What is not natural, however, is how, after eight years, Moffat can still write something like Heaven's Sent: the 2015 one-hander about fear, loss, loneliness and grief; the episode in which the Doctor, over the course of four and half billion years, punches through a wall of pure diamond. It's one of the best Doctor Who stories ever written – and, according to Moffat, a pretty good allegory for what it's been like to run the show. “You kill yourself every time,” he once said, “and then you get up and do it again.”

Will Moffat be missed? That depends on who you ask. But what is certain is that he has become one of the most distinctive voices in television; a writer who made Doctor Who his own – whose episodes can be picked easily out of a crowd. Whether the same will be said about the next showrunner, Broadchurch creator Chris Chibnall, is to be seen. None of the Doctor Who episodes he has written so far (The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, The Power of Three) have particularly stood out. And reports that, for some instalments, the show could be shifting to an American-style writer’s room does suggest a step-back from a cult of personality. But maybe that’s for the best. Maybe it’s time for a change; for a regeneration. Or maybe, in a few years time, fans will begin to miss that voice; to complain that Doctor Who isn’t as good as it used to be. Either way, for better or worse, Moffat must go.