Phil Ford is a good writer trapped inside the mad schemes of others. His scripts for Waters of Mars and Into the Dalek suffered from having Russell T Davies' and Moffats story arcs bolted on to them with the grace of a prison stabbing. He also wrote Dreamland, a good story weighed down by being in CGI animation that may/may not have been done with a PS1 cutscene manipulated by the effects in Microsoft PowerPoint. He needs an episode to himself so that he can write something which doesn't have 10 minutes scrapped from it for a story arc. It seems as though he gets crushed under the plot railroad more than most other writers, since he gets a pivotal episode with a list of things to told include that's longer than the script he hands in. He's basically owed an episode to himself by this point.