1. Consequences Are Actually There When It Matters
Now this one is going to be a lot harder to prove but hear me out. Although some people did die in the Russell T Davies' era, it was always insignificant people in the grand scheme of things. Every significant character in RTD's reign did not in any way die or get harmed in any real consequential way, even when promised they would. What was the point in trapping Rose in a parallel world if you can just write it to bring her back in a few series time? Or whatever happened to the idea that Donna's mind would 'burn and she would die' in the End of Time only to then have the Doctor turn around in the exact same story and say 'You'd think I'd leave my best friend without a defense mechanism?' What was the point of building up the danger if it was never there? Oh yeah, drama. Or how about Captain Jack Harkness who was just a walking, talking plot device that could be killed off at any minute with zero consequence. The truth is very little genuine consequences and threat actually occurred to anyone significant in the RTD era and what's worse is that the promise of it, while existent, wasnever delivered, making people think it actually happened even if it didn't. Eemember when Rose said 'this is the story of how I died' and she never did? Or how about when Dalek Caan saying one of the Doctor's companions will die only to have her memory wiped instead? Now here's the hard part - let's talk about Rory. Everyone moans about how Rory dies all the time, but how many times did he actually die in the reality of the show and brought back? Once, that was it. Every other instance of Rory dying took place in aborted timelines, (The Angels Take Manhattan) dream worlds, (Amy's Choice) or were illusions inside other character's heads (The Doctor's Wife). This is important to consider because in each of those instances a point is made that neither of those circumstances were really of consequence, we knew House was playing mind games in the Doctor's Wife and we knew that at least one existence in Amy's Choice was a dream and we knew that his and Amy's attempt at suicide was going to be a self correction paradox because that's why they did it in the first place. The only real time this happened was in Cold Blood and that was it, the only other time is when they got killed off in the series permanently. That makes twice. And with all of this in mind, the end justifies the means - the Ponds are gone they cannot and will not come back. For someone who people claim takes liberties with the consequences of companion's fates and claim that RTD was better for not doing this, people seem to forget that Moffat is the first and only head writer of the new series to actually write off his companions so they're actually gone permanently without any way they could return, what does that honestly tell you? In conclusion I do need to clarify some things. I'm more of a fan of the classic series, and I feel neither Moffat and Davies are great show-runners in general. I'm not a Moffat fan. I just look at both eras and see them for what they are. From an objective standpoint, a lot of the criticism surrounding Moffat's era are ill=founded or unjustified, mainly due to the way people look at the preceding era with Rose-tinted glasses (no pun intended). I hope I've shown why RTD's era was worse for the things people give Moffat such a hard time for. I mean no offense at all to the author of the opposing article, this is just my rebuttal to it.