I guess the thing I disliked most about Rusty was he always needs to make things bigger. Each season the ultimate threat became bigger and more impossible to beat which made the solution just... well it really did have to drop from heaven like a proper deus ex machina.

Series 1 - The Daleks have conquered Earth and the only solution is to kill half of Earth's population to take them out. The Doctor can't do it and surrenders. Rose then merges with the TARDIS and we have god Rose and a nice excuse to cause a regeneration.

Series 2 - The Cybermen have conquered Earth but that's not big enough for Rusty so lets bring in the Daleks as well. How do we fix this? 'Void-stuff' is invented. The Doctor then effectively turns on a giant hoover and sucks all the Daleks and Cybermen up into hell.

Series 3 - TARDIS transformed into a MacGuffin. Earth conquered by The Master *yawn*. The Doctor gets supercharged by all the people on Earth calling his name and transforms into Phoenix. Destroys MacGuffin and resets the year of hell. Forshadowing Ring shot.

Series 4 - Earth clearly isn't big enough so this time the Daleks along with Davros want to wipe out everything the whole of reality. Doctor-Donna. Donna get's an intelligence boost thanks to a handy zap from Davros and suddently knows exactly the right switch that disables every single Dalek. Not the sort of thing you think they would leave in Davros' lab since he was effectively a prisoner.

End of Time - A very svelt Rassilon uses a link to the Master to bring Gallifrey out of the Time Lock. They then plan to do what the Daleks couldn't and wipe out everything. The Doctor is now superhuman and jumps out of a ship surviving a 200 ft fall. The Master then has a Heel-Face turn and Russel T Davies rides off into the sunset of Hollywood leaving baffled fans wondering what the hell just happened.

I get where you're going, and I'd never defend "The end of time". However at least it did have direction. That's what I feel has been lacking, it's been too focused on how great the doctor is, and not enough on the world around. I hope in future we'll see a lot more of John Smith, and a lot more of other races and intentions, rather the doctor showing off. This was a complaint laid against Stephen Moffat, and one he appears to have taken to heart.

I totally agree with you that Russell T was all done for, and he was out of options by the time he went. Only David Tenant kept him going.

on another note
http://doctorwhotv.co.uk/doctor-who-series-7-autumn-2012-26419.htm

nooooo!

i still have old series to watch. haven't seen a single episode of old Doctor Who. it should keep me busy

Series 6 wasn't without problems I agree with that. The thing is I never finished watching an episode and thought "that was fucking awful" which I did a lot in RTD's run. At worst Moffat has been forgetable which is no real crime and his second season was a far cry from RTD's which was really bad on reflection. Mostly it was spoiled by the 'romance' between Rose and The Doctor which was just wrong on so many levels. Even worse when you realise Rose was RTD's Mary Sue. The best thing he did was dump her in Doomsday but then she was almost constantly referenced in series 3 and of course a major plot point in series 4.

The one thing about Moffat is he hasn't produced a Love and Monsters or a god forbid Fear Her. Also I agree he handles fan feedback a lot better than RTD did.
Troughton's Doctor is the most like Matt Smith's so that might be a good place to start but his run also has the most missing episodes :/

When you come to Colin Baker's run don't be too hard on him and check out some of his Big Finish audio drama's like Jubilee. Baker was actually a fine Doctor but he had John Nathan Turner screaming in his ear "MOAR CAMP, MOAR DRAMA" all the time. JNT deserves a lot of praise for keeping the show going in the dark days of the 80's when Michael Grade wanted the show axed but he also defaulted to his natural panto inspiration a lot of the time.

shock horror he's done what all of us hoped he would and moved who back to it's classical home, add to that hopefully throwing away rusty's godawful only 1 timelord in the universe storylines and we might just see a return of who to when it was at it's finest.

I forsee.. a modified cartmel plan in the future... a return of the time lords... and finally a true reboot rather than a series created by a fans wet dream.

As for the old series things to remember include that halfway through number 5's run a new chairman took over the beeb, he is savagely anti-who he loathes it with a vengence (he's part of the trust now and is complaining it costs too much despite it being the beebs biggest profit machine!) his first move was to cut the episode funds in half.. by the time it ended he had their budget down to less than they got when hartnell was the doctor! Because of this end of 5 through the first season of 7 is seen as the low point when cartmel takes over as script editor you'll start to see an improvement followed by it's cancellation

As much as I liked Lungbarrow it was a product of the time. I can imagine it working with McCoy's scheming manipulative bastard of a Doctor but not so much for Matt Smith. They do need to bring the Time Lords back though. The idea of the Doctor being a rebel doesn't work as well without something to rebel against.

hence modified. I do think they'll introduce the other as being who he is and matt smith's doctor is pretty cold and manipulative when he needs to be.

I know Moffat said he was a fan of the CMP introducing it now will be a little difficult if he's going to introduce the Looms especially since the RTD era talked a lot about the Doctor's family. I suppose it's possible to introduce The Other is some other way, that imprinting tech used in Family of Blood maybe.

I fully agree. I've read a fair bit of criticism that Season 5 and 6 have put more focus on the Doctor's companions but I think that it's a refreshing take on the Doctor as someone who actually exists as more than just an island unto himself.

I don't think there have been any *massively* bad episodes for the past two seasons; the only missteps I've seen in my opinion have been "The Girl Who Waited", but only because Karen Gillian is utterly unconvincing as a melee-combat badass (her acting as an aged, bitter version of herself though was surprisingly good). I even thought Closing Time was at least entertaining, even though the Cybermen were horribly misused.

Ugh, Fear Her. Night Terrors was a far, far superior episode, IMO. It was what Fear Her should have been.

It's worth noting that Moffat's also working on Sherlock, which may very well get another season after Season 2 (then again he did say that Reichenbach Falls would be the last S2 episode, so this may be the last we'll see of Sherlock). Production was supposed to be finished this year but it's apparently been pushed back to the early part of 2012. SM may also be working on other things as well. I mean, we never knew what happened after the last episode of Jekyll...

I swear everyone forgets holmes survived the falls...
also sherlock finished production 2 weeks ago at least according to Gattis thats when they handed the beeb the completed series to show whenever they want.
blech to the looms though even in lungbarrow your house is your family so you can do it that way you have a child by looming your line with a partners etc... but yeah looms are the one thing I hated about the plan

Series 6 was okay but too serialized for my liking. I love Doctor Who when he comes out of the TARDIS and sees some amazing new adventure before him. Series 6 seemed to be more about cliffhangers and mysteries than about, well, Doctor Who.

Moffat has already said next series is back to normal though, so I won't complain much.

As for the stories themselves I really liked The Doctor's Wife and the opening 2-parter, which without the serialized stuff might have been my favorite 2-parter of the revived series. I just loved how it all played out, logic gaps and all. The overall series 6 storyline was okay, though predictable and not at all as emotional as they wanted it to be IMO. The ending of Series 5 was much more moving if you ask me.

Least favorite episodes were the one with the little boy and the wooden doll enemies, which was absolute shit if you ask me, and the pirate one, which just kind of went nowhere. The "flesh" 2-parter was kind of average as well, though I did really enjoy the two Doctors when they interacted.

An interesting lead in to The Valeyard, who I would like to see return as a villain.

One of the reasons we need a return of the timelords is to bring back the doctors true enemies, the real master not rusty's dancing fool.. the Rani who willingly wiped out an entire species just to test a way of upping intelligence.. hell even the time meddler would be nice to see

I am not sure if I am happy that the name of Doctor will be revealed...it was nice mystery that shouldnt go away.

If you go by the CML it's hidden behind another title "The Other"