2. Development Of Plot And Characters
The biggest complaint I kept reading about series seven is that episodes felt rushed and plot lines and characters were underdeveloped. I don't think this was always fair. Though I fully agree that an extra 10 minutes to some episode like
The Power Of Three or
The Rings of Akhaten would have helped.
Cold War was fairly well paced for me. That being said, some characters got short changed a little. Professor Grisenko was a wonderful, funny and engaging character amid all the gruff Russian officers but it was criminal for an actor as great as David Warner to get so little screen time. And Tobias Menzies' first officer Lieutenant Stepashin had an interesting dynamic with the Ice Warrior that seemed cut short just to fit the episode length.
In my opinion the very strong
Hide could have benefited with being a two parter just to expand on the alien / lost time traveller angle. And if any episode was calling out for a terrifying cliffhanger, this was it. Of course sometimes it can go the other way. For every
Human Nature/The Family Of Blood and
The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang, you have drawn out, somewhat dull two parters such as
The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood and
the
Rebel Flesh/The Almost People, which would have benefited by loosing uninteresting characters and very slow build ups to become great single episodes.