If Moffat ever decides to end an episode with the villain growing to the size of a skyscraper and then the Doctor merging with the other characters and also doing it and then they have a very clumsy and ineffective looking kung fu battle I completely support him in that decision.

Not really any more than any of the other countries around - at best it looks like it was because it's a way, way older country than its neighbors. (Germany and Italy, e.g., are very very new countries.)

I'd like it if it really went back to the old fashioned Doctor Who style and the Doctor just kidnaps someone and drags them around for a couple years.

Ok but imagine if it was one of those fans that always hates whatever is going on at the time and compares it constantly to things that happened before while pretending that they weren't hating that thing when it was happening.

And, I mean, it has to happen somewhere, after all..

And of course there's suspension of disbelief, which you need for basically any kind of fiction. In reality the Doctor will never be allowed to just die on an episode of Doctor Who, but in reality there's no such actual thing as a TARDIS or a Time Lord either, so…

"The Doctor's not going to die, and anytime just about any show goes to
the old 'protagonist threatened with death' well, it's more than a
little lazy"

I don't even see why it's a mistake, as opposed to just a kind of plot setup you can have when you have time travel involved.

Because that was his name.
He didn't need to send the signal for rescue because he was dead.
He set up the signal/signal device before he died.
He didn't make it to the stasis chamber in time because the Doctor blew up the dam, killing him.
It was a recreation of a village used for military training purposes; we knew it…

Hey look if you have a better idea for how to take a single episode of the X-Files and turn it into an entire season of television without adding any new characters or plot points I'd like to see it.

…in a context where no one was outmaneuvering anyone else and the only connection between the two situations was that a woman was involved?

Generally when people want to start an evacuation they speak calmly and have people move in an orderly way towards the exits, because really that is the best way to do it. They don't, in particular, shoot gas grenades into the crowd and start yelling RUN FOR YOUR LIVES EVERYONE IS GOING TO DIE!!!

Not "Maybe Tomorrow"?

The "empty warehouse" was a nuclear power plant…

The "haha secret prison for you!" bit from the first season was creepy enough, but I was still thrown by the fact that they just kind of went "Oh man, he's kind of scary and our fancy taser thing didn't make him harmless so let's just murder him."

You mean, in that he's a big guy and has a mask? I feel like that covers a lot of comic book characters there.

It's true - once he became the God Emperor of All Goodness (in Doctor Who) things really went down hill.

I think it's pretty clear why it failed - they changed He-Man's haircut! That haircut was iconic!

It's just useless folk wisdom.

Mostly he uses it for the other, equally important function of the screwdriver, which is taking things apart so they don't work anymore. That's pretty much the opposite of what you're saying about him, though.