Bingo. It's almost as if Moffat doesn't want the fans to like Capaldi, so he's deliberately not giving him much to do. Fortunately, Capaldi is finding little moments here and there to show what he can do, and subvert Moffat's sabotage in the process.
Moffat has faced pushback from actors in the past.
This piece from NPR about Benedict Cumberbatch on Sherlock nicely illustrates it. The most relevant quote is this:
"Immediately as an actor I wanted to understand who [Sherlock] was, what his parents were," he adds. "These were questions I asked ... I wanted to understand. [Moffat] was just talking about, 'Can't this guy just be good at what he does and he's your age and he looks like you and he's doing his thing?' And I went, 'No, no Steven, there's a process I've got to go through. I've got to understand how I became this person.' "
He didn't necessarily expect those answers to be revealed to viewers, Cumberbatch points out now. "I can't just sort of float onto set with a whole bunch of mannerisms and hope it sort of comes off," he says. "You have to ground it in some sort of reality, otherwise you get found out as things sort of evolve."
One other thing Cumberbatch insisted on was creating a weakness for Sherlock — his inability to connect with people — another idea Moffatt resisted.
"And [Moffat] said, 'But can't he just be really good? Can't he just be good at it? Why does he have to have flaw or an Achilles heel?'" the actor says. "Because I said, you know, 'Where's his weakness?' Because no human being doesn't [have one]. And however much [Sherlock] tries to convince himself he's not human, he is."
THE ACTORS UNDERSTAND HOW TO WRITE THE STORY BETTER THAN THE SHOWRUNNER.
I think of it like this. Moffat is the ultimate fanboy, and he's a fanboy with talent. But that's a double-edged blade there. On the one hand, he's deeply knowledgable about the history and lore of the universe in which he's operating (at least in Doctor Who). But on the other, he has these...impulses to create characters that are just total wish fulfillment. Moffat's good at coming up with interesting concepts, and he can hit emotional beats really well, but he doesn't seem that interested in doing the work necessary to ground any of this stuff, so you end up with season after season of unearned payoffs. That's where he's a fanboy: because he just wants the Doctor or his other characters (e.g. Clara) to "win" so badly that he doesn't understand the SHOW loses whenever he indulges his impulse to cheat an ending.
To me, the quintessential example of this was the Christmas episode of last season. As a standalone story, it's actually pretty entertaining and good. I loved Faye Marsay's character, too. She felt
real. She felt
honest. I wanted to see more of her because she didn't feel like Moffat just made a list of "Things I'd have liked in a girlfriend at age 15." Great episode, great characters.
HOWEVER, the episode also totally undermined Clara's entire season arc in the 13 episodes that led up to it. Trying to decide whether she wanted to be with the Doctor, loving Danny,
losing Danny, and its ultimate impact on her, all of that was actually really nice. I didn't mind that the show focused on her last season
if it did so because it was getting rid of her, and that was the direction of the entire season.
And then in literally the last scene of the Christmas episode, Moffat just hand-waives it away because he just wants the Doctor to win. It goes back to that impulse, that "Can't he just be really good at it?" impulse. No, you twit. He can't be because
that's rubbish storytelling.
