Doctor Who: 10 Irritating Nu-Who Trends That Need To Die

6. Either Do the Season Long Arc Or Don't There's a right way and a wrong way to do a season long story arc that still allows you to tell individual stories within the framework. The Christopher Eccleston series made almost all the right choices; bringing the viewers attention to the repeated meme but not pointing it out to The Doctor until it was time for him to actively deal with it. The Torchwood and Saxon plots played more or less the same card, but they did it competently and inoffensively. In Season Four the cracks started to show, with the disappearing planets thread being buried too deep and the returning Rose thread being buried too shallow, but it still allowed for independent stories to occur without feeling too forced. Day of the Moon, however, ends with the 11th Doctor basically saying, 'Well, that's the overarching plot for the year, but let's go have a few individual stories before we get back to thinking about it, ay?' The Curse of the Black Spot had enough problems all on its own without making everyone resent it for dropping the bigger story, thank you very much. The Impossible Girl thread made the same mistakes, essentially being mentioned just often enough to remind us of its existence and then being forgotten by everyone when it got in the way of telling individual stories. It's a case of committing to the thing. Either do the season long plot properly or do a series of individual stories. Trying to do both at once is just irritating.