Moffat, a fan of Doctor Who since childhood, first professionally contributed to Doctor Who with a prose story, "Continuity Errors", which was published in the 1996 Virgin Books anthology Decalog 3: Consequences. In 1999 he scripted the parody Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death, which aired as part of Comic Relief's Red Nose Day charity telethon. The co-producer for that year's Comic Relief telethon was Moffat's then-new wife, Sue Vertue.
In 2004 Moffat was signed to write for the revival of Doctor Who. He became known, according to The Guardian, for writing "the clever, darker episodes" of the first four series of the show. His contribution for the 2005 series was the two-part story "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances". In the DVD audio commentary he says that he waited forty years to see his name appear on top of that theme music. He wrote an episode for each of the two following series: "The Girl in the Fireplace" in the 2006 series and "Blink" in the 2007 series. Moffat won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form three years in a row for his contributions. "The Girl in the Fireplace" and "Blink" were both nominated for Nebula Awards. "Blink" also gained him the BAFTA Craft Award for Best Writer, and a BAFTA Cymru Award for Best Screenwriter. In the Doctor Who Magazine reader poll for the 2007 series, Moffat was voted as best writer and "Blink" as the best story. He also wrote the 2007 Children in Need "special scene" "Time Crash".
He wrote a two-part story for series four in 2008, titled "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead", making Moffat and series executive producer Russell T Davies the only writers to have contributed scripts to the first four series of the revived show. In March 2008, Davies said that he often rewrote scripts from other writers, but didn't "touch a word" of Moffat's episodes. Moffat's script for series four secured him his fourth consecutive Hugo Awards nomination, though it did not win.
The BBC announced in May 2008 that Moffat would be taking over from Russell T Davies as head writer and executive producer for the revived show's fifth series, to be broadcast in 2010, although Davies had initiated discussions with Moffat regarding this as far back as July 2007. Commenting on his appointment, Moffat said it was "the proper duty of every British subject to come to the aid of the TARDIS". Production on Moffat's time in charge of the programme began in July 2009. As executive producer and head writer, he was significantly involved in casting Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor. Smith first appeared as the Doctor at the end of Davies and David Tennant's final episode, the second part of The End of Time, in a short post-regeneration scene that Davies left for Moffat to write himself. Moffat wrote the scene in "about ten minutes" as "a bit of fun banter" for the new Doctor.
In addition to his television episodes, Moffat has also contributed stories to Panini Publishing's Doctor Who Storybook series, penning the short stories "What I Did On My Christmas Holidays By Sally Sparrow" for the 2006 book (which later formed the basis of his TV episode "Blink"), "Corner of the Eye" for the 2007 volume and "A Letter From the Doctor" which opens the 2009 Storybook.
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