Curate, connect, and discover
I hate to keep being so salty about Moffat’s era b/c RTD’s first era did have some things I didn’t like but man RTD was a freaking genius at weaving so much emotion and heart into his stories while still keeping it sci-fi
I mean we had arcs for soooo many characters it’s actually kind of crazy when you think about it, and I’m not just talking about Nine, Ten/Tentoo, Rose, Martha and Donna
The companions families as well–positive and negative b/c I’m still not over how difficult it must have been for Martha’s family after their year with the Master. But Jackie and Pete had their happily ever after (and a baby), Mickey grew so much, Sylvia seemed to have a bit of a change of heart regarding Donna at the end, Wilf was fabulously Wilf (we saw their families so many times on screen!!)
Like think about how wild it is that I know Mickey was raised by his gran, I remember Martha warning her brother Leo and he was walking with a gf/wife/partner? pushing a baby stroller, Martha’s dad had a gf who I think was called Annalise and there was drama about that cheating scandal…I know so much about characters that aren’t really the main companions in comparison to, for example, Amy and Rory
We had arcs for “minor” characters like Cassandra, Harriet Jones, Adam, The Face of Boe, the Slitheen that took over Margaret, even Jake from Pete’s World
We had a connection between Gwyneth and Gwen with the explanation as to why they look the same, same for the explanation as to why Tosh was there in S1
We had what was essentially like an origin story for the Ood in S4 when they had first been introduced in S2
Jack had his own spinoff, I haven’t watched Classic Who but Sarah Jane was incredible in what I’ve seen of her own spinoff too
Even though there’s some things I don’t like about Journey’s End the reason it was so exciting to see was b/c of the culmination of so many characters that had so much backstory coming together. Come on we even had a reference to Mr. Copper from the “Voyage of the Damned” special since he funded the Sub-Wave Network! Incredible, just incredible.