The trouble with a series as it gets older is it can feel like a tradition, and tradition is the enemy of suspense, and it's the enemy of comedy. It's the enemy of everything, really. So you have to shake it up.
Interpretation
Tradition can hinder creativity and excitement in storytelling, requiring new approaches to maintain engagement.
In this quote, Steven Moffat highlights the tension between tradition and innovation in creative works, particularly in series and storytelling. He argues that as a series becomes more established, it may fall into predictable patterns that diminish suspense and humor, hence creativity must be continuously revitalized to keep the audience engaged and entertained.
In practice
During a panel discussion on originality in television, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of innovation in storytelling.
Demons run when a good man goes to war. Night will fall and drown the sun when a good man goes to war. Friendship dies and true love lies. Night will fall and the dark will rise when a good man goes to war. Demons run but count the cost; the battle's won but the child is lost.
It's a funny thing about stories. It doesn't feel like you make them up, more like you find them. You type and type and you know you haven't got it yet, because somewhere out there, there's that perfect thing -- the unexpected ending that was always going to happen. That place you've always been heading for, but never expected to go.
An awful lot of storytelling isn't really about making people understand - it's about making people care.
I don't want to think that the stories are finite; I want to feel that they can go on forever.
I'll be a story in your head. But that's OK. We're all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, eh? Because it was, you know; it was the best.
I know this is going to sound very self-serving, and I apologize for it, but if you can write comedy, you can pretty much write anything, because it's the hardest. It's the most technically demanding, the most precisely evaluated form of writing. People know if it works or not. There's a big button marked 'fail,' and that's when nobody laughs.
To some extent I happily don't know what I'm doing. I feel that it's an artist's responsibility to trust that.
Artists in general never stay in the same place; we keep growing. It's still you: you still have that core that you always had, but you work with new people and hear new things.
It took me two years to walk around a chair with ease; it took me another two years to learn how to laugh onstage - and I had to learn everything.
There's design, and there's art. Good design is total harmony. There's no better designer than nature - if you look at a branch or a leaf, it's perfect. It's all function. Art is different. It's about emotion. It's about suffering and beauty - but mostly suffering!
Dance is for everybody. I believe that the dance came from the people and that it should always be delivered back to the people.
I've made movies that I thought were okay, but then I was very good. And sometimes you're in a movie and you think, 'I wish more people saw that' - because you're good. And it just works out that the movie gets lost. But that's show business.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.