It's like a string of bright beads, and some duff beads. And sometimes it feels like too much, even when any individual bead is good in itself you get a bit 'OMG not another bloody bead on my heart-string, Russell'. Interestingly, this plotless narrative of accumulative wonders is something that Ackroyd picks out as a characteristic in ancient English writing, in Albion (now I have read that book it will remind me of everything, and vice-versa).
Another tendency - in English narrative in general and RTD in particular - is to recycle and reuse the past, to the extent that eventually we don't know where the act of creation is - does the present work add anything positive to the meaning of the canon? Or does it merely reawaken it, to loom over the present like some great tidal force.
RTD seems to me like a desperate man. He is spending all his resources to make us feel what he feels. But then, Everything Must Go, so why keep anything back?
My favourite piece of dialogue is the vision of the Time War as a self-contained hell where millions are dying and being reborn, the system thrashing between different states at the centre. That makes sense I think, as the result of a war where competing armies are writing and rewriting time. That vision is thrown away - probably just as well - it's better as something right out there at the periphery of vision.
What did I make of the Planet of Simm? It was just silly, and funny, and to be fair it made me feel a certain kinship with the writers. Yeah, if I had all the resources of the BBC I'd make those two beautiful creatures do all those things you made them do. That's what I pay my license fee for. 'More please BBC'.
ETA - while I was out today I thought of what I didn't write - that I really appreciated the range and quality of acting on show.