Just consider what the Tennant Doctor does to The Family of Blood in “Human Nature” & “The Family of Blood”: he pretty much traps them in torments for all eternity, with an unmistakeably cruel and power-driven mood to that resolution. I think this has been a pretty consistent part of this characterization.

I have seen every show still extant from the first series, and I still think that one of the very best single episodes was the very first show “An Unearthly Child” from 1963. Despite the dialogue and acting not being the best, it managed to achieve a truly creepy unsettling quality seldom equalled in later decades.

Wow! The Doctor’s going to get a “Drain Soul” attachment for his Sonic Screwdriver.

“I can remember being really scared by the way the Dalek raygun zapped victims into negative. I guess that only works with B&W.”

I remember hiding behind the sofa for the Pertwee Giant Fly story (the Green Death, which I guess was around the time of Love Canal), and Planet of the Spiders. Scary Baker ones were the Ark of Space, Pyramids of Mars, Robots of Death, and Image of the Fendahl, and Robot. Thought the Key of Time cycle was awesome, and the Planet Makers (where everything was run by a corporation) great satire.

Odd thing is, the kid loves Doctor Who and the original Star Trek, even as I’m wincing through the plot holes and crap special effects.

one of the things i like about RTD is that he takes the present-day ultra-conundrum of “watched by kids of all ages” seriously as a nut to be cracked, even if his attempts to crack it often go rawther awry

but the different side shown by the Doctor at the end would have been better had it been introduced as a way forward earlier in the Tennant years, IMO.

Ahem.

“Don’t you think she looks tired?” (from “The Christmas Invasion”)

and,

“’Because sometimes you need someone to stop you.” (from “The Runaway Bride”)

And those are just a couple of examples. Davies scripted it in too heavy-handed a manner, as has all-too-frequently been the case for him, but there’s been an undercurrent of it all along.

Link to Guardian Review (contains spoilers).

There’s also the fact that audiences are more familiar with the dominant story telling tropes.

Y’know, I quite like the illusion that I’m watching characters, from time to time; it’s the deviations from or riffs on the trope that are worth watching. Reducing Die Hard to a list of its tropes rather diminishes the craft of that film, in my view. (Of course, there’s good/enjoyable film-making that is almost all tropes; I’m just trying to make the case that watching older things should be more than just going “oh yes, Plot Device #163 on the list”.)

And to be vaguely on topic: I have very little experience of pre 1980s televised DW, but presumably one will only get something out of it if one is willing, to some extent, to accept it on its own terms.

Compare Raging Bull with Goodfellas, for a less strained example perhaps.