I enjoy RTD's character writing more than Moffat but Moffats arching and ideas more than RTDs.
RTD got caught up trying to out-epic himself constantly and its that reason i cant stand the finales to series 2 onwards until 5. (3 had such a great build up and it was brilliant up until Jesus Doctor flew in and forgave the Master)
Moffat doesn't suck in my eyes, i think hes become a little stuck in trying to please everybody, he got complaints for it going to dark then because it was too childish, because it was too complicated and archy then because its too linear or standalone.
Heres my views on the subject.
It seems like alot of the complaints of the RTD era rested squarely on his writing. The quick fixes, deus ex machinas, inappropriately timed comedic relief, using technobable to justify magic that violates rules of the story that he previously set down, and the jesus metaphors.
RTD was brilliant at coming up with ideas for plotlines and perfecting stories written by others, but when it came down to conecting those great ideas and fleshing them out into a story, there was alot of messy dialouge to connect the dots. These mistakes repeated themselves time and time again and were frequent sources of criticsm; including from many people on this board.
But despite being a bit of a crap writer; he was a brilliant producer and art director, and he took Moffat's excellent story ideas and grounded them in sci-fi and brought them to life in a way that really made you feel the excitement and adventure. Moffat is still a great writer but his problem isn't the stories but the fact that he is really bad at telling them.
This series is such a contrast to the RTD era. Everything looks cheap and grey compared to the epic and colorful world of RTD's who. All the sets are drab and anti-cinematic. Compare the Dalek ship from "Parting of th Ways" and "Journey's End" to that of "Victory of the Daleks". The latter looks like a minorly redressed high school cafeteria.
The only exception is the Tardis interior, which went too far the other way and if anything seems to be too colorful and goofy; with a console made of old junk and wacky sound effects just for the hell of it. It looks like MC Escher designed a playground.
You can also see how much RTD's edts went towards improving the scripts. No matter how out there things got in the RTD era, they always had a way of all making sense in the end. Moffat seems to be too obsessed with this "fairytale" thing and has complely changed Who's genre from science fiction to fantasy. Many scripts contain elements that make no sense and are never explained (regular looking fish that fly in the air, an elevator that has a girl read a creepy poem before killing people,ect) simply because they seem like they match the style Moffat is going for.
