom if it had happened a few years later.
But even so, it bugs the shit out of me when people act like Rusty never put a foot wrong and everything was lovely and progressive until That Damn Misogynist came along to ruin everything. It’s a weird version of history that makes no sense to me probably just because it’s a load of balls.
There was that time he called the people angry about how Ianto’s death fell into the ‘bury your gays’ trope “nine hysterical women” as well, which I think would’ve put a huge dent in his reputation if it’d happened in the Twitter age. (As it stands, it’s virtually forgotten.)
And him letting transphobia pop up in Torchwood, from the mouth of Jack no less.